Cisco Unveils AI-Powered Innovations for Webex to Transform Customer and Employee Experiences

Cisco Announces New Webex AI Agent and AI Solutions for the Contact Center to Transform Customer Experiences

Announces New Webex AI Agent and AI Solutions for the Contact Center to Transform Customer Experiences. 's Webex AI Agent automates contact center inquiries with conversational intelligence for quick and effective issue resolution New Webex AI Agent, and AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center will change how businesses interact with and support their customers Today at WebexOne, (NASDAQ: CSCO) unveiled new AI-powered innovations, including the Webex AI Agent, and AI Assistant features for Webex Contact Center. These AI solutions leverage advanced conversational intelligence and automation to enhance customer interactions, streamline issue resolution and improve overall customer satisfaction. This enables business leaders to deliver faster, more effective and more empathetic interactions that improve customer trust and brand loyalty. Webex AI Agent: Addressing the Need for Immediate and Effective Self-Service To address rising customer expectations for helpful and immediate assistance, announced the new Webex AI Agent. This self-service concierge swiftly takes actions and handles customer inquiries with natural dialogue and conversational intelligence to eliminate wait times and provide faster resolutions. Webex AI Agent incorporates the latest in responsible AI and automation into the Webex Customer Experience portfolio. It will transform the experience for customers, eliminating the complexity and frustration they are accustomed to. 'Customer experience can make or break a brand, and unlike other solutions on the market, the Webex AI Agent solves customer problems instantaneously and will fundamentally transform the experiences we have all reluctantly been using for far too long,' said , Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, . 'At , we're building AI solutions natively. We start product design with the assumption that AI is going to be in the core fabric of the product and an essential ingredient in how we reimagine customer experiences. We believe that in the next few years, a large majority of first-time calls will be handled by an AI Agent that will be just as interactive, dynamic, engaging and personable as a human agent.' According to a new global study conducted by , there is a link between customer satisfaction and effective self-service tools. Current options are failing to meet their needs. For example, rebooking a flight or replacing a lost credit card typically require live agent support, leading to long queues and hold times, multiple transfers, frustrated customers and agent burnout. Webex AI Agent provides self-service options for scenarios like these, which can result in a 39% improvement in customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores according to customer experience leaders. : Simplify and Scale the Contact Center Webex AI Agent includes a new design tool called , which makes it easy for business users and IT administrators to train and deploy AI agents, providing them with unmatched scalability and user-friendliness. allows contact centers to quickly deploy a voice or digital AI agent in minutes and choose which AI models are used to support customer inquiries. This AI front door will reduce calls in the contact center so that agents can focus on higher touch and relationship-based customer service. Webex AI Agent along with the will be generally available in Q1 2025 for cloud customers, with customer trials for on-premise customers in Q2 2025. Building on 's AI Momentum in Webex Contact Center Customer-facing teams often struggle with information overload and growing workloads, leading to longer resolution times and decreased CSAT scores. In fact, customer experience leaders report that 1 out of 3 agents lack the customer context needed to deliver ideal customer experiences. With the AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center, becoming generally available in Q1 2025, busy agents and supervisors benefit from automated guidance at their fingertips to provide expert-level customer support, including: Context Summaries: When an agent is required, context summaries facilitate seamless handoffs from an AI agent to contact center agent. All necessary background information is provided to continue the conversation while eliminating the need for customers to repeat themselves. Suggested Responses: Recommendations appear directly within the contact center platform, providing agents with the information they need right at their fingertips to reduce call times. Dropped Call Summaries: Interactions are captured and documented up to the point of disconnection, ensuring continuity when the call is resumed. Also becoming generally available in Q1 2025 is Agent Wellness for the contact center. These AI features allow for proactive actions such as automatic breaks for agents, changes in agent schedules and shifting of which channels agents support to increase or decrease capacity based on need. AI is also powering analytics to help customer experience leaders operate a smarter, more efficient contact center: Topic Analytics: Generally available now, these analytics quickly identify the drivers of incoming calls and customer issues to enable proactive issue resolution. Automatic CSAT Scoring: Available , this solution leverages operational data and transcripts to evaluate 100% of an organization's customer interactions, addressing the common issue of low customer survey response rates. With these new insights, business leaders can resolve challenges as they arise and anticipate future needs, delivering a new wave of proactive customer experience. About (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that securely connects everything to make anything possible. Our purpose is to power an inclusive future for all by helping our customers reimagine their applications, power hybrid work, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals. Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco. Webex is a leading provider of cloud-based collaboration solutions which includes video meetings, calling, messaging, events, customer experience solutions like contact center and purpose-built collaboration devices. At Webex, we start with people and their experiences first. This focus on delivering inclusive collaboration experiences fuels our innovation, which leverages AI and Machine Learning, to remove the barriers of geography, language, personality, and familiarity with technology. Our solutions are underpinned with security and privacy by design. We work with the world's leading business and productivity apps - delivered through a single application and interface. Learn more at webex.com.

