Avaya adds real-time speech analytics to contact centers

Avaya has updated its workforce optimization software for contact centers, adding real-time speech analytics and automated quality management tools. The vendor also released new data privacy features to help businesses comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The workforce optimization upgrades are Avaya's latest initiative to bring AI and automation to the contact center. In April, the vendor announced a partnership with the startup Afiniti for intelligent call routing.

All major contact center vendors have begun investing in workforce optimization, either through native software development or partnerships with other vendors, said Robin Gareiss, president of Nemertes Research, based in Mokena, Ill.

The upgrades Avaya highlighted this week should help contact center customers increase sales and boost customer satisfaction, but they are not revolutionary, Gareiss said. Instead, businesses can already get the same tools from legacy vendors such as Cisco and Genesys, as well as cloud startups such as Five9.

"Without these announcements, Avaya would fall behind," Gareiss said. "And given it's the platform for so many huge contact centers around the world, it's crucial for Avaya to continue to improve agent evaluation through speech analytics, as well as formal customer feedback and ratings."

Some startups in the contact center market have placed workforce optimization at the core of their offerings. The cloud vendor Sharpen Technologies Inc., for example, uses a customizable algorithm to rate agents and uses an AI platform to monitor and flag trends within the contact center.

"Workforce optimization has become a huge area of focus for customer engagement," Gareiss said. "It's really all about making the contact center agents more productive and efficient to provide continuously improving customer experience."