Analyst Webinar

2021 Contact Center Buyers Guide Webinar

The technology landscape continues to evolve — even as we move into a post-pandemic world. Keeping pace with the dramatic industry changes while balancing priorities, budget and resources is challenging — but not impossible.

Join us on January 19, as we analyze the top trends predicted for 2021 and provide some practical advice on navigating these changes in this new year and beyond.

On the agenda:

  • Identify and prioritize the essential capabilities that drive a modern contact center
  • Explore the forces driving the urgency for cloud
  • Understand why major analysts are now only evaluating cloud contact center solutions
  • Provide guidance on what to look for in a product roadmap

Whether you’re actively shopping for a cloud contact center solution — or simply staying on top of market trends, this session will be a great use of your time.

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Good morning, evening and afternoon, everyone. This is Josh Reed

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from the Digital Events team here at Genesys, and let

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me start by saying welcome and thank you all for

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joining this 2021 Contact Center Buyers Guide Webinar. As I

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usually do, I want to take a few minutes here

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in the beginning to go over a few housekeeping items

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to ensure that you have the best experience viewing today’s

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presentation. First off, if you do experience any problems or

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issues viewing or listening to today’s presentation, do me a

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favor and refresh your browser and make sure that it

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is indeed up to date. It also might help to

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switch over to something like Chrome or Firefox as well,

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as these are the best browsers to support the webcast

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platform. Also note that if you’re having trouble seeing any

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of the content on the slides, you do have the

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ability to enlarge that slide window by dragging any of

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the corners or hitting the full screen button to the

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top right. Also note that this webcast is designed to

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be an interactive experience between you and our presenters today,

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so at any time during the webcast you can submit

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your questions into the Q& A window below the slide, and

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we’ll get to as many as we can during our

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live Q& A at the end of the presentation. However,

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sometimes time gets away from us and if that does

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happen and we don’t answer your question aloud, we’ll just

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follow up with you via email within the next few

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business days. Please note that this is indeed being recorded,

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so if you have to jump to another meeting or

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anything like that and you miss part of the presentation,

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that’s okay, you’re going to receive a link to the

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on- demand recording via email from ON24 within the next

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few business days. I’ll also encourage you to feel free

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to go ahead and click that link in the resource

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box below the slides as well, next to the Q& A window and that’ll

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open up in a new tab in your browser, and

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that’s going to expand on today’s topic on the context

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in our buyer’s guide. Lastly, we welcome and appreciate your

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feedback, so you’ll have the opportunity to fill out a short

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survey that’s going to show up at the end of today’s

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presentation. That survey can be found at the last icon

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below, but it’s going to allow us to tailor these

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presentations to exactly what you want to hear in the

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future of Genesys webinars. Like I said, short and sweet. Today

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we have two excellent presenters excited to analyze the top

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trends predicted for 2021 and provide some practical advice on

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navigating these changes in the new year and beyond. I’m

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happy to introduce to you Sheila McGee- Smith, the founder

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and principal analyst to McGee Smith Analytics as well as

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Janelle Dieken, the senior vice president of content marketing here

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at Genesys. With that being said, I’m going to hand

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things over to Sheila to kick us off. Sheila, the

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floor is yours. Thank you, Josh, and nice to be

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working with you again, Janelle. Likewise. Happy new year, everyone.

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I may not be your first Genesys webinar, but it’s

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my first Genesys webinar for 2021, so what the heck.

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Before we dive into 2021, I thought we’d step back

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just a little to 2020. As we moved into 2020,

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the predictions then were an increased need for digital engagement

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and ways that we could integrate digital engagement with live

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agents because just more and more were looking for those

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digital channels. Virtual bots, virtual agents, whatever we call them,

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intelligent virtual assistants, other types of artificial intelligence and machine

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learning, we’re primarily in the investigation and early adopter phase.

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So there’s some people trying it for small use cases,

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but it’s still very early stages. The move to the

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cloud was increasingly being considered to be inevitable, but for

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a lot of companies it was still allowing for a

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one to three- year planning cycle, there was no immediacy

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around it. If you think about it, just a year ago UCaaS

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as a service and Contact Center as a service were

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generally considered to be separate decisions. Sometimes those were being

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made together, but more often than not those were separate

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decisions. When companies thought about APIs and platform features for

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their contact centers, those were considered possibilities that might become

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relevant in the future and were worthy of investigation, but

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it wasn’t a, ” Oh my gosh, what does my vendor

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have there?” Kind of a thing yet. As we then

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flash forward to 2021, and not to that but to

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2021, what happened? What happened during 2020 is that the

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things that we were worried about, the things we were

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thinking about, didn’t change as much as the immediacy changed.

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It was the timing, the urgency, that changed. So the

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same things are in the word cloud, but suddenly there’s

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an increased need for digital engagement methods that are unified

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with voice agent capabilities, because of everyone, every business having

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to move to eCommerce, because of shelter- in- place orders

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sent agents home, kept people home and as we’re seeing

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now in 2021, continues to cycle as geographic areas, as

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municipalities and countries come in and out of lockdown states.

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So what was nice to have a year ago is

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the only way we can do business in 2021. The

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rise in remote agents also put our new focus on

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workforce engagement management because now, all the things that we

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used to be able to do with agents in place

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in the office, things like how we hire, how we

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support the agents, how we coach and train them, now

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we have to figure out how to do that remotely.

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A lot of times, some of those tools are embedded

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in workforce engagement management solutions that companies may have had

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in the solutions they have, may have had those options,

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but never really deployed them. A great example, I think,

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is gamification. The adoption rate of gamification coming into 2020

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was relatively low, and suddenly that was the kind of

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application that companies realized, ” This is going to help me with

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my agents. This is going to help me with agent

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engagement, it can also help with coaching, there’s a lot

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of different elements.” So again, something that was important, it became

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more important. Virtual agents, bots, AI, were often fast tracked

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to handle what became unheard of interaction demand. I mean,

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I’m always drawn to the case that Janelle is going

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to talk about, one of these case studies later on in the

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hour, of millions of people going on unemployment and hitting

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unemployment contact centers that were simply unprepared and unable to

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handle the sheer volume. And just the quickness with which

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companies and governments installed chat bots and voice bots to

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be able to answer those interactions, which is something that

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happened much more quickly than anybody would’ve thought a year

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earlier. Then, with respect to platform and APIs, I think

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the ability to quickly redesign and customize customer experience became,

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again, more of a necessity because what platform and API

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allows you to do, is to drive down into the

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business operation, the ability to make the kind of changes

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that might be required by rapidly changing conditions. And with

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what’s going on, conditions are changing all the time. Great

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example, my in- laws live in South Carolina, they opened

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up the ability to sign up for vaccines last week,

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they’re both well into their 90s and they both signed

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up, all good. Lot of remote help by their daughter-

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in- law, but they signed up. And then, this morning

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get a call to say, ” We no longer have a

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supply of vaccines so we’re going to have to reschedule.” So

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things that even were taking one interaction, the email interaction

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setup, now there’s phone calls that have to happen because

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supplies aren’t in, so just the requirement to be able

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to change things quickly and driving that down to the

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contact center and not requiring IT, again, much more of

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a need today than we saw even a year ago.

