Gitex Global: Avaya augments CX role with AI-based Virtual Operations Manager

After revealing in May 2024 what it said was a winning formula for enterprises, whereby enabling a high-quality customer experience (CX) through tools such as advanced artificial intelligence (AI), plus a commensurate employee experience (EX), would see firms able to achieve their required and sustainable business growth, Avaya, a global leader in enterprise CX, has furthered its vision for a future of customer experience orchestrated by AI.

Revealed at Gitex Global in Dubai, the Avaya Virtual Operations Manager concept is said to be built on the existing Avaya Experience Platform (AXP) and “highlight the art of the possible”, demonstrating how human and AI collaboration can fundamentally alter the way customer experience is managed at the contact centre level. That is, unifying contact centre data and operations to provide centralised insights and boost performance with a virtual contact centre operations manager advising, and acting on behalf of, contact centre leaders.

The Virtual Operations Manager concept is designed to augment the role of human operations managers, helping them make sense of the amounts of data being captured by contact centres’ range of CX-focused applications. It can then offer, or even automatically take, actions to improve contact centre performance, based on parameters that can be configured in a low-code/no-code environment.

Built with the large-enterprise contact centre in mind, Virtual Operations Manager is said to demonstrate “seamless” integration with complex applications, high levels of security compliance, and the ability to scale and upgrade using a combination of on-premise and cloud-based technologies.

“While the AI revolution continues to unfold, it’s clear that the most compelling use cases are those which put the power of AI into human hands to achieve things that were never possible,” said Avaya chief product officer Omar Javaid.

“With the AXP as its core platform, [Virtual Operations Manager shows] AI can not only unify data across a connected business ecosystem, but use those analytics to perform complex workforce orchestration, giving contact centre managers the tools they need to supercharge business growth,” he said.

“Our customers are seeking to balance innovation with business growth and ROI while avoiding a ‘rip and replace’ of their existing infrastructure,” said Javaid. “As a result, our approach of Innovation without Disruption is embodied in our roadmap, which is designed to deliver modern, customised capabilities.”

Other recent enhancements to the AXP roadmap milestones include: AI agent assist enhancements; unified customer journey improvements; and experience orchestration foundations. The former is designed to deliver a foundation for next-generation orchestration into AXP, driven by Avaya’s acquisition of Edify, showing that by focusing initially on voice and self-service use cases, customers with on-premise deployments can start using orchestration and automation capabilities from the cloud. This is said to enable better use of interaction data for improved decision-making, leading to enhanced customer and employee experiences. 

The unified customer journey improvements offer a single view for agents to see all consumer interactions, combining on-premise, and cloud voice and digital interactions. This is said to help agents gain more context and prevents customers from having to repeat information, thereby eliminating silos and disjointed experiences.