Following a recent round of $40m Series B funding, in which Twilio Ventures participated, PolyAI and Twilio announced the integration of PolyAI’s customer-led conversational assistant with Twilio Flex and Twilio Programmable Voice, the world’s most flexible contact center platform. Twilio Flex allows enterprises to deploy a 100% cloud-based contact center in days, not months.

PolyAI’s integration with Twilio Flex and Programmable Voice solutions allows customers to use PolyAI conversational assistants to resolve customer queries over the phone and transfer calls back to contact center agents, when necessary. This hand-off includes vital metadata about the interaction to enable personalization and power business intelligence.

Despite the abundance of self-service options available to customers, only 9% of queries are fully resolved in digital self-service channels, according to Gartner, while 71% of customers² prefer to phone even when their queries could easily be fully resolved online.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Amol Waishampayan, Chief Product Officer at FullThrottle

“PolyAI’s unique delivery model for conversational assistants now allows Twilio Flex customers to access PolyAI’s proprietary technology along with our expertise in speech recognition, conversational design, machine learning and dialogue design,” commented Michael Chen, Head of Partnerships at PolyAI. “This allows them to deploy solutions that elevate the typical call center workflow into a branded conversational experience.”

The PolyAI integration is available as a Marketplace Stream Connector, a native capability within the Twilio console, so Twilio customers have a seamless UX to manage their connections to PolyAI conversational assistants alongside any other services. Listen to a PolyAI conversational assistant in action.

“Conversational agents are a crucial capability that allows businesses to innovate and transform IVR systems into the customer-centric experiences that customers demand. PolyAI integration with Twilio Flex and Twilio Programmable Voice makes it easier for every business to personalize customer engagements and leave impressions that turn into repeat business,” Andy O’Dower, Head of Product at Twilio.

Twilio customers can use the Studio Widget as a no-code way of transferring incoming calls to the PolyAI conversational assistant, connecting relevant metrics and analytics, and facilitating Live Agent Handoffs to the contact center.

1. Gartner press release on Customer Service report
2. Microsoft Global State of Customer Service report

Marketing Technology News: The Recession Reset