SAN FRANCISCO, July 24, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Twilio (NYSE:TWLO), the leading cloud communications platform, today announced the company has collaborated with Google Cloud to integrate Contact Center AI into Twilio Flex, the first fully programmable cloud contact center platform. Google Cloud’s Contact Center AI is a solution that combines multiple AI products to improve the customer service experience, as well as the productivity of contact centers. By deepening its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, Twilio provides developers with a robust, flexible platform to build intelligent, next-generation customer experiences. To learn more, visit www.twilio.com/flex.

“Every company has a need to communicate with their customers and, for most businesses, this interaction is handled by the contact center,” said Al Cook, head of Twilio Flex. “AI has the potential to improve the effectiveness of the contact center dramatically and make those human interactions more impactful. We’re excited to support Google Cloud’s Contact Center AI within Flex and, in turn, give developers greater choice as they work to deliver better experiences for their customers.”

Google Cloud Contact Center AI and Flex
Google Cloud Contact Center AI is a simple, secure and flexible solution that allows enterprises to easily deploy AI in their contact centers. The solution is made up of three products:

• Virtual Agent - a conversational AI bot that uses an enterprise’s knowledge base and back end processes to speak with customers
• Agent Assist - passes customer to live agents if needed and suggests answers to agents based on previous interactions
• Analytics - uses enterprise data and knowledge to train how virtual agent and agent assist products serve customers

Through integration with Google Cloud Contact Center AI, Twilio Flex customers can now easily use a virtual agent that can resolve a variety of customer issues and, if required, transfer customers to a live agent who will receive suggested responses based on previous interactions. These kinds of intelligent conversations enable enterprises to streamline their contact center teams and ultimately resolve customer inquiries more quickly and effectively.

Twilio has also simplified integration between the Twilio Programmable Voice platform and Google’s Dialogflow. The combination of Twilio's robust voice and call control capabilities with Dialogflow allows developers to easily build automated AI-driven conversational user interfaces and voice bots.

UK-based retailer, Marks & Spencer, recently re-engineered their inbound calling system to stores by building a Natural Language Routing intelligent IVR powered by Twilio. This technology is automating the company’s extensive switchboard operation. The customer experience leverages the Twilio and Google Cloud services to determine the caller’s intent and then uses Twilio’s voice API and skills-based routing tool to direct the customer to the appropriate end-point to resolve the inquiry.

“Thanks to Twilio’s platform, which integrates easily with Google Cloud's AI capabilities, Marks & Spencer is able to equip our colleagues with the tools they need to improve the customer experience and reduce operational costs” said Chris McGrath, IT programme manager at Marks & Spencer.  

“Contact Center AI empowers enterprises to use artificial intelligence to complement and enhance their contact centers,” said Rajen Sheth, director of product management at Google. “Google Cloud’s goal is to make it as easy as possible for our customers to use AI for contact centers through our relationships with key partners like Twilio.”

According to Kate Leggett, principal analyst at Forrester Research, “Enterprises must re-imagine their operations, with automation and AI at the center of their strategy: for example, automated answers, automated conversations, automated agent guidance and RPA, optimized routing, scheduling, case classification. They must also invest in intelligence to ensure AI fueled technologies evolve and learn from prior interactions over time.” (Top Customer Service Trends For 2018, Forrester, Feb. 2018)

The Power of the Application Platform Model
The launch of Twilio Flex in March introduced a new type of platform for applications. This platform provides enterprises the ability to programmatically customize every element of their contact center experience including the interface, communication channels, agent routing, and reporting to meet the unique needs of the business. Developers have the choice to select any vendor or solution that fits their needs and to easily integrate this within Twilio Flex. Twilio Flex is the only contact center platform that is entirely vendor agnostic - empowering companies to build future-proof contact centers that have the capability to support virtually any communication channel, AI workload, CRM or reporting application.

About Twilio
More than 2 million developers around the world have used Twilio to unlock the magic of communications to improve any human experience. Twilio has democratized communications channels like voice, text, chat, and video by virtualizing the world’s telecommunications infrastructure through APIs that are simple enough for any developer to use, yet robust enough to power the world’s most demanding applications. By making communications a part of every software developer's toolkit, Twilio is enabling innovators across every industry — from emerging leaders to the world’s largest organizations — to reinvent how companies engage with their customers.

Source: Twilio Inc.

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