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So we’re going to go to our first poll, Janelle, and we’re

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going to ask all of you, this is the first

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of three polls that we’re going to do. We’re going

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to ask, ” What is your strategy for using cloud technology

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to support customer experience?” Are using Contact Center as a

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Service? Do you have a private cloud? Are you today

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combining clouds application with on- premises or hosted solutions? Are

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you on- premises, and there’s certainly a lot of companies

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whose contact centers remain on- premises, or are you in

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an evaluation stage? We’re hoping we caught all the choices

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there, we will work on the choices because that was part of this. So

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I’m going to ask you, Janelle, what do you think

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is going to come in as number one? Well, I think

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it depends on who our audience is today. I think

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if it’s a lot of small, mid- size companies, we’ll

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see a vast majority on the first. But larger enterprise,

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here at Genesys, we’re seeing a bit of mixed bag

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with multi cloud options that provide that flexibility of cloud

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with that range of control that companies are still comfortable

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with. I think there could be more options if you break out

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what’s customer operated, we see some going system- integrated operated

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but customer owned and managed, so it’ll be interesting. I

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think we’ll see a mixed bag but I’m placing my

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bets majority on A, what do you think, Sheila? Its

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interesting when I think about some of my analyst colleagues

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and the reports that are written about the contact center

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market. One of the leading analyst firms has decided that

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Contact Center as a Service is the only thing we need

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to look at, that’s all there is. I think what

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we’re going to find here, is that the whole world

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doesn’t think the same way as they do, that there

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are people who are on lots of different types of

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systems. Where that might be an end goal, Contact Center as

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a Service, that end goal could be 10 years away

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for a lot of businesses. Let’s see what our audience

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has to say, drum roll. Look at that! You win

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there, 45% are on Contact Center as a Service- Yeah, the

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majority, it’s interesting to see hybrid. We see that, too,

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as a stepping stone along the way, to grab that

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innovation while still leveraging existing investments, so that’s interesting to

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see and quite a few on the phone still evaluating

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so hopefully they can capture some of the lessons from

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the case studies ahead, too. Yeah. I guess I’m even

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a little surprised that they’re still evaluating, that it’s that high,

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it’s actually our number two response. But like you, not

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surprised with hybrid, on- premise is so low. Yeah. So

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even though we know that about 75% of agents, as

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we enter 2021, are still served by a premises- based

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contact center, just by the numbers, most of those companies

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are looking at options. They’re either evaluating or they’ve done

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some hybrid, and hybrid can really broad, right? It could mean

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I have Contact Center as a Service for contact center,

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but I’m still doing premises for workforce management, so hybrid

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is going to be a very common choice, as we see. So good

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data, that’s why we like to ask the audience, excellent.

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Thank you, audience. So, moving on. So, one of the things that we talked about

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that was present in 2020, which was the need for

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digital engagement, and persists even more strongly in 2021 is

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this notion of digital and digital- first and digital- everything,

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but I’m going to start with the retail apocalypse. We

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saw so many retailers go out of business in 2020,

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but in reality the demise of retail started 10 years

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ago. You can almost tie it a little bit to

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the birth of eCommerce in that period. So the store

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closings started back in 2010 in Toys R Us and

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companies like that. Part of it was a shift in

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consumer habits; experience spending versus buying things, and you’re nodding,

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Janelle, and I know it impacted the way I lived

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my life in that decade, right? My husband and I

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were much more likely to go and take a great

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trip than we were to buy another television. Let’s go

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see Costa Rica while it’s still there and we’re young

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enough to still do it, that kind of thing. Casual

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fashion due to relaxed dress codes. I came into the

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business world in the 80s when it was suits and ties

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for men and women and pumps every day. That changed,

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so we didn’t have that need to have multiple wardrobes

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that we had in the past. And there was, as

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I said, that rise of eCommerce, but goodness gracious, it

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was certainly amplified during 2020. These are 29 retailers who

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filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Some of these may survive,

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I fear many of them will not, that we’ll never

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see them come back again. So you see something like

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this and you look at that list and say, ” Lord&

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Taylor, that’s a place I used to go. Neiman Marcus,

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they had my size shoes.” I used to get them,

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so what do I do? Well, I go online but

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I need better digital support. I need better digital contact

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center support than I needed before when I could just

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go back to a store and return something. Looking at

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the retail apocalypse and saying it didn’t just start in

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2020, you can think about, or I thought about it

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as, was it a little bit self- created? Think about

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when you did go to a mall or a department

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store in the last 10 years. There was a sense

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that those retailers were more retail centric, more about themselves,

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that we had to conform to their behavior. Best example

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for me is trying to find a cashier, sometimes it

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was the most frustrating thing to do, ” I have this

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thing, I want to buy it, I want to give

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you money, where is that person I can give money

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to?” And you couldn’t find them. The customer came second,

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the way they ran their operation came first and what

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we all learned as consumers is eCommerce is very consumer

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centric. Online, we’re in control so that shift was happening

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not just because of COVID, but because retailers weren’t taking

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care of their customers the same way. So it’s a

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digital transformation shift as well. But I think, just as

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we find in the contact center, that the combination of

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digital engagement and live agents is the best combination. Hopefully

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we’ll come to a nice balance, once COVID is over,

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of having stores to go do things with and having

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eCommerce for the times when that’s the most expedient way

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to do things, and tie things together like we try

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and do in the contact center. It’s not just retail,

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obviously, that has moved toward a more digital transformation and

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moved more quickly because of COVID. This is the mayor

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of Los Angeles speaking on television in August of 2020,

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and his comments are, in order to survive, governments, too,

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have to become more digital, that city services should be

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just as smooth and easy, and as efficient as everything

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you can do online. Now, COVID forced that because government

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offices had to close, but it’s a little bit like

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that retail story where perhaps government was behind the curve

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in terms of where they should’ve been with digital transformation,

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but COVID certainly brought it to the fore in 2020.

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And then telehealth, just another example of a business that,

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the technology was there, the capabilities were there and yet,

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as a consumer I felt like the availability wasn’t there.

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My general practitioner did not make it easy for me

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to do a telehealth visit a year ago, today I

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can and it’s good for both of us. COVID- 19

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just catapulted telehealth forward by decades, in a few months.

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Teladoc, which is a global leader in virtual care, predicted

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that 2020 revenue would be twice that of 2019, driven

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by the demand for these virtual care solutions and there

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are already signs that future telehealth will persist, that even

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after this crisis is over, Teladoc is expecting 30 to

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40% growth for the next four years. Doesn’t surprise me

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because once you’ve done it, boy, is it easier than

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getting in your car and driving 20 minutes, if you’re

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lucky enough to be 20 minutes away and it didn’t snow 20 inches overnight.

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I’m going to turn it over to you, Janelle, to

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talk about a great Genesys customer in the telehealth area.

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Certainly, but maybe even before I do that, when you

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were talking about the retail apocalypse, it actually reminded me

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of one of our marquee retail customers, TechStyle Fashion Group.

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If you’re not familiar with TechStyle, the most common brand

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I know of is Fabletics but they offer about five

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brands that are celebrity marketed, active wear and footwear through

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the rise of subscription services that’s going on with retail,

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too. So you can imagine their exceptional growth last year,

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all fueled by being ahead of the game on that

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omnichannel and real eCommerce and really going that method from

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the get- go with their business model. But onto telehealth,

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there’s no question that the healthcare industry is changing out

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there. We meet with healthcare companies around the globe and

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we’re seeing that digital transformation with that cloud agility is

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absolutely a business imperative. That couldn’t have been more true

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for Company Nurse, both before and after the pandemic hit.

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If you’re not familiar with Company Nurse, they offer nurse

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triaging for accidents in the workplace and if we back

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up prior to them moving forward with Genesys Cloud, they

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were on legacy on- premises solution, voice only. They were

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having problems because it couldn’t scale the way they wanted,

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wouldn’t provide the results that they need, expensive to maintain.

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They couldn’t integrate it with any sort of digital channels

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and it was really preventing them, too, from staying up

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to speed with that realtime visibility that they needed in

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the moment. If you were to go back in time

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and take a peek at the essential capabilities that they

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were looking for in their buyer guide, think of easy

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digital platform to support multichannel, integrated workforce engagement across those

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channels, as well as integration from that platform perspective, like

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Sheila, you talked about earlier, with their existing systems as

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well as the ability to adapt to new applications easily,

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and they got that with cloud. As you can see

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from the CTO quote over there to the right, their

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contact center, they really saw as mission critical to their

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business, 70% of it being revenue generating, so they needed

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a solution that they could also switch to in a

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matter of weeks or less, which they did. So that

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agility to be able to migrate simply with expertise was

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also really important to them as an essential capability. You

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can see the results listed there, tremendous results that equated

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to lower total cost of ownership, improved employee productivity, but

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that’s actually not my favorite part of this story. My

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favorite part of this story, if you were to Google

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after this, take a moment, Company Nurse, it’s our Genesys

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podcast. We had a guest, the CTO, Henry, who talks

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about their pivotal decision back in February, March last year,

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early days of COVID-19, where they had to shift their

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entire business model. You can imagine nurse triaging in the

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workplace, companies shifting to work from home, nurse triage isn’t

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needed as much, right? So they went to their customers

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and they asked what they needed instead, and within a

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month from idea, they had an MVP ready that they

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were the first out there to offer a COVID digital

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screening app, and in that month they integrated it to

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their digital, their voice, their SMS, their callback channels with

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Genesys Cloud, to not only grow their business to record-

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breaking results during this time, but perhaps more importantly, meeting

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their customers’ needs without having to do mass layoffs in

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their employee base that others were facing in the health

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space. So tremendous story both pre- pandemic as well as

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post- pandemic that I think really speaks to the power

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of digital transformation with cloud agility there. Hey, Sheila. I

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think you’re muted. I always do that to be polite

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00:23:29,080 –> 00:23:31,960
to the speaker before me, and then I’m not polite

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00:23:31,960 –> 00:23:34,580
when I start talking and nobody can hear me, but

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life goes on so thank you, Josh, for letting me

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know. So when you have digital engagement and you’re introducing

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it into your contact center, part of that story is

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also building on the channel agents, because omnichannel agents are who

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you need to do all of this fantastic work of

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integrating all of these channels and doing all of this.