Cisco Announces New Webex AI Agent and AI Solutions for the Contact Center to Transform Customer Experiences

Cisco's Webex AI Agent automates contact center inquiries with conversational intelligence for quick and effective issue resolutionNew Webex AI Agent, AI Agent Studio and Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center will change how businesses interact with and support their customers Today at WebexOne, Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) unveiled new AI-powered innovations, including the Webex AI Agent, AI Agent Studio and Cisco AI Assistant features for Webex Contact Center. These AI solutions leverage advanced conversational intelligence and automation to enhance customer interactions, streamline issue resolution and improve overall customer satisfaction. This enables business leaders to deliver faster, more effective and more empathetic interactions that improve customer trust and brand loyalty. Webex AI Agent: Addressing the Need for Immediate and Effective Self-Service To address rising customer expectations for helpful and immediate assistance, Cisco announced the new Webex AI Agent. This self-service concierge swiftly takes actions and handles customer inquiries with natural dialogue and conversational intelligence to eliminate wait times and provide faster resolutions. Webex AI Agent incorporates the latest in responsible AI and automation into the Webex Customer Experience portfolio. It will transform the experience for customers, eliminating the complexity and frustration they are accustomed to. "Customer experience can make or break a brand, and unlike other solutions on the market, the Webex AI Agent solves customer problems instantaneously and will fundamentally transform the experiences we have all reluctantly been using for far too long," said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco. "At Cisco, we're building AI solutions natively. We start product design with the assumption that AI is going to be in the core fabric of the product and an essential ingredient in how we reimagine customer experiences. We believe that in the next few years, a large majority of first-time calls will be handled by an AI Agent that will be just as interactive, dynamic, engaging and personable as a human agent." According to a new global study conducted by Cisco, there is a link between customer satisfaction and effective self-service tools. Current options are failing to meet their needs. For example, rebooking a flight or replacing a lost credit card typically require live agent support, leading to long queues and hold times, multiple transfers, frustrated customers and agent burnout. Webex AI Agent provides self-service options for scenarios like these, which can result in a 39% improvement in customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores according to customer experience leaders. AI Agent Studio: Simplify and Scale the Contact Center Webex AI Agent includes a new design tool called AI Agent Studio, which makes it easy for business users and IT administrators to train and deploy AI agents, providing them with unmatched scalability and user-friendliness. The AI Agent Studio allows contact centers to quickly deploy a voice or digital AI agent in minutes and choose which AI models are used to support customer inquiries. This AI front door will reduce calls in the contact center so that agents can focus on higher touch and relationship-based customer service. Webex AI Agent along with the AI Agent Studio will be generally available in Q1 2025 for cloud customers, with customer trials for on-premise customers in Q2 2025. Building on Cisco's AI Momentum in Webex Contact Center Customer-facing teams often struggle with information overload and growing workloads, leading to longer resolution times and decreased CSAT scores. In fact, customer experience leaders report that 1 out of 3 agents lack the customer context needed to deliver ideal customer experiences. With the Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center, becoming generally available in Q1 2025, busy agents and supervisors benefit from automated guidance at their fingertips to provide expert-level customer support, including: Context Summaries: When an agent is required, context summaries facilitate seamless handoffs from an AI agent to contact center agent. All necessary background information is provided to continue the conversation while eliminating the need for customers to repeat themselves.Suggested Responses: Recommendations appear directly within the contact center platform, providing agents with the information they need right at their fingertips to reduce call times.Dropped Call Summaries: Interactions are captured and documented up to the point of disconnection, ensuring continuity when the call is resumed. Also becoming generally available in Q1 2025 is Agent Wellness for the contact center. These AI features allow for proactive actions such as automatic breaks for agents, changes in agent schedules and shifting of which channels agents support to increase or decrease capacity based on need. AI is also powering analytics to help customer experience leaders operate a smarter, more efficient contact center: Topic Analytics: Generally available now, these analytics quickly identify the drivers of incoming calls and customer issues to enable proactive issue resolution.Automatic CSAT Scoring: Available January 2025, this solution leverages operational data and transcripts to evaluate 100% of an organization's customer interactions, addressing the common issue of low customer survey response rates. With these new insights, business leaders can resolve challenges as they arise and anticipate future needs, delivering a new wave of proactive customer experience. About Cisco Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that securely connects everything to make anything possible. Our purpose is to power an inclusive future for all by helping our customers reimagine their applications, power hybrid work, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals. Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks.

