AI Conversational Building Blocks Help Businesses to Speed Design and Elevate Customer Engagement Across Omnichannel Communications

Vonage, a global leader in cloud communications helping businesses accelerate their digital transformation, has launched Vonage AI Studio, a low code/no code tool to design, create and deploy customer engagement solutions that operate in natural language using artificial intelligence (AI). With these intelligent conversations, Vonage AI Studio helps businesses elevate customer engagement through personalized and automated interactions across channels such as voice, SMS, and messaging apps such as WhatsApp.

The new standalone Vonage AI Studio enables developers and IT professionals to effortlessly build natural language customer engagement solutions such as virtual assistants for self-service support, billing updates, appointment scheduling, FAQs, and much more – with the ability to embed them into any application. Vonage AI Studio also incorporates machine-learning models that adapt by using higher-performing messages – for example, during high call volumes, for even greater efficiency. These AI conversational capabilities enhance interactions by enabling frictionless customer engagement wherever customers are, without losing context and insights. This drives a personalized customer journey across voice and messaging channels while creating and deploying end-to-end conversations in real-time.

Vonage customer Ronlight, the sole distributor of Garmin products in Israel, leveraged AI Studio to create a virtual assistant within its contact center environment to automate and scale, improving efficiency, costs and overall customer engagement: “We created our virtual assistant, Ron, using Vonage’s AI Studio and it has made all the difference in managing call traffic in our call center,” said Avishay Pariz, CEO for Ronlight. “In fact, with Ron, our call center is now a 24/7 operation, successfully responding to more than 70% of our frequently asked customer calls without any human assistance at all. This has drastically reduced call resolution times, and empowers our live agents with the time they need to address more pressing customer inquiries and issues.”

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Building Smart Interactions

Built on Vonage’s proprietary natural language understanding (NLU) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) algorithms that are already being successfully leveraged in AI Virtual Assistant for unified communications and contact centers, with Vonage Business Communications (VBC) and Vonage Contact Center (VCC), Vonage AI Studio uses a natively-built, visual platform that enables low code/no code creation of smart, automated design flows across engagement channels, with simple drag and drop modules and reply actions that require little to no developer expertise. This creates more intelligent communications channels – from inception to completion – removing the need for low-level AI integration, and simplifies the creation process for developers and non-developers alike – while accelerating time to value.

Those businesses that prefer not to build their own conversational AI solution can take advantage of Vonage’s AI expertise with a la carte services or a complete Virtual Assistant package. These services provide a turnkey, customized solution and user experience that includes setup, monitoring and/or billing across multiple vendors.

“Today’s businesses need to engage with customers across all modes of communication,  seamlessly moving among channels and maintaining meaningful connections through every stage of the customer journey,” said Savinay Berry, Executive Vice President, Product & Engineering for Vonage. “We’ve already seen how our customers are benefiting from the power of AI Studio capabilities by deploying AI Virtual Assistant within our unified communications and contact center solutions. With the launch of Vonage AI Studio as a standalone product, we are putting conversational building blocks right into our customers hands, powering automated messaging and speech-enabled applications that free up agents while providing their own customers with a personalized experience at every touchpoint.”

Building a Stronger Partner Ecosystem

In addition to providing enterprise businesses with the tools to build smart engagement solutions, AI Studio also provides a unique opportunity for the Vonage API partner ecosystem. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) can accelerate their development cycles to build competitive enterprise-grade virtual agents on any channels, and Systems Integrators (SIs) can offer differentiated service packages to businesses. Native to the Vonage Communications Platform, AI Studio gives these Vonage partners the ability to augment their existing platforms and offerings to provide their own customers with custom integrations into CRM, contact center, analytics and more.

“Today’s consumer demands the ability to connect and communicate with businesses easily, seamlessly and across the same apps and channels they rely on in their personal lives,” said Jim Lundy, Founder and CEO of Aragon Research. “Similarly, businesses need the tools that enable them to easily create these kinds of meaningful connections, augmented by AI capabilities to add efficiencies to workflows and using natural language that doesn’t take away from the customer experience. With AI Studio, Vonage is providing businesses across all market categories with the technology and expertise to understand and address their customers needs faster by making applications smarter and more intuitive.”

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