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But omnichannel agents are not born, they are made and

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they’re made by having workforce engagement management solutions that can

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handle all of the channels. So it’s interesting, over the

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last couple of years when I was still doing speaking

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engagements where people were in front of me, one of

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the questions I would ask is, ” How many of you

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are using a workforce monitoring system that just handles voice?”

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And it would be amazing what a high proportion of

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the audience members would say that their quality monitoring was

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just for voice. So we can’t build omnichannel agents if

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00:24:44,720 –> 00:24:49,050
we don’t have tools that address all of the channels.

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00:24:49,290 –> 00:24:51,950
So as you move toward digital engagement, you have to

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sort of bring in that workforce engagement part of it.

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The other, to me, one of the elements of building

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an omnichannel agent is sort of a mindset twist, which

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is typically in the context in how we think about handling this interaction,

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00:25:07,780 –> 00:25:14,320
this transaction, single transaction resolution, that’s the goal. But in

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00:25:14,320 –> 00:25:18,010
reality with digital engagement, often that customer’s coming to you

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with other content, with other interactions that they already had.

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They’d looked on the website, they may have tried to

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chat with you, they may have sent an email, and

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00:25:28,900 –> 00:25:33,140
so it’s no longer the agent’s responsibility to just handle

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00:25:33,140 –> 00:25:37,180
this interaction, but to look at the entire journey that

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00:25:37,180 –> 00:25:42,030
the customer has been on. So from a building your

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00:25:42,090 –> 00:25:46,410
contact center plan, what do you need, you not just

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00:25:46,410 –> 00:25:49,520
have to make those digital channels available. You have to

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coach and train and monitor the agents on all of

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those channels, and then to the extent that you can,

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00:25:56,150 –> 00:25:59,030
you need to make sure that the agent has the

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context, the information from those other steps that the customer

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00:26:03,590 –> 00:26:08,170
has taken. So as we move to the next slide,

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we’re going to have Janelle tell us about Ethiopian Airlines

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and some of the things that they have done. Yeah,

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00:26:17,350 –> 00:26:21,410
so Company Nurse, they had integrated workforce engagement management as

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00:26:21,410 –> 00:26:26,160
well, but here’s another example in a different industry across

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00:26:26,160 –> 00:26:29,150
the pond that also saw a big change last year

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00:26:29,150 –> 00:26:33,920
with the airline industry. Ethiopia Airlines, unrivaled in Africa for

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00:26:33,920 –> 00:26:39,610
their efficiency and operational success, like every airline I can

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00:26:39,610 –> 00:26:43,250
think of anyway, last year they were just trying to

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00:26:43,250 –> 00:26:46,760
survive and look for ways to lower costs and improve

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00:26:46,760 –> 00:26:50,550
margins, focusing on the customer, I think, too, an important

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00:26:50,550 –> 00:26:54,430
point in your buying consideration, looking at not just the

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00:26:54,430 –> 00:26:58,070
service part of your customer journey, but looking for engagement

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00:26:58,070 –> 00:27:01,880
tools that span marketing sales and service. Let’s look at

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00:27:01,880 –> 00:27:06,330
the before and after of Ethiopia Airlines. Prior to moving

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00:27:06,330 –> 00:27:11,620
to Genesys Cloud- based environment, they were facing incompatible systems,

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00:27:12,360 –> 00:27:16,270
their calls were actually routed to employees that weren’t taking

401
00:27:16,270 –> 00:27:20,520
into account even just basic things like language skills or

402
00:27:20,520 –> 00:27:24,220
any skills for that matter. Their teams worked in silos,

403
00:27:24,220 –> 00:27:29,170
handling emails, handling chats, handling phone calls, all separately, they

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00:27:29,170 –> 00:27:32,500
didn’t have a CRM system, they didn’t have workforce engagement,

405
00:27:33,010 –> 00:27:36,730
data was buried elsewhere and everywhere, and needless to say,

406
00:27:36,730 –> 00:27:39,740
they lacked that full overview of the customer journey and

407
00:27:39,790 –> 00:27:43,730
that real- time insight. So looking into the essential capabilities

408
00:27:44,160 –> 00:27:49,330
they captured, they deployed within two months, had 500 agents

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00:27:49,410 –> 00:27:54,440
now working more productively in a blended fashion, handling emails,

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00:27:54,440 –> 00:27:59,110
chats and phone calls, effortlessly switching between them, all from

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00:27:59,110 –> 00:28:02,770
that single omnichannel desktop, which is really important in order

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00:28:02,770 –> 00:28:05,310
for the employees to be able to do that. And

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00:28:05,310 –> 00:28:10,220
they really unlocked further customer experience gains by introducing that

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00:28:10,220 –> 00:28:15,010
workforce engagement piece to further improve the customer experience. So,

415
00:28:15,040 –> 00:28:21,320
some results, their service levels went from 70% to 95%.

416
00:28:21,670 –> 00:28:26,430
They had higher first- call resolution, their abandonment rate went

417
00:28:26,430 –> 00:28:31,440
from 20% just down to 3%. Calls answered went from

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20 seconds, which airline, that’s still pretty good, down to

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00:28:34,140 –> 00:28:36,620
eight seconds, I can’t remember when the last time I

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00:28:36,620 –> 00:28:39,270
called an airline and they answered in eight seconds, and

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00:28:39,330 –> 00:28:42,570
they had that agility they needed to change IBR menus

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00:28:42,570 –> 00:28:46,910
on the dime without having to pay for external support.

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00:28:47,440 –> 00:28:51,910
In addition, they expanded the use of their cloud technology

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to their sales environment, too, being able to monitor customers’

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00:28:55,630 –> 00:29:00,620
behavior on their website, understand that and get predictive with

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00:29:00,620 –> 00:29:03,560
the use of AI to intercept in the moment because

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00:29:03,560 –> 00:29:07,090
they had the right staff in place to really help

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00:29:07,090 –> 00:29:10,690
that customer through their buyer journey and saw web conversion

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00:29:10,690 –> 00:29:14,840
rates just increase dramatically, and you can see the results

430
00:29:14,840 –> 00:29:19,230
there. So I love this story because it is really

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00:29:19,230 –> 00:29:23,030
a proved point in helping a company that was in

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00:29:23,030 –> 00:29:28,190
a struggling industry last year, and looking ahead, really make

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00:29:28,190 –> 00:29:32,810
change and support the customer journey across marketing, sales and

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00:29:32,810 –> 00:29:38,680
service. Excellent, so we are moving to our next poll.

435
00:29:38,740 –> 00:29:44,880
The question is, ” Is there value in integrating your unified

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00:29:44,880 –> 00:29:50,410
communication solution incorporation with the contact center?” We have just

437
00:29:50,410 –> 00:29:55,030
three choices; yes, we think there’s value in integrating them,

438
00:29:55,310 –> 00:29:59,670
but we prefer one solution for both contact center and

439
00:29:59,720 –> 00:30:04,970
unified communications and collaboration. Yes, we think there’s value and

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00:30:04,970 –> 00:30:09,920
our preferred solution is Microsoft Teams, and this is one of those ones where

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00:30:09,920 –> 00:30:13,380
we wait for all of the responses before you select

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00:30:13,380 –> 00:30:16,450
one because you might be number one but number two

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00:30:16,450 –> 00:30:20,470
is more specific to you. And then third, yes, our

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00:30:20,470 –> 00:30:26,660
preferred solution is a different UCC provider. Okay, so I

445
00:30:26,660 –> 00:30:29,210
realize we do not have a choice here for no.