Cisco Unveils New AI Innovations to Amplify the Employee Experience

launches new AI solutions to advance collaboration and empower employees with equitable and exceptional experiences. IT teams benefit from simplicity of deployment, management and the ability to scale in any workspace. Designed to help organizations reimagine work and workspaces, new innovations include Spatial Meetings to deliver 3D meeting experiences that reduce the impact of distance, Ceiling Microphone Pro to enable truly immersive and integrated audiovisual experiences, and AI Assistant features to advance employee productivity. Today at WebexOne, (NASDAQ: CSCO) unveiled new AI-fueled solutions to enhance employee connection and collaboration. The company announced several new innovations, including Spatial Meetings, Ceiling Microphone Pro, new AI Assistant for Webex capabilities and more. Today, employees and IT teams want solutions that enable seamless and intelligent collaboration. From delivering enhanced meeting quality to enabling increased productivity and streamlined device management, 's new AI innovations are designed to transform work and workspaces. 'With AI baked into every part of 's product portfolio, we're helping organizations futureproof their workspaces with solutions ready for the next generation of how and where people work,' said , Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, . 'We're providing our customers with intelligent, adaptable, and easy-to-manage technology that enhances experiences for their employees and customers.' Delivering Distance Zero Experiences In this era of distributed work, employees need experiences that make all meeting attendees feel like they're in the same room, even if they aren't - a concept calls Distance Zero. is leveraging AI to reimagine smart workplaces and enable equitable and inclusive meeting experiences for everyone regardless of where and how they work. New innovations include: Spatial Meetings: Turn any space equipped with a into a stunning immersive studio and deliver spatial video to Webex for Apple Vision Pro users - easily with a simple software upgrade. With any Room Bar Pro device and an Apple Vision Pro, users can do things like product demos, remote training, education and more with video that includes remarkable depth and dimension. Ceiling Microphone Pro: Capture natural conversation from anywhere in a variety of workspaces. This industry-first adaptive microphone uses AI to automatically adjusts to speaker position and changes to room configuration. Compatible with cameras and room systems, the Ceiling Microphone Pro delivers a fully integrated and immersive meeting experience that is easy to manage. Microphone set up is now faster than ever, taking minutes, instead of hours. Managing Smart Workspaces With the rise of flexible work, IT responsibilities have expanded alongside increased employee expectations. To address this, is empowering IT and facilities teams to streamline their work with: Workspace Designer: Fully automates the design and customization of workspaces. It provides a 3D view of audio and video coverage, and accelerates the time it takes to deploy video-enabled hybrid workspaces. in Control Hub: Enables IT to dynamically identify and resolve meeting room issues in real time. ThousandEyes integration for the Desk Phone 9800 Series and Webex Calling: Helps monitor and troubleshoot in real-time, reducing downtime by tracking where call issues originate. Advancing Employee Productivity and Engagement Integrate with Glean, enabling mutual customers to enhance discussions and speed up decision-making with its knowledge graph and connectors including Outlook, Salesforce and . Choose the Large Language Model (LLM) that best fits their needs with Amazon Bedrock. Share summaries and recaps across third-party platforms including Microsoft Outlook, Teams, Copilot and Slack. Additional new capabilities to enhance employee engagement include: Vidcast enhancements: New features like highlights, chapters and transcripts enhance asynchronous video capabilities. AI-generated Vidcast will soon allow users to upload a PDF or PPT and automatically generate a script and voice-overs in the language and tone of their choice. This is a major time-saver and will enhance the user experience. AI-generated Slido polls: Meeting participants can use AI to generate Slido polls during webinars and large meetings. About (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that securely connects everything to make anything possible. Our purpose is to power an inclusive future for all by helping our customers reimagine their applications, power hybrid work, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals. Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco. Webex is a leading provider of cloud-based collaboration solutions which includes video meetings, calling, messaging, events, customer experience solutions like contact center and purpose-built collaboration devices. At Webex, we start with people and their experiences first. This focus on delivering inclusive collaboration experiences fuels our innovation, which leverages AI and Machine Learning, to remove the barriers of geography, language, personality, and familiarity with technology. Our solutions are underpinned with security and privacy by design. We work with the world's leading business and productivity apps - delivered through a single application and interface. Learn more at webex.com.

Cisco Unveils New AI Innovations to Amplify the Employee Experience

Cisco launches new AI solutions to advance collaboration and empower employees with equitable and exceptional experiences.IT teams benefit from simplicity of deployment, management and the ability to scale in any workspace.Designed to help organizations reimagine work and workspaces, new innovations include Cisco Spatial Meetings to deliver 3D meeting experiences that reduce the impact of distance, Ceiling Microphone Pro to enable truly immersive and integrated audiovisual experiences, and Cisco AI Assistant features to advance employee productivity. Today at WebexOne, Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) unveiled new AI-fueled solutions to enhance employee connection and collaboration. The company announced several new innovations, including Cisco Spatial Meetings, Ceiling Microphone Pro, new Cisco AI Assistant for Webex capabilities and more. Today, employees and IT teams want solutions that enable seamless and intelligent collaboration. From delivering enhanced meeting quality to enabling increased productivity and streamlined device management, Cisco's new AI innovations are designed to transform work and workspaces. "With AI baked into every part of Cisco's product portfolio, we're helping organizations futureproof their workspaces with solutions ready for the next generation of how and where people work," said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco. "We're providing our customers with intelligent, adaptable, and easy-to-manage technology that enhances experiences for their employees and customers." Delivering Distance Zero Experiences In this era of distributed work, employees need experiences that make all meeting attendees feel like they're in the same room, even if they aren't - a concept Cisco calls Distance Zero. Cisco is leveraging AI to reimagine smart workplaces and enable equitable and inclusive meeting experiences for everyone regardless of where and how they work. New innovations include: Cisco Spatial Meetings: Turn any space equipped with a Cisco Room Bar Pro into a stunning immersive studio and deliver spatial video to Webex for Apple Vision Pro users - easily with a simple software upgrade. With any Room Bar Pro device and an Apple Vision Pro, users can do things like product demos, remote training, education and more with video that includes remarkable depth and dimension.Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro: Capture natural conversation from anywhere in a variety of workspaces. This industry-first adaptive microphone uses AI to automatically adjusts to speaker position and changes to room configuration. Compatible with Cisco cameras and room systems, the Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro delivers a fully integrated and immersive meeting experience that is easy to manage. Microphone set up is now faster than ever, taking minutes, instead of hours. Managing Smart Workspaces With the rise of flexible work, IT responsibilities have expanded alongside increased employee expectations. To address this, Cisco is empowering IT and facilities teams to streamline their work with: Workspace Designer: Fully automates the design and customization of workspaces. It provides a 3D view of audio and video coverage, and accelerates the time it takes to deploy video-enabled hybrid workspaces. Smart Diagnostics in Control Hub: Enables IT to dynamically identify and resolve meeting room issues in real time.ThousandEyes integration for the Desk Phone 9800 Series and Webex Calling: Helps monitor and troubleshoot in real-time, reducing downtime by tracking where call issues originate. Advancing Employee Productivity and Engagement To advance collaboration and increase productivity, the Cisco AI Assistant will enable users to: Automate workflows through integrations with enterprise apps including Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk, and more.Integrate with Glean, enabling mutual customers to enhance discussions and speed up decision-making with its knowledge graph and connectors including Outlook, Salesforce and ServiceNow.Choose the Large Language Model (LLM) that best fits their needs with Amazon Bedrock.Share summaries and recaps across third-party platforms including Microsoft Outlook, Teams, Copilot and Slack. Additional new capabilities to enhance employee engagement include: Vidcast enhancements: New features like highlights, chapters and transcripts enhance asynchronous video capabilities. AI-generated Vidcast will soon allow users to upload a PDF or PPT and automatically generate a script and voice-overs in the language and tone of their choice. This is a major time-saver and will enhance the user experience.AI-generated Slido polls: Meeting participants can use AI to generate Slido polls during webinars and large meetings. About Cisco Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that securely connects everything to make anything possible. Our purpose is to power an inclusive future for all by helping our customers reimagine their applications, power hybrid work, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals. Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on X at @Cisco. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. About Webex by Cisco Webex is a leading provider of cloud-based collaboration solutions which includes video meetings, calling, messaging, events, customer experience solutions like contact center and purpose-built collaboration devices. At Webex, we start with people and their experiences first. This focus on delivering inclusive collaboration experiences fuels our innovation, which leverages AI and Machine Learning, to remove the barriers of geography, language, personality, and familiarity with technology. Our solutions are underpinned with security and privacy by design. We work with the world's leading business and productivity apps - delivered through a single application and interface. Learn more at webex.com.

