DENVER--The second day of the Genesys Xperience 2024 conference focused on customer success stories, which attendees at the 2023 conference said they wanted to hear more about, according to Scott Cravotta, Genesys' chief customer officer.
New and old customers alike are benefiting from artificial intelligence, Cravotta said. "AI is driving a seismic shift in customer experience."
AI is a key element of new features of Genesys' solutions, with a new feature being added nearly every day.
The company added nearly 750 new customers last fiscal year and is seeking to continue to grow.
One of Genesys' newest customers is The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that operates several programs to help prevent suicide among LGBTQ+ young people, including 24/7 free crisis services via voice, SMS, web chat, and WhatsApp , as well as a suicide hotline.
The organization started using Genesys in Mexico, and in the United States a week ago, Emmet Troxel, the organization's director of contact center technology, said in an interview.
"We had been on 15 different technology stacks for our contact center, which was a nightmare to manage. There was also a lack of unified reporting and a lack of visibility. We didn't have capabilities like real-time adherence," Troxel said.
The legacy platform was customized for the organization, increasing its complexity, Troxel added. The organization wanted to simplify its technology stack by moving to a cloud-based solution.
Troxel's team went through an extensive four-month requirement-gathering process and ultimately chose Genesys due to its special pricing for nonprofits, consumption-based model, and agent assist copilot feature, Troxel said.
One level of complexity in converting to Genesys was eliminated because the organization could stay with its Salesforce CRM platform.
Though the organization just started using the Genesys solution, Troxel noted that there haven't been any dropped calls, not an uncommon issue with its previous solution. Dropped calls are a particular concern with the suicide hotline because callers are already in state of crisis and don 't need any more stress.
Troxel noted a few particular features of the Genesys solution:
- The topic miner feature enables the organization to see the top reasons people are making contact.
- Genesys Agent Assist provides call summaries, which are important for the organization to maintain its accreditation with the American Association of Sucidology.
- AI quickly prioritizes the highest-risk contacts, enabling a human volunteer or counselor to quickly get on a call or involved with an online interaction.
HSBC Seeks to improve Customer Retention
One of the world's largest banking and financial services companies, HSBC, has been pursuing digital transformation for some time, said Paulette Toynton, its head of wholesale channel servicing and customer care. "We really weren't making the difference we wanted to make.
A third-party consultancy recommended Genesys, but not wanting to rely solely on that one recommendation, HSBC sought other references. Once it chose Genesys, the project moved quickly, going live in less than three months with messaging and voice in parts of the United Kingdom. The plan is to be live throughout the U.K. and the rest of the world by the end of the year, Toynton said. Worldwide access will help with load balancing and customer retention.
"We want to be best-in-class," Toynton said. "It's a competitive market. We want common standards and common principles across the team."
Genesys' technology is particularly helpful for customer retention, because it provides the contact center with a single solution for digital and voice interactions, using AI, chatbots, and voicebots to provide customer support around the clock, Toynton said.
The technology also collects details about interactions, enabling management to see why customers are making contact and how well agents handled human-assisted calls, indicating which type of additional training might be needed.
"If we get this right, we will have much higher customer satisfaction," Toynton said. "I'm excited to see what's going to happen."
Coca-Cola, meanwhile, has been on the Genesys platform since 2017. The relationship has grown ever since. Coca-Cola now has 10 lines of business using Genesys' technology.
"It's been an amazing partnership," said Vincent D'Amico, Coca-Cola's senior director of service operations support, noting that the two companies participate in an annual football game that provides fun, camaraderie, and a learning opportunity.
"We feel like we've made a lot of really good progress [using the Genesys technology]," D'Amico added. "People are looking forward to some of the AI-based predictive engagement. We're excited about our transition to voicebots, one of the things we decided to do when we jumped on Genesys Cloud."
D'Amico expects additional benefits from the AI aspects of the Genesys technology, admitting that his team has only a novice level of experience with AI. "We just try to take bite-sized pieces of what we can hope can drive value in our business."
The AI within the Genesys technology has provided Coca-Cola with more and better insights, enabling the company to respond to customer needs more quickly, which is particularly important for businesses customers, D'Amico said. For example, if a soda dispenser is not working, the AI helps the agent determine what the problem might be and whether a simple fix is possible or a technician might need to be dispatched. "We can completely get the customer back up and running. Prior to having the voice bots, we were a little blind from a systems standpoint and how to get it back right."