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00:30:31,790 –> 00:30:35,560
We may have missed that, but we’ll see what people

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00:30:35,560 –> 00:30:37,900
think. I think it’ll be interesting to see what we

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00:30:37,900 –> 00:30:43,380
get here. Clearly, Microsoft Teams had a huge uptick in

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00:30:43,380 –> 00:30:47,130
usage in 2020, so I’m not going to be surprised

450
00:30:47,130 –> 00:30:50,750
to see that we have a lot of Microsoft Teams users,

451
00:30:50,750 –> 00:30:54,230
what do you think, Janelle? I think the same, it’s

452
00:30:54,230 –> 00:30:57,190
becoming one of those essential capabilities you mentioned at the

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00:30:57,190 –> 00:31:01,230
beginning. It used to be a very separate decision and

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00:31:01,230 –> 00:31:05,180
while it may not be from a single provider, we’re

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00:31:05,180 –> 00:31:09,710
seeing it recurring on the list of requirements for cloud

456
00:31:09,710 –> 00:31:12,520
based solutions to be able to extend beyond the contact

457
00:31:12,530 –> 00:31:16,030
center and have an integrated solution regardless, so we’re keen

458
00:31:16,030 –> 00:31:20,790
to see if our audience agrees. Okay, so drum roll.

459
00:31:25,770 –> 00:31:30,940
I’m going to… I was hitting submit instead of next.

460
00:31:30,970 –> 00:31:36,330
Okay, what can we discern from this? Over 50% are

461
00:31:36,330 –> 00:31:40,880
using Teams, wow. That’s even higher than I would’ve predicted.

462
00:31:41,870 –> 00:31:44,950
Or their preferred solution is Teams, doesn’t tell me that

463
00:31:44,950 –> 00:31:49,960
they’re really using it but I’m actually surprised it’s as

464
00:31:49,960 –> 00:31:52,320
close between the first and second option as it is.

465
00:31:52,320 –> 00:31:55,250
I thought it would be a bigger differential because we’re

466
00:31:55,250 –> 00:32:00,990
definitely seeing more for Teams across the board. Yeah, and

467
00:32:00,990 –> 00:32:03,990
not too much for other providers. Yeah, back to Teams,

468
00:32:03,990 –> 00:32:06,620
I happened to be on their site today and there

469
00:32:06,630 –> 00:32:10,270
are 15 different contact centers who are working to get

470
00:32:10,270 –> 00:32:13,620
certified in Microsoft Teams, so it’s a much bigger effort

471
00:32:13,620 –> 00:32:16,360
than it has been for many years. So I think

472
00:32:16,700 –> 00:32:18,700
to the point that we’ve both made at this point,

473
00:32:18,700 –> 00:32:24,430
Janelle, the importance of bringing together the unified communications and

474
00:32:24,400 –> 00:32:28,140
the contact center has just been elevated. Part of that

475
00:32:28,140 –> 00:32:32,300
is not being in a single physical location and not

476
00:32:32,300 –> 00:32:37,040
being able to bring your supervisor over with something as

477
00:32:37,040 –> 00:32:42,900
easy raising your hand. A study that I had read

478
00:32:42,900 –> 00:32:47,340
over the summer, that 93% of companies now say that

479
00:32:47,380 –> 00:32:52,040
UC and team messaging integration with the contact center is

480
00:32:52,040 –> 00:32:57,270
a very important factor in customer experience success, and yet,

481
00:32:57,500 –> 00:33:00,930
as you and I know, there’s not enough evidence today

482
00:33:01,130 –> 00:33:04,430
that, that’s happening in contact centers. I think if we’ve

483
00:33:04,430 –> 00:33:07,730
got that many listeners who are thinking Microsoft Teams is

484
00:33:07,730 –> 00:33:11,160
the answer, and companies like Genesys are now stepping up

485
00:33:11,220 –> 00:33:14,140
and working much more closely with Microsoft, hopefully a year

486
00:33:14,140 –> 00:33:17,040
from now we’ll see a lot more of that UC in

487
00:33:17,040 –> 00:33:20,700
contact center integration. You’re going to tell us about one

488
00:33:20,700 –> 00:33:24,410
customer who’s doing that. Absolutely, as I mentioned, we see

489
00:33:24,410 –> 00:33:27,850
it on many people’s list and here’s an example of

490
00:33:28,630 –> 00:33:33,330
a company that I admire so much, who has taken

491
00:33:33,330 –> 00:33:36,120
that step forward and has it implemented. Let me tell

492
00:33:36,120 –> 00:33:40,390
you a little bit about Integral Care. I think of

493
00:33:40,390 –> 00:33:44,560
their contact center not as a call center, I don’t

494
00:33:44,730 –> 00:33:46,930
think of it as a profit center, I think of

495
00:33:46,930 –> 00:33:50,580
it as a life center. They have about 900 people

496
00:33:50,580 –> 00:33:56,170
on staff across 45 locations, where they provide a 24

497
00:33:56,170 –> 00:34:00,850
hour crisis helpline that’s often that first point of contact

498
00:34:00,850 –> 00:34:05,100
for people needing that immediate emotional support, especially during these

499
00:34:05,100 –> 00:34:09,100
crazy times. They also receive traffic from calls to national

500
00:34:09,100 –> 00:34:14,620
suicide prevention lines. So as you can imagine, streamlined communication,

501
00:34:14,850 –> 00:34:19,790
it is essential and lifesaving, and downtime is more than

502
00:34:19,790 –> 00:34:24,210
critical, it can be even tragic. So where were they?

503
00:34:24,600 –> 00:34:29,070
Prior to Genesys, they were having huge technology issues that

504
00:34:29,070 –> 00:34:34,890
were degrading their service levels for this helpline. Their CIO,

505
00:34:34,890 –> 00:34:37,610
if he was on, he would describe their on- premises

506
00:34:37,610 –> 00:34:43,700
contact center system as unreliable, hard to scale, expensive to

507
00:34:43,700 –> 00:34:48,210
maintain and add features, and on average, they suffered two

508
00:34:48,210 –> 00:34:52,140
to three outages a month. And you can see on

509
00:34:52,140 –> 00:34:56,300
the slide, those each lasted anywhere from 15 minutes to

510
00:34:56,300 –> 00:34:59,900
five hours, where during that time, they couldn’t even take

511
00:34:59,960 –> 00:35:03,870
a critical call, which was totally unacceptable. So they went

512
00:35:03,870 –> 00:35:07,290
with a cloud based platform, voice and digital channels, seeing

513
00:35:07,300 –> 00:35:11,850
a theme here, and they integrated Genesys Cloud with their

514
00:35:11,850 –> 00:35:16,320
Netsmart Electronic Health system. They really appreciated the platform capabilities

515
00:35:16,320 –> 00:35:18,830
that Genesys Cloud brought to the table as well, so

516
00:35:18,830 –> 00:35:22,360
that they could leverage that existing system that was working

517
00:35:22,360 –> 00:35:26,020
really well for them. So they also were looking, as

518
00:35:26,020 –> 00:35:29,460
an essential capability, for that cloud platform to be able

519
00:35:29,460 –> 00:35:34,410
to intercept and route calls for neighboring area codes automatically

520
00:35:34,410 –> 00:35:37,810
so that they could make best use of local knowledge

521
00:35:37,810 –> 00:35:43,760
and resources. Sheila, you mentioned that COVID- 19 catapulted telehealth

522
00:35:43,760 –> 00:35:47,560
forward by decades in a few months. After they did

523
00:35:47,560 –> 00:35:52,000
that, they then integrated with Microsoft Teams so that they

524
00:35:52,000 –> 00:35:55,180
could make it even easier for case managers that weren’t

525
00:35:55,180 –> 00:36:00,860
regular contact center agents to also be able to conduct

526
00:36:01,040 –> 00:36:05,770
telehealth video calls with clients and collaborate effectively with other

527
00:36:05,770 –> 00:36:09,220
agents. So we don’t see a ton of people doing

528
00:36:09,220 –> 00:36:12,380
this yet, but we are hearing Microsoft Teams integration on

529
00:36:12,380 –> 00:36:15,520
a regular basis, on many buyers’ minds. I think Integral

530
00:36:15,520 –> 00:36:18,940
Care is a great organization and a great example that

531
00:36:18,950 –> 00:36:22,930
has forged ahead to integrate their UC and their contact

532
00:36:22,930 –> 00:36:29,820
center technologies really for the best of reasons. Excellent. Oops.