New AI-Powered Cisco Collaboration Products And Features Unveiled At WebexOne 2024

Here's a look at the products updates, hardware and AI-enhanced features that the tech giant launched this week during WebexOne 2024. Cisco Systems has been on a mission over the last 18-24 months to truly elevate experiences for remote and in-person employees, businesses, and end users and customers. To that end, the tech giant has spent the last several years further building out and strengthening its globally popular Webex collaboration platform. Cisco on Wednesday during its annual WebexOne event came armed with a smattering of AI-inspired updates to its Webex portfolio as the pace of AI innovation accelerates, including for Webex Calling and Contact Center. The company also unveiled new collaboration hardware and smart workspace management to delight end users, IT administrators, and channel partners alike. It's safe to say that Cisco wants security and AI to be synonymous with its Webex platform. "I'm quite proud of the recognition that we're getting for our efforts, as well as all the momentum that we're seeing with our product lines, whether that is 16 million plus users who trust us with Webex calling, or a 75 percent increase in our contact center seats year over year. In fact, our WebEx contact center business is the fastest growing cloud business within Cisco, and I'm talking businesses of large sizes, several hundreds of billions of dollars," Anurag Dhingra, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Collaboration, told reporters and analysts ahead of the show. CRN rounded up the latest collaboration products and AI features that the tech giant unleashed this week at WebexOne 2024 event. Here's how Cisco is bolstering the Webex platform. Webex AI Agent Cisco executives said that the company is seeing "amazing traction and momentum" in AI adoption, especially with AI Assistant embedded into WebEx meetings. With customer experience in mind, Cisco has rolled out Webex AI Agent. It's a self-service concierge that can handle customer inquiries with conversational intelligence in that it has been designed to sound like a natural, non-robotic voice that can quickly switch gears or swap in new context and resolve numerous customer inquiries, even if a customer changes their mind or asks a different question. Cisco said this will cut down the complexity and frustration that exists today and will free up contact center agents to focus on higher touch and relationship-based customer service. "We believe that in the next few years, a large majority of first-time calls will be handled by an AI Agent that will be just as interactive, dynamic, engaging and personable as a human agent," Jeetu Patel, Cisco's executive vice president and chief product officer, said of the Webex AI Agent. AI Agent Studio Webex AI Agent will include a design tool on the backend that simplifies the process of training and deploying AI Agents in minutes for users and IT administrators. The AI Agent Studio allows contact centers to quickly deploy a voice or digital AI agent in minutes and select which AI models are used to support specific customer inquiries. It's what Cisco is calling an "AI front door" to reduce calls in the contact center. Webex AI Agent along with the AI Agent Studio will be generally available in Q1 2025 for cloud customers, with customer trials for on-premise customers in Q2 2025. Available right now within the Webex Contact Center are AI-powered analytics to boost agent, supervisor, and business performance for improved customer interactions and contact center operations. Cisco Spatial Meetings Distance Zero, a term that Cisco has coined aimed at making all meeting attendees feel like they are in the same room, was the inspiration for Spatial Meetings. Cisco Spatial Meetings is a feature that lets businesses turn any space with a Cisco Room Bar Pro into a 3D studio with spatial video experiences for Webex for Apple Vision Pro users. With any new or existing Room Bar Pro device and an Apple Vision Pro, users can do things like product demos, remote training, education and more with increased video depth and dimension, Cisco said. Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro Meeting attendees joining remotely have a screen to themselves and a dedicated microphone. Cisco has been on a mission to improve the conference room experience so that each in-person attendee can also be featured and easily heard for remote attendees. The new Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro is equipped with AI-powered adaptive beamforming technology that automatically adjusts to a speaker's position in the room and any changes to room configuration to capture natural conversation wherever it is occurring in the space. Cisco said that the new ceiling microphone also works with existing Cisco cameras and room systems to deliver an integrated and immersive meeting experience. Smart Workspace Management Cisco unveiled a handful of new offerings, features, and integrations aimed at facilitating flexible work environments as end users blend in-office and working from home. The first is Workspace Designer, a blueprint-like tool that automates the design and customization of hybrid workspaces by guiding users through furniture, platform, and product choices based on their requirements. For IT professionals and integrators, Cisco also released Smart Diagnostics in Control Hub, a feature that lets administrators resolve issues on RoomOS and MTR devices in real time with an easy-to-understand explanation of why an issue occurred and actionable suggestions for resolving device issues. Cisco also announced that it was integrating its network intelligence tool ThousandEyes into its Desk Phone 9800 Series and within Webex Calling, which will let administrators monitor and troubleshoot issues within Webex Calling and the Desk Phone 9800 Series in real-time, to identify the exact location of the problem, the company said.

