How Interactions’ AI Is Changing Brand-Consumer Relationships

Imagine seemingly endless rows of desks, with countless employees in black headsets staring at computer screens amid the perpetual aroma of coffee brewing. This is a snapshot of life inside a typical contact center. 

These brick-and-mortar operations still function as the heart of customer service for many of the nation’s largest organizations, employing thousands of individuals in some cases. Yet without the help of technology, they’re far from the most efficient way to deliver top-notch customer experiences. 

Just ask Interactions’ Senior Vice President of Customer Success Candy Digges. She knows firsthand that the bond between consumers and brands is crucial — and extremely fragile.  

“One single experience has the ability to make or break a relationship with a brand,” Digges said. 

That’s why Digges is excited about Interactions’ technology, which is designed to deliver exceptional customer experiences while alleviating common contact center pain points, including agent churn, high operational costs and risks. She said the company’s products allow organizations to deliver personalized, conversational customer experiences that enable agents to spend more time having fruitful conversations with customers with the help of automation. 

According to CTO Anoop Tripathi, it’s the company’s unique holistic approach to CX that sets the organization apart. “The quality of our solution doesn’t just come from looking at individual technologies like automatic speech recognition — although ours is unparalleled in the industry,” Tripathi said. “It’s really about everything working together. These technologies, along with our human-assisted understanding and expertise in design and AI, allow us to create optimized experiences for our clients.” 

In Tripathi’s mind, Interactions has undoubtedly made a major impact on the customer experience realm. And for him, this has been made possible by the company’s unique level of AI-powered innovation. 

The Next Level in AI

To satisfy digital-savvy consumers, modern businesses must communicate with customers through a variety of different channels, including voice, text, email and web portals. That’s why Tripathi said the team has built different models to accommodate every type of customer communication.

According to Senior Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development Chris Hughes, the company is focused on deepening its automation capabilities to optimize more channels in the future. And in doing so, he said the company also aims to help its customers leverage their development tools so they can begin to drive innovation on their own. 

While omnichannel experiences are far from a new concept, Digges said they’ve been poorly executed up until this point. That’s why Interactions changed the way communication channels are created and interwoven. 

“When you talk to a lot of these corporations, you find that there’s both digital and voice roadmaps often without overlap,” Digges said. “I look forward to the opportunity to use our expertise and technology to unify them and create one persona for a brand.”

Building brand voices may not seem like the role of a company like Interactions, but in fact, it’s integral to their mission. According to Hughes, the organization sees itself as an extension of their customers’ businesses, which means that when a company needs to communicate more effectively with consumers, it’s their job to make that happen.

For Digges, opening up greater communication channels doesn’t just solidify Interactions’ prominence in the AI sector. It also puts them in the role of business partner to the customers they serve. 

“We’re fundamentally changing the way these businesses conduct their day-to-day operations and optimizing some of that process,” Digges said. “It’s a great two-way street with learnings that benefit both sides.” 

Driving Forces Behind Future Transformation

Omnichannel experiences may be currently dominating the AI conversation, but that doesn’t mean things won’t change within the next few years. Tripathi said the field is constantly shifting, and for Interactions, that means keeping up to meet the demands of an ever-evolving industry. 

Tripathi noted that one of the most impactful changes to AI has been caused by the rise of cloud computing. “Imagine asking for a few terabytes and a couple of TPUs as a data scientist,” Tripathi said. “Before the cloud, it would have taken months to get a budget approved and hardware procured and installed, if they were lucky enough to get all the approvals. Now, you can get that all and much more for a fraction of the cost and click of a button. That’s how disruptive the cloud has been to AI.”

All in all, these changes have made it easier for Interactions to spark innovation in the field. “It’s much easier to work together from different locations, so that has opened up a lot of doors for us to work faster, more efficiently and collaboratively in the AI space,” Tripathi said. 

‘We’re Just Getting Started’

As the AI landscape continues to shift, Interactions is ready to evolve alongside the sector. That’s why Tripathi said the company is focused on developing more advanced dialogue and data-gathering techniques. In doing so, he said they will be able to tackle even tougher challenges in the world of customer communications. 

For Digges, the company’s plans to bolster their existing capabilities will play a major role in meeting future demand. She said it will give the company the chance to prove its dominance and unique worth to businesses. 

“There’s a lot of pressure both within the market and our existing customer base to say, ‘OK, you guys are a pioneer, so what’s next?’” Digges said. “What I get the most excited about is being able to take our technology, apply that to the real world and see it come to fruition.” 

Businesses come to us because they have hard issues they need to fix, and what we do is deliver them great solutions.”

As Interactions continues to strengthen its AI potential, Hughes said the team is focused on strengthening partnerships with other companies that offer tech and infrastructure expertise. According to him, forming alliances of this kind will only make it easier to “conquer the next frontier.” What this frontier will look like depends on the unique challenges that come their way.

“Businesses come to us because they have hard issues they need to fix, and what we do is deliver them great solutions,” Hughes said. “I think we’re just getting started.”