533
00:36:31,210 –> 00:36:34,540
Trying to move on… here we go. And I can

534
00:36:34,540 –> 00:36:40,620
be heard this time? Yes, okay. Yes. I did it. So

535
00:36:40,620 –> 00:36:44,920
we talked about artificial intelligence and what’s interesting is digital

536
00:36:44,920 –> 00:36:48,350
engagement keeps coming up, and really the two of them

537
00:36:48,350 –> 00:36:54,440
are very tightly integrated, because artificial intelligence is really what

538
00:36:54,440 –> 00:36:58,540
helps optimize for digital- first. If you look at all

539
00:36:58,540 –> 00:37:04,310
of these technologies that are here; automatic speech recognition, natural

540
00:37:04,310 –> 00:37:09,370
language processing, these are all backed up with artificial intelligence

541
00:37:09,420 –> 00:37:15,780
and machine learning. But things like transcription and translation and

542
00:37:15,780 –> 00:37:21,020
automatic topic categorization, these are the exciting things that are

543
00:37:21,020 –> 00:37:26,040
relatively new to artificial intelligence, but really help bring digital

544
00:37:26,620 –> 00:37:33,600
to a much higher level. Transcription means that, that interaction

545
00:37:33,600 –> 00:37:38,600
that a customer had with a natural language bot can

546
00:37:38,600 –> 00:37:41,440
be transcribed and sent to the agent, and the highlights

547
00:37:41,440 –> 00:37:44,800
of that highlighted so the agent doesn’t have to read

548
00:37:44,800 –> 00:37:47,190
every single thing that was said to the bot, but

549
00:37:47,190 –> 00:37:51,940
can just understand really quickly what the intent of this

550
00:37:51,940 –> 00:37:57,700
particular call is. Or if a customer picks up the

551
00:37:57,700 –> 00:38:02,180
phone and speaks to an intelligent virtual agent, and just

552
00:38:02,180 –> 00:38:07,660
speaks very freely, the system can automatically categorize what that

553
00:38:07,660 –> 00:38:10,580
topic is that the customer wants to talk to and

554
00:38:10,580 –> 00:38:15,040
send that to the appropriate resource. So what’s exciting is

555
00:38:15,040 –> 00:38:18,110
digital- first coming at the same time as artificial intelligence,

556
00:38:18,280 –> 00:38:21,710
because one aids the other, one makes the other better

557
00:38:22,100 –> 00:38:26,510
and again, Janelle’s got a great case study back to

558
00:38:26,510 –> 00:38:29,200
the unemployment case that I was talking about earlier. Go

559
00:38:29,200 –> 00:38:35,480
ahead. Yeah, I read recently that in a CMSWire article,

560
00:38:35,500 –> 00:38:41,640
72% of interactions will involve chat bots by 2022. We’ll

561
00:38:41,640 –> 00:38:43,860
see, but even if it doesn’t hit that high, I

562
00:38:43,860 –> 00:38:47,600
think, Sheila, your point is well taken, that digital and

563
00:38:47,600 –> 00:38:51,900
AI go hand- in- hand and that it’s definitely on

564
00:38:51,900 –> 00:38:56,840
the rise. And even to your point earlier that Mayor

565
00:38:57,120 –> 00:39:00,970
Garcetti signed that executive order to make all city services

566
00:39:01,180 –> 00:39:04,500
contactless and digital, so at Genesys we saw an increase

567
00:39:04,500 –> 00:39:08,240
in the adoption of cloud AI and automation in government

568
00:39:08,550 –> 00:39:10,930
last year as well, and we expect to continue to

569
00:39:11,370 –> 00:39:15,640
see that in 2021. So this is an example of

570
00:39:15,640 –> 00:39:19,410
that, I’ll leave it semi anonymous to which state it

571
00:39:19,410 –> 00:39:24,990
was exactly, but while some businesses like Company Nurse thrived

572
00:39:25,210 –> 00:39:29,170
last year, Sheila pointed out many that didn’t survive. And

573
00:39:29,170 –> 00:39:34,500
due to COVID- 19, this particular state’s unemployment agency saw

574
00:39:34,550 –> 00:39:39,100
a gigantic spike in unemployment just in one month around

575
00:39:39,150 –> 00:39:43,990
the February, March timeframe. To put that in perspective, they

576
00:39:43,990 –> 00:39:49,840
received 20 months of unemployment claims in just a single

577
00:39:49,840 –> 00:39:55,350
month when the pandemic hit, and their existing 25 year

578
00:39:55,350 –> 00:40:01,860
old IVR technology didn’t scale and they were abandoning, at

579
00:40:01,860 –> 00:40:05,760
one point, 2,000, 000 calls per day. And I think

580
00:40:05,760 –> 00:40:09,360
of being that person that was trying to call in

581
00:40:10,170 –> 00:40:12,750
and being one of those 2, 000,000, how frustrating that

582
00:40:12,750 –> 00:40:16,220
would be. So they threw people at the problem and

583
00:40:16,220 –> 00:40:20,550
even with 1, 000 agents in their call center, they

584
00:40:20,550 –> 00:40:24,420
still had to bring in help from state legislator, putting

585
00:40:24,740 –> 00:40:27,460
more employees on the phone and while their citizens were

586
00:40:27,460 –> 00:40:30,160
in a crisis because they lost their job, the agency

587
00:40:30,530 –> 00:40:32,990
was also in a crisis and they needed help. So

588
00:40:33,040 –> 00:40:36,980
they reached out to many providers for quotes for services,

589
00:40:37,500 –> 00:40:40,300
and they needed a trusted advisor to help them throughout.

590
00:40:40,370 –> 00:40:44,650
On their list of essential capabilities, it was pretty straightforward;

591
00:40:44,870 –> 00:40:49,470
cloud automation, fast. And so, in the solution here, the

592
00:40:49,470 –> 00:40:53,100
agency took advantage of our rapid response program we launched

593
00:40:53,100 –> 00:40:56,440
last year to serve our customers, and they quickly stood

594
00:40:56,440 –> 00:40:59,770
up Genesys Cloud IVR for their voice calls. Part of

595
00:40:59,770 –> 00:41:04,030
that program was with our prebuilt integration to Google Dialog

596
00:41:04,030 –> 00:41:07,900
Flow, one of our very strategic partners for that virtual

597
00:41:07,900 –> 00:41:11,920
agent capabilities for both calls and chat on the website.

598
00:41:12,430 –> 00:41:15,020
They were up and running in about two weeks with

599
00:41:15,020 –> 00:41:19,990
a full solution, saw a 350% increase in connected calls

600
00:41:20,560 –> 00:41:24,130
and what that translates to is like a typical February

601
00:41:24,180 –> 00:41:27,320
for this agency would see 70 claims, they processed that

602
00:41:27,320 –> 00:41:30,650
same number in a single day in March. So to

603
00:41:30,650 –> 00:41:33,920
me, this is just a super powerful story of the

604
00:41:34,260 –> 00:41:38,300
power of a cloud platform and being able to integrate

605
00:41:38,300 –> 00:41:45,170
with other strategic partners out there. Just a moment. I’m live.

606
00:41:45,530 –> 00:41:51,030
Platform capabilities, so this is a buyer’s guide for 2021.