Cisco's Webex Contact Center platform gets agentic AI-powered chatbots - SiliconANGLE

Cisco's Webex Contact Center platform gets agentic AI-powered chatbots Cisco Systems Inc. said today it's bringing agentic artificial intelligence capabilities to its contact center and video conferencing platforms, helping customer service agents and employees boost their productivity through automation. The new capabilities, announced at the company's annual Webex One event in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, include a new Webex AI Agent that's designed to take customer calls on behalf of human agents. The company also announced the Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center, which is a digital assistant for human contact center employees, designed to help them be more efficient while dealing with customers. In addition, the company announced a new AI Agent Studio for companies that want to create their own, customized AI agents for use in Webex Contact Center. With today's updates, Cisco is looking to take the lead in a contact center industry that has eagerly embraced the capabilities of AI. Virtually every contact center software provider offers some kind of AI-powered chatbots for handling basic customer queries, before handing off the more difficult ones to human agents. But with Webex AI Agent, Cisco says it's going one better, as its chatbots will be able to perform much more complicated tasks, and reduce the workload that humans are required to deal with. The Webex AI Agent leverages advanced natural dialogue and conversational intelligence to deliver faster resolutions, reducing wait times for callers. As an example, Cisco said issues such as a consumer needing to rebook a flight or replace a lost debit card almost always involve a human agent, but that's no longer the case. With Webex AI Agent, companies will be able to create customized, self-service options for such use cases, so consumers can complete these tasks without human agent assistance. According to Cisco, early adopters have seen a 39% improvement in customer satisfaction since they began implementing the technology. Cisco Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel said the quality of customer service has a big impact on a brand's reputation, so they can't afford to get it wrong. "Webex AI Agent solves customer problems instantaneously and will fundamentally transform the experiences we have all grown accustomed to," he promised. Within the Webex AI Agent, customers will also be able to play around with Cisco's AI Agent Studio, which provides an interface and tools for training customized AI bots that possess more context about their business. Customers will be able to use their own AI models and train them on their own data, and deploy them within Webex Contact Center, improving the capabilities of their chatbots further, the company said. Cisco said Webex AI Agent and AI Agent Studio will both become generally available for cloud customers in the first quarter of next year, while on-premises customers will be able to preview them starting in the second quarter. As for Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center, this is an AI bot that's designed to assist human agents, who will still be necessary to handle the most complicated customer issues that Webex AI Agent cannot deal with. Generally available now, provides automated guidance for call center agents as they deal with each caller, delivering at-a-glance context summaries to facilitate the hand-off from chatbot to human, who will immediately be able to see what the caller's problem is. In addition to context, the Cisco AI Assistant will also provide suggested responses to agents. It's smart enough to listen and understand the conversion between the agent and the customer, and will immediately tell the agent what they should do next to resolve the customer's issue as soon as possible. The AI Assistant isn't the only way that Cisco is taking care of human agents. With the new Agent Wellness capability announced today, it's providing contact center managers with some useful capabilities such as automatic breaks for agents to prevent them from getting burned out. Other features include better agent scheduling and tools for increasing or decreasing each agent's workflow on the fly. Finally, the company also revealed a number of updates for enterprise users of the Webex video conferencing platform to facilitate virtual meetings The new stuff includes a feature called Spatial Meetings that can transform any space equipped with a Cisco Room Bar into a more immersive, studio-like environment with immersive, spatial audio. There's a new piece of hardware too, called the Cisco Ceiling Microphone, which helps to capture natural conversation from anywhere in the room. It uses AI to detect where the voices are coming from and adjust the microphone on the fly, so it can always focus on the person who is speaking. It's compatible with various Cisco cameras and room systems, and replaces the need for individual microphones for each user.

