Who likes talking to a machine? On the surface, it might seem that most of us don’t. Research from Gartner has found that despite the abundance of self-service options available to customers, only nine percent of queries are fully resolved in digital self-service channels, while 71 percent of customers prefer to phone even when their queries could easily be fully resolved online.
While no doubt there are people who will always prefer speaking with a human, a large part of this issue is that, in the past, speech-recognition platforms for self-service just didn’t work very well. With the new release of more human AI self-service solutions, that is changing.
PolyAI and customer engagement solutions provider Twilio recently announced the integration of PolyAI's customer-led conversational assistant with Twilio Flex and Twilio Programmable Voice, a flexible contact center platform. Twilio Flex allows enterprises to deploy a 100 percent cloud-based contact center in days, not months. The announcement follows a recent round of $40 million Series B funding, in which Twilio Ventures participated.
PolyAI's integration with Twilio Flex and Programmable Voice solutions allows customers to use PolyAI conversational assistants to resolve customer queries over the phone and transfer calls back to contact center agents, when necessary. This hand-off includes vital metadata about the interaction to enable personalization and power business intelligence.
"PolyAI's unique delivery model for conversational assistants now allows Twilio Flex customers to access PolyAI's proprietary technology along with our expertise in speech recognition, conversational design, machine learning and dialogue design," commented Michael Chen, Head of Partnerships at PolyAI. "This allows them to deploy solutions that elevate the typical call center workflow into a branded conversational experience."
The PolyAI integration is available as a Marketplace Stream Connector, a native capability within the Twilio console, so Twilio customers have a seamless UX to manage their connections to PolyAI conversational assistants alongside any other services.
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