607
00:41:51,030 –> 00:41:56,370
Perhaps in 2020, you wouldn’t have been thinking that having

608
00:41:56,760 –> 00:42:02,620
an orchestration tool, having the ability to perhaps just use

609
00:42:02,750 –> 00:42:08,260
parts of a solution like Genesys Cloud in your contact

610
00:42:08,260 –> 00:42:11,570
center, it might never occur to you, but suddenly in

611
00:42:11,580 –> 00:42:15,650
2021 it does occur to you. You have tens of

612
00:42:15,650 –> 00:42:18,490
thousands of agents and you want to add a capability

613
00:42:18,740 –> 00:42:21,530
like the one that Janelle just talked about for the unemployment

614
00:42:21,530 –> 00:42:24,820
office. It doesn’t always mean you have to change everything,

615
00:42:25,280 –> 00:42:27,190
it doesn’t mean you have to change all the voice

616
00:42:27,190 –> 00:42:30,070
capabilities that you have and that you’ve built. But with

617
00:42:30,070 –> 00:42:35,310
platform capabilities and the ability to add those great AI

618
00:42:35,630 –> 00:42:39,920
capabilities from the cloud to your existing platform, that’s when

619
00:42:39,920 –> 00:42:42,900
it becomes important to understand, ” What can platform do for

620
00:42:42,900 –> 00:42:46,410
me? In that period between now and maybe two or

621
00:42:46,410 –> 00:42:49,810
three or five years when I move off the premises

622
00:42:49,810 –> 00:42:53,640
solution that I have, how can I start taking advantage

623
00:42:53,890 –> 00:42:57,200
of the cloud?” And I think platform capabilities are key

624
00:42:57,200 –> 00:43:02,610
to that, because even without changing your entire operation, you

625
00:43:02,610 –> 00:43:06,020
can get some of those benefits of faster time to

626
00:43:06,020 –> 00:43:10,870
market, like the unemployment office did. Increased iteration time, being

627
00:43:10,870 –> 00:43:16,710
able to change things more quickly and increased stakeholder engagement

628
00:43:16,710 –> 00:43:20,330
and satisfaction because they can make some of the changes

629
00:43:20,330 –> 00:43:22,810
that need to be made without having to go to

630
00:43:22,810 –> 00:43:26,540
IT necessarily every time. So you may not have been

631
00:43:26,540 –> 00:43:28,770
thinking about it a year ago, but as you speak

632
00:43:28,830 –> 00:43:32,150
to the vendors that you’re thinking about as you take

633
00:43:32,150 –> 00:43:37,310
the next steps in your contact center solution journey, make

634
00:43:37,310 –> 00:43:39,110
sure that this is on that list of things that

635
00:43:39,110 –> 00:43:46,350
you’re looking for and at. So what are legacy call

636
00:43:46,350 –> 00:43:52,650
centers not delivering right now? Integrated digital channels, how often

637
00:43:52,650 –> 00:43:56,000
do I see a contact center that has perhaps a

638
00:43:56,000 –> 00:44:00,020
great voice contact center, but they’ve used a different vendor

639
00:44:00,020 –> 00:44:04,100
for email and maybe a different vendor for chat, and

640
00:44:04,100 –> 00:44:06,720
none of that is integrated. And that agent who’s on

641
00:44:06,730 –> 00:44:11,040
the voice contact center gets no data necessarily from those

642
00:44:11,040 –> 00:44:15,360
digital engagements, so it’s almost impossible for that agent to

643
00:44:15,360 –> 00:44:20,740
have context. Robust support from remote and mobile workforce, and

644
00:44:20,740 –> 00:44:23,960
that means both for the contact center solution as well

645
00:44:23,960 –> 00:44:28,890
as for the workforce engagement management applications. That seamless front

646
00:44:28,890 –> 00:44:32,510
office, back office communications. As we talked about, it doesn’t

647
00:44:32,510 –> 00:44:35,360
have to be one solution as long as there is

648
00:44:35,360 –> 00:44:38,840
a tight integration between the two, like Genesys is doing

649
00:44:38,840 –> 00:44:43,700
with Microsoft Teams. Legacy call centers, it’s difficult for them

650
00:44:43,700 –> 00:44:47,730
to use artificial intelligence and to help you have that

651
00:44:47,730 –> 00:44:51,480
innovation, and so it makes hard to have that agility to

652
00:44:51,480 –> 00:44:56,380
make changes quickly based on business needs. I mean those

653
00:44:56,380 –> 00:45:01,160
of us who worked at legacy contact centers know, typically they’re told, ” Maybe next

654
00:45:01,160 –> 00:45:06,160
year, maybe.” And we’re in a world where we need

655
00:45:06,160 –> 00:45:11,460
that by next week, ” Maybe next year,” doesn’t work anymore. So

656
00:45:11,460 –> 00:45:15,420
we’re going to go to our final poll question. Among the areas

657
00:45:15,680 –> 00:45:20,340
that we discussed today, what is your top priority for

658
00:45:20,340 –> 00:45:27,130
customer experience technology investment in 2021? Is it digital engagement,

659
00:45:27,480 –> 00:45:30,960
expanding the number of channels that you have, integrating it

660
00:45:31,270 –> 00:45:34,870
more closely to the voice channel? Is it workforce engagement,

661
00:45:35,950 –> 00:45:42,650
integrated collaboration and contact center technology, or artificial intelligence and

662
00:45:42,650 –> 00:45:50,220
automation? All good choices. Hold on. Again, I think it

663
00:45:50,220 –> 00:45:54,970
depends on where our audience is at, because digital engagement

664
00:45:54,970 –> 00:45:58,090
and AI go hand- in- hand. Some might already be

665
00:45:58,190 –> 00:46:03,820
using it, some might be evolving to more channels. I

666
00:46:03,820 –> 00:46:08,500
also read a study where, I think, by 2022 the

667
00:46:08,500 –> 00:46:11,530
use of workforce engagement in the cloud will be at

668
00:46:11,890 –> 00:46:16,210
94% so maybe it’s on- premise, by working the cloud.

669
00:46:16,460 –> 00:46:20,720
I also have seen a pivot where many companies are

670
00:46:20,720 –> 00:46:25,960
using workforce optimization, where it’s very focused on operational efficiency,

671
00:46:26,290 –> 00:46:29,750
and to your point earlier with the gamification example, really

672
00:46:29,750 –> 00:46:33,020
shifting more towards that focus with the employee, especially in

673
00:46:33,020 –> 00:46:37,010
this virtual world of workforce engagement, so I’m intrigued to

674
00:46:37,010 –> 00:46:38,430
see where we’re going to be at. What do you

675
00:46:38,430 –> 00:46:43,970
think, Sheila? I think digital, I mean I think that’s

676
00:46:43,970 –> 00:46:47,960
the pressing need for a lot of businesses, that they

677
00:46:48,000 –> 00:46:50,110
may not have been doing that as well as they’d

678
00:46:50,110 –> 00:46:58,720
like, but we will see. It’s time. Aha! You were

679
00:46:58,720 –> 00:47:05,020
right. Interesting. Well, I wanted you to say it. Well,

680
00:47:05,020 –> 00:47:10,400
look at the tie between integrated collaboration and AI actually,

681
00:47:10,400 –> 00:47:15,600
that’s interesting. Right, because they’re so different, right? Yeah. They’re

682
00:47:15,600 –> 00:47:18,980
very different. One is probably more contact center focused, the

683
00:47:18,980 –> 00:47:22,410
AI, and the other is more enterprise focused, but it

684
00:47:22,410 –> 00:47:24,780
comes back to what you said about sales, service and

685
00:47:24,780 –> 00:47:27,950
marketing. We’re not going to get there without the integrated

686
00:47:27,950 –> 00:47:33,110
collaboration, I think, so excellent. It’s always interesting to learn

687
00:47:33,110 –> 00:47:38,350
something about how people are thinking, that’s why the poll, this is not

688
00:47:38,350 –> 00:47:39,990
for us as it is for them, but you get

689
00:47:39,990 –> 00:47:41,830
to see what your peers are thinking as well. So

690
00:47:41,830 –> 00:47:46,760
I am now going to move it to you to

691
00:47:46,760 –> 00:47:51,120
finish up on the Genesys vision. Fabulous. Well, we highlighted

692
00:47:51,120 –> 00:47:54,800
these essential capabilities that we just reviewed in the poll.