Cisco introduces AI solutions for improved customer service By Investing.com

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) has announced the launch of its new artificial intelligence (AI) innovations aimed at enhancing customer service experiences. The Webex AI Agent, AI Agent Studio, and Cisco AI Assistant are designed to streamline customer interactions and issue resolution through advanced conversational intelligence and automation. The Webex AI Agent is a self-service concierge that utilizes natural dialogue to address customer inquiries promptly, aiming to reduce wait times and improve resolution speed. It integrates responsible AI and automation into the Webex Customer Experience portfolio, with the goal of simplifying customer support interactions. Cisco's Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Jeetu Patel, stated, "Customer experience can make or break a brand, and the Webex AI Agent solves customer problems instantaneously." He added that Cisco is focused on embedding AI into the core of their product design to reimagine customer experiences. The AI Agent Studio is a new design tool that allows business users and IT administrators to easily train and deploy AI agents. It offers scalability and user-friendliness, with the objective of reducing call volumes in contact centers, thus enabling human agents to concentrate on more complex customer service tasks. These AI solutions are expected to be available for cloud customers in Q1 2025, with trials for on-premise customers following in Q2 2025. Additionally, the Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center, set to be generally available in Q1 2025, will provide agents and supervisors with automated guidance. Features include context summaries for seamless handoffs from AI agents to human agents, suggested responses to reduce call times, and dropped call summaries to ensure continuity. Cisco is also introducing analytics tools powered by AI. Topic Analytics, available now, identifies the main issues driving customer calls for proactive resolution. Automatic CSAT Scoring, coming in January 2025, will use operational data and transcripts to evaluate all customer interactions, addressing the challenge of low survey response rates. This announcement is based on a press release statement from Cisco Systems, Inc., and aims to offer businesses tools for improving customer satisfaction and operational efficiency in customer service. In other recent news, Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ:CSCO). has seen significant developments, with the spotlight on earnings and revenue results. The company reported Q4 2024 revenue of $13.6 billion, marking a 10% decline year-over-year. Despite the overall decrease, specific sectors such as Security and Observability experienced significant growth, surging by 81% and 41% respectively. The acquisition of Splunk (NASDAQ:SPLK) contributed an additional $960 million to the quarter's revenue. Cisco also caught the attention of various analyst firms, including Citi and HSBC (LON:HSBA), both upgrading the stock from Neutral to Buy. Citi's upgrade was based on Cisco's potential growth in the Ethernet AI Total Addressable Market and a narrowing valuation gap with peers. Meanwhile, HSBC anticipates a compound annual growth rate of 11.6% in Cisco's non-GAAP earnings per share from 2024 through 2027. In addition to these significant upgrades, Cisco announced a substantial investment in cloud services provider, Coreweave, valuing it at $23 billion. This move underscores the company's intent to expand its presence in the rapidly evolving sector. Lastly, a notable change in the company's board of directors was announced, with Ekta Singh-Bushell not seeking re-election at the forthcoming annual stockholders meeting. These are all recent developments within the company. As Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) unveils its new AI innovations for customer service, investors may find additional context from InvestingPro's data and tips particularly enlightening. Cisco's market capitalization stands at an impressive $225.88 billion, underscoring its position as a major player in the technology sector. This substantial market presence aligns with the company's ambitious AI initiatives, which aim to revolutionize customer experience management. An InvestingPro Tip highlights that Cisco is a "prominent player in the Communications Equipment industry," which supports its capacity to introduce groundbreaking AI solutions like the Webex AI Agent and AI Agent Studio. This industry leadership could be a key factor in the successful implementation and adoption of these new technologies. Another relevant InvestingPro Tip notes that Cisco "operates with a moderate level of debt," suggesting financial stability that could be crucial for funding and sustaining long-term AI development projects. This financial prudence may allow Cisco to invest in AI innovations without overextending its resources. Cisco's P/E ratio of 22.27 indicates that investors are willing to pay a premium for the company's earnings, possibly reflecting optimism about future growth potential from initiatives like the AI-powered customer service tools. It's worth noting that InvestingPro offers 11 additional tips for Cisco, providing investors with a more comprehensive analysis of the company's financial health and market position. These insights could be valuable for those looking to understand the full impact of Cisco's AI strategy on its business outlook.

WebexOne 24 - Cisco updates AI features across Webex including 3D virtual meetings

