Genesys – Moments Connected

At the event, we heard from CEO Paul Segre, who proudly announced that the integration with Interactive Intelligence was completed at the end of September, and they are now moving together as one company.

The main highlights discussed included:

• “Cloud first”
• The growth and success of PureCloud
• AI
• Use Cases – reducing sales cycle, “time to value”

Other topics discussed included “employee engagement,” including cloud-based WFO, and omnichannel solutions supporting a range of channels with an increased focus on messaging (e.g.; Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger, Skype, WeChat, and Line. 

Cloud First

Segre explained that Genesys is becoming “cloud first,” noting that they took the PureCloud methodologies and DevOps from Interactive Intelligence and improved upon them, and now have one set of architectural principles that Genesys’ development staff now follows. Until now, not everything Genesys did on-prem was also available in the cloud, but cloud first is about having everything in the cloud, using a common architecture and microservices. This new microservices architecture lets them develop something one time and deploy it across all three of the company’s platforms (PureCloud, PureConnect, and PureEngage). Segre noted that over time the vast majority of their new innovative cutting-edge developments will be shared services across the platforms. He noted, “The cloud is an environment that’s faster and more agile to develop in, and provides more flexibility, enabling Genesys to produce more code and feature functionality faster.” This cloud-first approach allows for a continuous delivery process for cloud deployment

As Steve Rutledge, SVP, Product Management and Marketing, explains in this video interview, cloud first is about rapid availability and deployment of new services and features. Rutledge also provides an update on PureCloud, and introduces the concept of “use cases,” which was a big focus of the analyst event, as will be discussed.

PureCloud Growth

As Rutledge mentioned, PureCloud is growing very rapidly, and added more than 500 PureCloud customers in the last 12 months, with nearly half of these located outside of North America. Genesys also added 160 new features added in the past year. One of the key areas of focus for PureCloud was the improvement in terms of services and customer care, as Genesys dramatically improved PureCloud service delivery speed and reduced “time to value” (deploying production agents), In addition, PureCloud is expanding globally, as international represents 50% of PureCloud revenues. New digital channels are being added, including multiplatform messaging and SMS. Genesys also announced that PureCloud is launching the first CX integration with Amazon Lex for conversational AI.

AI

AI was clearly a hot topic at the event, as Genesys has been busy innovating, and introduced Kate, the “personification of AI” (side note: Kate actually means “Pure,” which ties in with Genesys’ PureCloud, PureConnect, and PureEngage). Genesys focuses on what it calls “blended AI,” the seamless blending of bots, automation and AI with human agents and employees. Genesys is using AI technologies in three primary ways, including Predictive Routing, chatbots, and Predictive Workforce Management (first half of 2018).

In this video interview Merijn te Booij, Genesys CMO, discusses Blended AI, how Genesys enables “bring your own bot,” and how they are using AI for the next generation of routing, called Predictive Routing, to find the best match between the customer and agent. He also talks about how Genesys is using Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in the support domain.

Meet Kate

I had the opportunity to see some pretty cool demos of Kate and how Kate is used in several scenarios, including:

• As a chatbot, providing conversational IVR and text,
• As a bot gateway to bring in third-party bots and AI like Watson
• Predictive Routing
• As a translator –translating text input to another language in real time.

This video shows the demo of Kate as a chatbot, and how it can escalate an interaction from a bot to an agent when needed.

The next video shows Predictive Matching, demonstrating how Genesys uses AI to provide the most granular match of customer attributes with employee knowledge and performance in order to provide the best results for the customer and the enterprise.

Smart Use Cases

The other big topic at the conference was Use Cases. Genesys notes that it captured and productized the best practices of how customers use Genesys products, and developed prescriptive outcome-based Smart Use Cases that bring together products, services, and best practices. With these Use Cases, Genesys now sells its products and services based on outcomes, rather than selling licenses for specific products. For example, instead of gathering requirements and customizing a solution, sales people now identify business problems and apply the use cases to those business challenges, bringing in the right resources. The use cases have a standard architecture and a standard set of outcomes.

Genesys currently has 80 Smart Use Cases. Examples of these include:

• Outbound - Improve telesales with automated campaign management: blend contact strategies across multiple channels, deliver highly targeted campaigns, and route customers to live agents if needed.
• Digital - Increase sales conversion with proactive chat: tracking customer actions across channels, engage seamlessly and leverage the moment of opportunity, all in real time.
• Inbound - Connect Voice Interaction to Right Resource: create a unified virtual contact center, by routing customers to your best-fit agents across any location

By using these prescriptive Use Cases, businesses can reduce churn, grow sales, and improve NPS, etc. Genesys found that it has been able to shorten the sales cycle and time to go live, with a faster “time to value.”

In addition, Genesys is expanding beyond customer service to sales and marketing Use Cases. While it’s still early days for this, Genesys mentioned a few well-known companies that have deployed Genesys for sales and marketing, and I expect to hear more in the coming months.

I spoke with Lucy Norris, Executive VP of Customer Success, about how the Smart Use Cases help Genesys in the sales process, and how customers benefit.  Norris also discusses PureSuccess, which is a new way of delivering services to customers to help them get started. PureSuccess includes several bundles: Drive, Guide, and Equip, all aimed at helping customers drive adoption.

It was great to hear from Genesys about how it’s driving a cloud-first vision leveraging microservices, innovating with technologies like AI, and improving the customer experience for its own customers with Smart Use Cases and PureSuccess. I was also pleased to hear that while Genesys will continue to sell PureCloud Communicate and PureCloud Collaborate for customers that request them, the company isn’t pursuing or pushing its UCC offerings, and instead will focus on its core strength – customer experience and the contact center.

Genesys is investing a lot of resources into R&D, and I expect to see the fruits of this become even more evident in the coming months.