I had the extreme privilege of attending the NICE analyst summit, held in Victoria Falls, Zambia, Africa. It was an unusual location for an analyst event, but one that we all truly enjoyed and appreciated.
In the African safari parks, the clouds are in the sky rather than data centers. Journeys are about migrating and moving from one food source to another, based on the climate and time of year. Workflows focus on getting enough to eat to endure. Intelligence is real, and not artificial, as the prey needs to outwit the predators. Transformation means adapting to the realities of climate change and a drought that has had a huge impact on the animals’ ability to find food sources.
The wildlife that adapts to these changes will survive, and hopefully thrive, while those that don’t will perish. For example, according to Save The Elephants.org, “Some elephants in sub-Saharan Africa have started uncharacteristically travelling at night to avoid the threat of poaching that usually occurs during the day. Elephants also have developed sophisticated gestures, sounds, infrasound, and even chemical secretions to relay messages to one another for survival purposes.”
So what does all this have to do with customer experience? Just like elephants and other wildlife, organizations need to adapt to the changes taking place in order to survive. Businesses that don’t transform their operations will be left behind, while more nimble organizations that embrace change and evolve will win out in the “survival of the fittest.”
At the analyst event we heard about how NICE is helping its customers transform their customer service operations to become more proactive, automated, and intelligent. NICE has been at the forefront of anticipating the market changes, particularly with the accelerated and rapid pace of change brought on by AI. According to CEO Barak Eilam, NICE is focused on “exponential innovation” and being “the fastest path to the future.” By embracing these changes and increasing automation, AI assistance, and AI augmentation, organizations can improve the customer experience and not just survive, but thrive.
In his final analyst summit keynote before he departs NICE as CEO at the end of the year, Eilam set the stage for the event.
He explained that there’s a new era for enterprises, with new approaches to driving business outcomes. This includes:
I was intrigued when he noted, “AI is moving from the dramatic to the pragmatic,” and soon understood how NICE plans on making this happen.
Eilam introduced the concept of the hyper-platform, described as a system of everything – system of record, workflow, and intelligence – to coordinate workflows across teams, departments, and the ecosystem with a shared domain. Hyper-platforms embed functional AI to enable workflow orchestration and essentially deliver workflow as a service. To that end, NICE launched the next generation of CXone Mpower, calling it the “Ultimate AI Hyper Platform for Customer Service Automation.”
With CXone Mpower, NICE infused its AI infrastructure natively into CXone to enable seamless adoption of AI technology while providing new capabilities. CXone Mpower helps organizations automate customer service with a hyper-platform that includes all the workflows, agents (human and AI) and knowledge and data working together, with access control and AI-driven workflow optimization to provide complete end-to-end automation.
Peeling the onion a bit more, Barry Cooper, president of NICE CX division, went into more detail about CXone Mpower, describing it as the upgraded architecture of CXone with new AI services added to the architecture. This architectural update embeds all the services in the CXone Mpower platform, leading to faster adoption of services like autosummary or Autopilot.
Cooper described how CXone Mpower automates customer service by orchestrating three elements:
In this video, Cooper discusses how CXone Mpower is an enhancement to the core CXone platform, providing new capabilities. As Cooper explains, NICE AI services, including copilot, autopilot, autosummary, and new hubs such as the LLM Hub, were moved into the CXone architecture. He notes with the next release that goes out to all customers, CXone Mpower will be available to all CXone customers, providing them with an upgraded architecture that makes it easy to take advantage of all of the NICE AI services. This means that any NICE customer will have an AI-enabled architecture to easily consume AI services, leading to increased adoption of NICE’s AI services.
In a session led by Tim Harris, general manager, CX Division, Harris noted several challenges that CXone Mpower helps to overcome:
By providing openness and flexibility, connected interoperability, and out-of-the-box intelligence, CXone Mpower makes it easier to connect to third-party applications as if they are native.
There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to CXone Mpower. In this video, Harris drills down a bit more and explains how CXone Mpower helps the agent, the supervisor, and the customer.
In a deep-dive about large language models (LLMs), Elizabeth Tobey, head of marketing, digital & AI, and Neeraj Verma, head of Applied AI, drilled down even deeper and discussed how applying LLMs for customer service requires:
Three pillars harness LLMs’ potential for meaningful customer service improvements:
In this video, Tobey discusses how NICE’s approach to AI is different from other vendors. She notes that LLMs are integrated into the architecture of the platform, providing accuracy and security, and describes the LLM Hub as a connection point to ensure proper use and functionality of the LLMs. Tobey also discusses how NICE tests and validates LLMs for various use cases to identify the best LLM for each specific use case to ensure the most valuable and accurate LLM.
Everyone agrees that knowledge is at the heart of AI systems. In this video, Aaron Rice, GM Expert CX, discusses how knowledge is now a must have and is essentially the “food” that you feed generative AI. NICE’s knowledge management is core and foundational to CXone Mpower. Rice notes that bringing knowledge together is now simpler and more accessible, allowing customers to access and harvest knowledge resources without huge migration efforts.
One of the best parts of the event was hearing from and interacting with customers and partners. I had the opportunity to chat with Sashen Naidu, vice president CX Services at NTT. In this video, Naidu discusses NTT’s customers’ AI adoption journeys, and how NTT helps customers increase adoption of AI technology. Naidu and I strongly agree that change management is key, ensuring that all stakeholders understand the benefits of AI and how it helps and supports them. Naidu also discusses how NICE and NTT work together to support customers.
While there was a lot to digest at the event (including impala meat and crocodile steaks), here are some key takeaways or messages that resonated with me:
Due to its profitability, rather than doing things based on investors’ demands, NICE can focus on the long term rather than just the short term. As Eilam explained, “We don’t need investment bankers and can spend the money how we want.” This gives the company more freedom and flexibility to innovate and make appropriate acquisitions.
This also means that NICE can do things at scale based on its size and number of employees. For example, NICE has specialized teams that look at the stability of the solution, as well as teams focused on adoption. Most competitors don't have the size and resources to do this.
Customer service is all about workflows. Throughout the event we heard about “human-free workflows,” workflow orchestration, workflow as a service, self-optimizing workflows powered by AI memory, injecting contextual insights into workflows – well, you get the picture. This is key, as customer service is essentially made up of a number of workflows that vary from company to company, requiring orchestration and automation.
Focusing on workflows, agents, and knowledge, rather than just technical elements such as generative AI, helps “move AI from the dramatic to the pragmatic.”
Spending several days in Southern Africa (Zambia and Botswana) can change the way you look at the world. The natural world can be beautiful and brutal. I witnessed a Cape Buffalo being attacked and eaten by several crocodiles, as well as zebras fighting each other for dominance. I also saw families of elephants protecting each other and the babies by relying on hierarchy, while teaching the youngsters the ways of the herd. I saw a female crocodile protecting her nest from predators, monkeys grooming each other, and so much more.
I also toured a small village in Botswana with a local, which made me appreciate so much of what we take for granted – including indoor plumbing.
The African people were warm, welcoming, and gracious, and I truly appreciate my experience there. The NICE conference was a perfect combination of content, connections, and conversations – with the added bonus of lions, leopards, and lots of elephants!
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