At its WebexOne event in Florida today, Cisco is presenting a range of AI enabled agents and products, to be available Q2 next year, including AI-generated scripts from your PowerPoint deck, and a spatially-aware 3D meeting experience. As diginomica reported back in August, Cisco is in the middle of moving from a network product company, to a networking and cybersecurity software and service backbone for AI. At the event, Cisco is showcasing its Webex AI Agent which it says is in response to increasing demand for immediate and effective customer support. It is a self-service assistant, which handles customer inquiries with conversational intelligence that can swap context, and resolve numerous customer inquiries, freeing up contact center staff to focus on better, relationship-based customer service. Anurag Dhingra, Leader of Cisco Collaboration says the AI agent brings together conversational intelligence with generative AI, and can deliver natural personalized conversations that also integrate into back office systems, and drive and automate workflows. Cisco is currently running its Webex AI agent pilot internally for the HR benefits use case. He comments: It's very powerful. It can actually do full workflow automation completely in an autonomous fashion. Safety and security for these types of use cases is very, very important. So we are excited that we are bringing it together. He says the company has been slowly introducing capabilities to make the agents more effective through the AI assistant for WebEx Contact Center, and it also has useful capabilities for supervisors and business leaders, like topic analytics and the ability to predict customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. At last year's WebExOne, it launched its new AI assistant and said it is going to be embedded in every part of its product. He comments: Over the last 12 months, we've unveiled AI assistant capabilities and AI capabilities across the board in WebEx suite and WebEx devices. Now to take it one step further, we're announcing new capabilities in our AI assistant, and we're making it really easy to access the AI assistant through our WebEx devices, through all of our conference and personal devices. As the back end of the Webex AI Agent, its AI Agent Studio design tool enables businesses to train and deploy AI Agents more effectively. CIsco says the new AI features in the Webex Contact Center will enhance performance for customer interactions, and includes AI-powered analytics to help contact center business leaders operate more efficiently. Chief Product Officer, Jeetu Patel, says the company is offering a holistic, platform-based approach, rather than just a bunch of business units operating by themselves. He says: The largest business for us right now is this notion of future proof workplaces, which is campus, branch, factory floor offices, home offices, any kind of workplace you can think of your car, you know, on the road, whatever it might be. Today it introduced Cisco Spatial Meetings, which allows users to turn any space equipped with a Cisco Room Bar Pro into a 3D studio, and deliver spatial video experiences to Webex for Apple Vision Pro users who can gain access to various spatial use cases, including product demos, and design visualization. Cisco AI Assistant for Webex on Apple Vision Pro lets users improve productivity with AI-enhanced capabilities to catch up on meetings, get summaries, and writing assistance. It is also showcasing a number of AI driven features to enhance audience engagement. Dhingra comments: Let's talk about audience engagement. This is a very exciting capability in the product called vidcast. Now with generative AI, we are supercharging this so you can upload a slide deck or a PDF file, and vidcast will automatically generate a short form video for you based on that content. If you have speaker notes in PowerPoint, we'll use that to come up with a script. You don't have speaker notes, it will use the content of the slides themselves and generate a script. You can also create the voice world for that content. You can take a look at the script that it comes up with, and you can edit. You can upload your own script and let AI do the talking. We're very excited about this capability. We believe that this is going to improve the way we engage with each other and with our employees as leaders, and this is coming to beta next month. Also in the meeting space, it is announcing its Cisco Ceiling Microphone Pro, which uses AI-powered adaptive beamforming technology that automatically adjusts to speaker position and changes to room configuration. It also works with Cisco cameras and room systems to deliver a fully integrated and immersive meeting experience. Finally in the IT management arena Cisco mentions design, diagnostics and troubleshooting innovations. Workspace Designer will automate the design and customization of hybrid workspaces, while the smart diagnostics in Control Hub will mean IT admins can resolve issues on RoomOS and MTR devices in real time, with explanations of why an issue occurred and suggestions for resolving device issues. In addition, Cisco announced ThousandEyes integration for the Desk Phone 9800 Series and Webex Calling, which will allow teams to monitor and troubleshoot in real-time, and let IT admins pinpoint the exact location of the problem. Patel says: This notion of digital resilience, where customers, when they do have an outage, resume operations in the most frictionless way possible. They don't spend the first four hours figuring out if the outage was because of a network outage or because there was a security breach, or because there was something that went wrong with an API or an application issue. We can make sure that we correlate data across all the different areas of our business, have extreme levels of visibility, and then can also remediate that so that you can get back up to speed. Patel concludes: Think about this as part of the future-proof workplace. Regardless of which workplace customers are in, they can go out and reimagine everything from connectivity to safety to security, to making sure there's productivity that's being had, to automation of workflows, to the way that you enable contact centers, all of those pieces we are pulling together a very meaningful way. Lots of future AI goodies on show at WebexOne 24, and interesting to hear and see some of the betas and pilots taking place internally at Cisco. Yes every vendor seems to be showcasing its AI agents, but I can see some useful stuff emerging from these announcements, especially in the diagnostics and troubleshooting arena.

Analysis: At WebexOne, Cisco debuts AI-driven tools to enhance employee collaboration and customer service - SiliconANGLE