693
00:47:54,800 –> 00:47:59,830
Top of line, digital engagement, integrated UC and CC, artificial

694
00:47:59,830 –> 00:48:05,360
intelligence, workforce engagement. As you evaluate providers for these essential

695
00:48:05,360 –> 00:48:09,440
capabilities, you need to ultimately improve customer experience. Let me

696
00:48:09,440 –> 00:48:12,500
just leave you with this final point that relates to

697
00:48:12,500 –> 00:48:16,960
our vision for our customers. When it comes to customer

698
00:48:16,960 –> 00:48:22,200
experience, of course your customers want their issues resolved quickly and

699
00:48:22,200 –> 00:48:26,750
correctly, and we know that efficiency and effectiveness, they’re always

700
00:48:26,750 –> 00:48:29,420
going to be important for your contact centers to be

701
00:48:29,420 –> 00:48:31,790
able to support and for your company to be able

702
00:48:31,790 –> 00:48:36,080
to support. But don’t forget that your customers along the

703
00:48:36,390 –> 00:48:40,250
way, especially now more than ever, want to be treated

704
00:48:40,250 –> 00:48:43,180
with empathy, or in other words to be to heard

705
00:48:43,180 –> 00:48:47,540
and understood. So experience as a service is the Genesys

706
00:48:47,540 –> 00:48:51,520
vision that helps you put empathy at the center of

707
00:48:51,520 –> 00:48:56,570
each experience. It’s the key ingredient, along with efficiency and

708
00:48:56,570 –> 00:49:01,880
effectiveness, that helps foster trust with your customers to ultimately

709
00:49:01,880 –> 00:49:06,210
drive loyalty. So here at Genesys, we’re making experience as

710
00:49:06,210 –> 00:49:09,810
a service a reality by helping you use the right

711
00:49:09,810 –> 00:49:13,430
combination of technology so that you can truly personalize those

712
00:49:13,430 –> 00:49:17,980
experiences at scale. And that right combo of tech, it

713
00:49:17,980 –> 00:49:22,520
starts with data from any system or any engagement, including

714
00:49:22,520 –> 00:49:25,410
the one going on in the moment. Then, with the

715
00:49:25,410 –> 00:49:30,060
power of cloud and by applying AI, you can process

716
00:49:30,060 –> 00:49:33,730
this data in real- time, you can decipher the customer’s

717
00:49:33,730 –> 00:49:36,270
intent and predict how and when to interact with them

718
00:49:36,270 –> 00:49:39,870
further and with this understanding of your customers, you can

719
00:49:39,870 –> 00:49:43,950
quickly then provide that relevant and personalized experience with those

720
00:49:43,950 –> 00:49:48,260
engagement tools like in the Ethiopia example that spans marketing,

721
00:49:48,260 –> 00:49:52,840
sales and services. So ultimately, your customers will feel like

722
00:49:52,840 –> 00:49:55,980
they’re a priority to you, they’ll feel cared for as

723
00:49:55,980 –> 00:50:00,970
individuals, sometimes that literally is a life or death situation,

724
00:50:01,040 –> 00:50:04,400
and they feel uniquely understood. They won’t have to repeat

725
00:50:04,400 –> 00:50:08,580
themselves, their issues will be resolved, sometimes even before they

726
00:50:08,580 –> 00:50:13,640
know it, with compassion. So integrated data, AI, engagement tools

727
00:50:13,640 –> 00:50:17,620
with that cloud interactive ability and choice really are at

728
00:50:17,620 –> 00:50:22,130
the heart of the essential capabilities we see companies needing,

729
00:50:22,480 –> 00:50:24,960
now and for the future. So with the trends that

730
00:50:24,960 –> 00:50:29,070
Sheila shared, the customer examples that I highlighted, know that

731
00:50:29,600 –> 00:50:33,910
this combination of tech that fuels this vision of experience

732
00:50:33,950 –> 00:50:36,950
as a service, is possible because the technologies we talked

733
00:50:36,950 –> 00:50:40,270
about today are finally at that right level of maturity

734
00:50:40,270 –> 00:50:43,230
and within reach for any company. So with this vision,

735
00:50:43,700 –> 00:50:46,590
you as a business can truly take a more customer-

736
00:50:46,590 –> 00:50:50,170
centric approach with your business and with your engagement with

737
00:50:50,290 –> 00:50:55,020
customers. So with all that said, Josh, I think I’ll

738
00:50:55,020 –> 00:50:56,700
turn it over to you to see if there’s any

739
00:50:57,020 –> 00:51:02,130
questions. Thanks, Janelle. So, just to get started, we do have

740
00:51:02,130 –> 00:51:03,960
a few questions that have already come in, but as

741
00:51:03,960 –> 00:51:06,770
a reminder to everybody in the audience, to participate in

742
00:51:06,770 –> 00:51:09,350
today’s Q& A, just submit those into the Q& A

743
00:51:09,350 –> 00:51:11,470
window below the slides and we’ll get to as many

744
00:51:11,470 –> 00:51:13,540
as we can with the little time that we have

745
00:51:13,540 –> 00:51:16,290
remaining today. As I mentioned before, though, there is a

746
00:51:16,290 –> 00:51:17,820
chance that we’re not going to be able to get to

747
00:51:17,820 –> 00:51:19,940
all of the questions today, so if we do not

748
00:51:19,940 –> 00:51:22,770
answer your question aloud, what we’ll do is we’ll follow

749
00:51:22,770 –> 00:51:25,130
up with you via email within the next few business

750
00:51:25,130 –> 00:51:28,810
days. To kick things off, as we do have a couple

751
00:51:28,810 –> 00:51:32,050
of live questions in here now, so I think this

752
00:51:32,050 –> 00:51:34,590
is going to be directed more towards you, Sheila. The

753
00:51:34,590 –> 00:51:38,070
first question is, ” Is the change for digital a resource

754
00:51:38,310 –> 00:51:42,310
of COVID- 19 or more because of the younger demographics

755
00:51:42,340 –> 00:51:45,390
of customers like Gen Y and Gen Z using more

756
00:51:45,390 –> 00:51:49,980
apps and SMS and chat?” One of the things that

757
00:51:49,980 –> 00:51:53,990
I’ve been talking about is that, what COVID has done

758
00:51:53,990 –> 00:51:59,980
is accelerate a need that was already there. I think

759
00:52:01,020 –> 00:52:05,900
we weren’t, as an industry, providing the digital choices that

760
00:52:05,900 –> 00:52:10,170
consumers wanted. There was a gap between what consumers wanted

761
00:52:10,170 –> 00:52:13,730
and what we were delivering, just like when I talked

762
00:52:13,730 –> 00:52:17,590
about the retail apocalypse. There was a gap and so

763
00:52:17,640 –> 00:52:21,390
what COVID has done is highlight that gap, because to

764
00:52:21,790 –> 00:52:24,910
the point of the questioner, the Gen Zs and the

765
00:52:24,910 –> 00:52:28,430
Millennials were looking for these choices, we just weren’t delivering

766
00:52:28,430 –> 00:52:32,500
them. Now, everybody is looking for them, everybody’s a Gen

767
00:52:32,500 –> 00:52:37,710
Z. Even my 93 year old father- in- law has

768
00:52:37,710 –> 00:52:40,460
suddenly had to become a Gen Z, because the only

769
00:52:40,460 –> 00:52:42,770
to make his appointment for a vaccine was to do

770
00:52:42,770 –> 00:52:46,130
it online. So I think what it’s done is accelerate,

771
00:52:46,380 –> 00:52:50,030
and it’s really two trends coming together and reinforcing one

772
00:52:50,030 –> 00:52:57,950
another. Then as a follow up, this individual asks, ” Do

773
00:52:57,950 –> 00:53:01,840
you see CX as a separate function from CCaaS, or

774
00:53:01,840 –> 00:53:07,330
an integral part of the platform?” Interesting, I saw that

775
00:53:07,330 –> 00:53:10,340
question and I was thinking about it. CCaaS is a

776
00:53:10,340 –> 00:53:17,640
technology. It’s very specific, it’s something you buy. Customer experience,

777
00:53:17,790 –> 00:53:21,780
to me, is a strategy. It’s, ” What is our strategy

778
00:53:22,030 –> 00:53:27,330
to deliver to our customers an overall experience that keeps

779
00:53:27,330 –> 00:53:30,870
them with us?” So I see them as quite separate.