Analysis: At WebexOne, Cisco debuts AI-driven tools to enhance employee collaboration and customer service In the communications business, the artificial intelligence wars are on. As an analyst, I tend to focus on market transitions as that's when significant share change happens. When the cloud first came to unified communications and contact centers, Webex established itself as a leader, which enabled it to be acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. The pandemic and working from home shift saw Microsoft Teams and Zoom take a disproportionate share. Now, the industry is on the precipice of the next major transition: the infusion of AI into customer and employee experience platforms. This creates the opportunity for challengers to build a better mousetrap and wrestle some share away from the market leaders. This week, Cisco is holding its WebexOne event, and it's using the event to showcase its AI-driven innovations targeting employee collaboration and customer service to be a disruptor in the market. Cisco has invested heavily in AI across its portfolio, but the collaboration business unit has led the way. Webex made several AI-related announcements that address the broader trends in workplace automation and customer service transformation, particularly within hybrid work environments and the evolving demands of customer expectations. I attended a briefing with senior Cisco executives to preview the announcements. Aruna Ravichandran, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Cisco Collaboration, led the briefing, which was joined by Jeetu Patel (pictured), Cisco's executive vice president and chief product officer, and Anurag Dhingra, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco Collaboration. Patel set the stage by saying that the company had boosted innovation in a way that has embedded it in the team culture. "It's just a part of how they work," he said. "And thinking about what we are doing with AI right now will blow you away. The first time I saw it, I couldn't believe it was this good, and the more you start using it, the more you get excited about it." That set a high bar. Here are details on all the AI-related announcements: One of the key announcements at WebexOne was the introduction of new AI-powered tools to improve collaboration and employee experiences within the workplace. These innovations include AI-enhanced spatial meeting capabilities, more efficient audio management tools, and the integration of virtual assistants into workflows. The company unveiled several new tools, including Spatial Meetings and the Ceiling Microphone Pro. With Spatial Meetings, Cisco aims to offer more immersive virtual collaboration experiences by using advanced 3D video technologies to make virtual meetings feel more physically present. "Just to jog your memory, at the beginning of this year, Apple launched the Vision Pro product, and Webex was ready on day one to launch with Apple," Dhingra said. "And our app for Vision Pro is the editor's choice in the App Store because we leverage the true powers of the platform, things like completely different cameras and the ability to have tasking in a much more effective way." He added that Cisco is bringing Spatial Meetings to all conference rooms. The Ceiling Microphone Pro supports flexible and adaptive meeting environments by automatically adjusting its audio capture to accommodate room changes or speaker movements. "This is the industry's first adaptive AI microphone," Dhingra said. "It's zero-touch. It's plug and play, configuring itself to deliver an amazing experience for everyone in the room." It appears that Cisco designed these solutions with the hybrid workplace in mind, addressing the challenge of keeping remote and on-site workers equally engaged and productive, regardless of their physical location. Webex has certainly had its ups and downs through the pandemic, hybrid work, and return to work, but its room systems have been and continue to be the best in class. The second part of Cisco's strategy is improving information technology teams' ability to manage hybrid workspaces more efficiently. With tools such as the Workspace Designer and Smart Diagnostics, IT teams can quickly diagnose issues and manage spaces using AI for automated solutions. This shift toward automation reduces manual tasks and increases the capacity for scaling operations, making it easier for organizations to manage the increasingly complex requirements of hybrid work. Dhingra said Smart Diagnostics will help IP admins focus on critical problems. "AI will give you a lot of context. And when you combine that with an AI, this is a true enabler for at-scale deployments." He said this will enable a small IT staff to manage thousands of rooms. Workspace Designer creates a 3-D model of a conference room or meeting space and allows an administrator to place tables, cameras, microphones, displays and other meeting equipment to assess the design's effectiveness. The tool shows where the audio gaps are, how complete the video coverage is, and other aspects that could cause a less-than-optimal meeting experience. The focus on increasing the capabilities of IT staff mirrors industry trends in which technology is increasingly expected to handle routine tasks, freeing up human resources for higher-level problem-solving and strategic work. Cisco's innovations, such as integrating the Desk Phone 9800 Series with performance monitoring tools, further illustrate the importance of seamless, tech-driven support for hybrid work environments. The Workspace Designer addresses a gap in Cisco's go-to-market strategy regarding meeting rooms. The company has invested heavily in building out its offices in Atlanta, Paris, New York, and other locations to showcase Cisco technology. Though customers who toured the facility liked what they saw, converting this into sales was a challenge as it wasn't always obvious what equipment to put where. Workspace Designer enables customers to try things virtually, ensuring they are purchasing the best possible technology for each space. Cisco also announced new AI tools aimed at transforming customer service. The Webex AI Agent and the AI Agent Studio mark Cisco's attempt to modernize how companies interact with customers. These solutions tap into conversational AI to offer customers quicker, more effective self-service options, eliminating the need for prolonged interactions with human agents for routine inquiries. By introducing the AI Agent, Cisco is positioning itself in a market increasingly focused on reducing customer wait times and improving satisfaction. This technology uses conversational intelligence to efficiently resolve customer queries, which Cisco says will improve customer satisfaction scores. This type of automation has become more critical as businesses face higher customer expectations for instant responses, driven by an overall shift toward digital-first interactions. One notable feature of the Webex AI Agent is its capability to handle simple inquiries autonomously, allowing human agents to focus on more complex customer issues. What was interesting about the Cisco demo was the quality of the virtual agent. During the demo, the speaker started asking about human resources benefits and, at one point, interrupted the agent and asked a new question. The virtual agent was able to pivot quickly, much like a human. This should have some significant implications for customer experience. Historically, we have deferred to text-based conversations with bots and virtual agents because the audio experience was always bad. What Cisco showed was conversational and lifelike, enabling customers to talk to a brand naturally and have their inquiries answered. As the technology improves, I predict that the industry will eventually reach a point where customers will prefer the virtual agent over a human one for simple transactions. The same shift happened in banking about 25 years ago. Early in the shift to online banking, many people pushed back as banking was viewed as something you should talk to a human about. However, today, every bank offers feature-rich mobile and online banking, which people prefer today. The company designed AI Agent Studio to simplify the setup of AI-based customer service, allowing IT administrators and business users to deploy these solutions more quickly. This low-code environment underscores the industry's movement toward empowering nontechnical users to manage complex technological systems, a trend that allows companies to scale more effectively. These announcements reflect AI's growing role in workplace collaboration and customer service across industries. By improving employee experiences and customer satisfaction, Cisco is tapping into two key areas of organizational performance. There is a push to make work environments more engaging, collaborative, and efficient for employees, particularly in hybrid or fully remote settings. For customers, the introduction of automated agents and intelligent support tools addresses the increased demand for quicker, more effective service solutions. Cisco's investment in AI-powered tools aligns with broader industry trends where companies seek ways to reduce operational costs while improving customer and employee satisfaction. Including AI in nearly every aspect of their product portfolio also speaks to the broader expectation that AI will play a foundational role in business operations and customer interactions. However, the significance of these announcements also hinges on how successfully these tools can be implemented in real-world scenarios. Though Cisco has outlined several use cases for these new AI features, the practical challenges of deployment, integration with existing systems, and user adoption rates will likely determine the long-term impact of these innovations. Cisco's announcements underscore the company's ambition to leverage AI to address critical challenges in hybrid work environments and customer service. These innovations suggest that Cisco is positioning itself to meet the evolving needs of both employees and customers by offering scalable, intelligent and automated solutions.