780
00:53:31,100 –> 00:53:34,770
The other thing is, for me, customer experience includes more

781
00:53:34,770 –> 00:53:40,840
technologies than just CCaaS, it includes customer relationship management, it

782
00:53:40,840 –> 00:53:45,990
includes workforce engagement management, so to me, CCaaS is a

783
00:53:45,990 –> 00:53:49,090
much broader term, but it’s also, to me, more of

784
00:53:49,090 –> 00:53:52,790
a, ” What is the company CCaaS strategy? Not who is

785
00:53:52,790 –> 00:53:56,750
their vendor.” Can I just add to that? Improving customer

786
00:53:56,750 –> 00:54:00,060
experience is a business outcome, I mean you could Google

787
00:54:00,820 –> 00:54:03,640
tons of different studies out there that show the impact

788
00:54:03,640 –> 00:54:07,760
to a company’s bottom line when you focus on improving

789
00:54:08,130 –> 00:54:11,280
customer experience. And to Sheila’s point, too, I totally agree

790
00:54:11,280 –> 00:54:16,120
to that, but CCaaS technology is part of that strategy

791
00:54:16,120 –> 00:54:23,530
to direct towards that outcome. Awesome. Thanks, guys. I’ll direct

792
00:54:23,530 –> 00:54:26,670
this question to you, Janelle, and, Sheila, you’re welcome to

793
00:54:26,990 –> 00:54:30,600
follow up. This individual is moving from an on- premise

794
00:54:31,870 –> 00:54:34,850
setup to a unified communication spot where blending CCaaS and

795
00:54:34,850 –> 00:54:38,890
UCaaS with a cloud based provider. If you have any

796
00:54:38,890 –> 00:54:43,100
recommendations, how would you suggest they choose, or what would

797
00:54:43,100 –> 00:54:48,030
you suggest they choose in that direction? It’s difficult for

798
00:54:48,030 –> 00:54:51,010
me to answer that with any wisdom when I don’t

799
00:54:51,010 –> 00:54:54,560
know your business requirements, so it really comes down to

800
00:54:54,610 –> 00:54:58,130
what are your business needs and business requirements and what

801
00:54:58,130 –> 00:55:01,760
you use cases are you looking to support, like with

802
00:55:01,760 –> 00:55:07,620
meetings, with video, with unified chat across the contact center

803
00:55:07,680 –> 00:55:10,890
presence, et cetera, et cetera. So know that you have

804
00:55:10,890 –> 00:55:14,650
options out there, like for instance with Genesys, we integrate

805
00:55:14,650 –> 00:55:18,400
with Zoom, we have native capabilities, we integrate with Microsoft

806
00:55:18,400 –> 00:55:22,290
Teams as I mentioned before with the Integral Care example.

807
00:55:22,290 –> 00:55:25,490
So really happy to partner with you and dig into

808
00:55:25,490 –> 00:55:29,180
your contact center requirements to really answer that with a

809
00:55:29,470 –> 00:55:34,300
more educated response to your business. That’s actually a good

810
00:55:34,780 –> 00:55:37,230
point, too, Janelle. There’s going to be a survey that pops up

811
00:55:37,230 –> 00:55:39,410
at the end of today’s presentation asking if you would

812
00:55:39,410 –> 00:55:44,230
like your local Genesys account representative to reach out. So

813
00:55:44,230 –> 00:55:46,780
if you want additional information, go ahead and mark yes

814
00:55:46,780 –> 00:55:48,540
to that question in the survey, and we’ll be sure

815
00:55:48,540 –> 00:55:50,750
to follow up with you with any additional information you’re

816
00:55:51,020 –> 00:55:57,530
interested in learning.- Let me follow up a little bit

817
00:55:57,530 –> 00:56:02,380
on the question, Josh, if I may. It’s interesting, one

818
00:56:02,380 –> 00:56:04,940
could look at UC and CC and say, ” I want

819
00:56:04,940 –> 00:56:09,270
one vendor and not two vendors,” but if you actually

820
00:56:09,270 –> 00:56:11,690
look at a vendor who says they have UC and

821
00:56:11,690 –> 00:56:15,540
CC, you may find that their CC is coming from

822
00:56:15,540 –> 00:56:18,860
a different company so it’s really not one solution, it’s

823
00:56:18,860 –> 00:56:22,010
two. Or you may find that a company that has

824
00:56:22,010 –> 00:56:29,260
two solutions has a two partners, like Genesys plus Zoom

825
00:56:29,260 –> 00:56:33,870
or some other context and a plus Teams. What looks

826
00:56:33,870 –> 00:56:38,090
like two separate solutions, really if you understand the technology

827
00:56:38,090 –> 00:56:41,440
behind how they’re integrated, it may be tighter than somebody

828
00:56:41,440 –> 00:56:45,090
that looks like one solution. So you really have to

829
00:56:45,090 –> 00:56:47,730
scratch the surface, or I think the advice I would

830
00:56:47,730 –> 00:56:51,470
have is, make sure you sort of understand the genesis

831
00:56:51,470 –> 00:56:54,820
of the technology in each case and how well they

832
00:56:54,820 –> 00:56:59,440
integrate, what does integration mean with that particular solution? Does

833
00:56:59,440 –> 00:57:03,410
it mean four- digit dialing from you to somebody who’s

834
00:57:03,410 –> 00:57:07,000
not in the contact center? Does it mean that something

835
00:57:07,000 –> 00:57:09,850
that you chat to somebody not in the contact center,

836
00:57:10,030 –> 00:57:12,980
can get captured in the contact center record? You want

837
00:57:12,980 –> 00:57:16,250
to ask those kinds of questions, it’s less about whether

838
00:57:16,250 –> 00:57:23,210
it’s one vendor, it’s how the applications work together. Awesome.

839
00:57:24,260 –> 00:57:27,160
So unfortunately that is all the time we have today.

840
00:57:27,160 –> 00:57:29,080
I know that there are a handful of questions that

841
00:57:29,080 –> 00:57:31,210
we did not get to today, so do not fret, we

842
00:57:31,210 –> 00:57:33,420
will respond to you via email within the next few

843
00:57:33,420 –> 00:57:36,150
business days. However, if you are looking for more of

844
00:57:36,150 –> 00:57:38,120
a prompt response, you can always feel free to reach

845
00:57:38,120 –> 00:57:41,400
out to us at onlineevents@ genesys. com, no caps or

846
00:57:41,400 –> 00:57:44,410
spaces, and we’ll get back to you as quickly and

847
00:57:44,410 –> 00:57:48,490
promptly as we can. So with that being said, to

848
00:57:48,490 –> 00:57:52,260
wrap today. First off, I know that you’re wanting additional

849
00:57:52,260 –> 00:57:55,080
information about today’s topic, so be sure check out that

850
00:57:55,080 –> 00:57:59,240
resource list. That’s going to have the 2021 Contact Center

851
00:57:59,240 –> 00:58:01,990
Buyer’s Guide bundle that will give you additional information on

852
00:58:02,040 –> 00:58:05,650
all of the topics that we discussed today. In addition

853
00:58:05,650 –> 00:58:07,660
to that, I mentioned a survey that’s going to show

854
00:58:07,660 –> 00:58:10,630
up at the end of today’s presentation. We encourage you

855
00:58:10,630 –> 00:58:12,670
to fill that survey out, it shouldn’t take you more

856
00:58:12,670 –> 00:58:14,840
than a couple of minutes, but we tailor all of

857
00:58:14,840 –> 00:58:17,790
these webinars and presentations to exactly what you want to

858
00:58:17,790 –> 00:58:21,040
hear and learn more about with respect to contact center technology.

859
00:58:21,290 –> 00:58:23,110
So go ahead and fill that out, and we’ll be

860
00:58:23,110 –> 00:58:26,900
sure to incorporate that feedback into the future Genesys presentations

861
00:58:26,900 –> 00:58:31,520
and webinars. And also, Janelle mentioned if you want to

862
00:58:31,520 –> 00:58:34,400
learn more about Company Nurse, there is the Take A

863
00:58:34,400 –> 00:58:36,730
Moment Podcast as well as the Tech Talks in Twenty

864
00:58:36,730 –> 00:58:39,190
Podcast, so I encourage you to check that out on

865
00:58:39,190 –> 00:58:42,090
basically any podcast application that you listen, or you can

866
00:58:42,090 –> 00:58:46,750
check us out on Genesys. com/ podcasts. So with all

867
00:58:46,750 –> 00:58:50,320
that information being said, on behalf and Sheila, Janelle and

868
00:58:50,320 –> 00:58:52,770
the entire Genesys team, I want to thank you again

869
00:58:52,770 –> 00:58:57,410
for joining today’s 2021 Contact Center Buyers Guide webinar. Until

870
00:58:57,410 –> 00:59:02,480
next time, have a good one, everyone. Thank you. Thank

871
00:59:02,480 –> 00:59:02,500
you.

Meet the Speakers

Sheila headshot

Sheila McGee Smith
Founder and Principal Analyst
McGee Smith Analytics

Janelle

Janelle Dieken
Senior Vice President of Content Marketing
Genesys