Radish Blog

BEHOLD!!! The Matrix of Contact Centers

The recently launched addition of ChoiceView® to Amazon Connect’s cloud-based, self-service contact center platform represents an achievement and milestone of epic proportions for Radish Systems. ChoiceView as an AWS Lambda function being accessible in Amazon Connect’s contact flows means that current and prospective clients now have unprecedented access to “best in class” visual engagement technology. This game-changing value proposition includes an AI-driven methodology that allows contact centers to engage and enable smartphone and phone/browser callers with the 3-Dimensional ability to talk, touch, and SEE their way through web based menus, content, graphics, and videos, with in-context escalation to a smart virtual agent and/or a live agent when deemed appropriate by the enterprise.

The ability to add comprehensive AI-driven multimedia capability to an existing contact center infrastructure within minutes (in some cases) and within the context of a 14-day free trial will be hard for many enterprises to fathom initially. In customary fashion, Amazon (see Amazon Web Services, Alexa, PillPack, Haven, Whole Foods, Amazon Care, etc.) has quietly put themselves in a position to obliterate currently held paradigms about how to implement and enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of contact center engagements. Businesses can now move aggressively forward virtually risk-free with their AI-enabled, chatbot-driven, 3-D engagement aspirations, and implement use cases that include customer support activities, patient engagement, complex information sharing, coaching and a myriad of others.

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that this solution is extraordinarily financially and technically accessible to any enterprise, large or small. The following list of benefits is long, unimaginably tantalizing, and most importantly, real:

  • Ability to try before you buy
  • No upfront payments or long-term commitments
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing
  • No hardware or software to install
  • No infrastructure to manage
  • No expensive maintenance, upgrades, or downtime
  • No need for extensive provisioning and maintenance resources
  • AI-enabled speech analytics, recognition, and natural language processing
  • Self-service graphical interface that enables non-technical users to design contact flows, manage agents, and track performance metrics
  • Open platform that is easy to integrate with popular CRM solutions and custom solutions (or, of course, the AWS platform)
  • Amazon RDS to store, access, and lifecycle session recordings
  • Ready access to other Amazon Connect Integrations as well as AWS-validated popular services and solutions from AWS Partners, such as Radish Systems

With all of these seemingly implausible features and benefits in mind, it becomes easy to make the case that ChoiceView for Amazon Connect is representative of a ground-breaking, paradigm-shifting, risk-free way for enterprises to achieve the goals of decreasing contact center costs while improving customer experience, engagement, access, and satisfaction. With virtually no barriers to entry, Amazon Connect has quietly ushered in ready access to a brave new world for contact centers — that doesn’t even require bravery to enter.

So… about that “Matrix” reference in the title. Hyperbole, as it relates to Amazon Connect, is absolutely justified! For many contact centers, it will be just like The Matrix was for our hero Neo in the beginning — very difficult to comprehend and believe. The good news is that the cloud-based, self-service contact center solution is already living up to the hype. A number of forward-thinking, nimble enterprises like ChartSpan, Capital One, Intuit, Dow Jones, and axialHealthcare are already taking advantage of Amazon Connect solutions to save millions of dollars while also significantly improving C-Sat scores.

As we gear up for the ambitious ride that will be the fourth installment of The Matrix it should soon be comforting to know that we can now make sure Neo is completely satisfied and empowered with the service he receives from the Amazon Connect enabled Resistance contact center on Zion. When he calls to engage with Morpheus (his favorite chatbot) and uses ChoiceView to gain access to the Construct in order to upgrade his training, we can rest assured that we will gain control of the machines and foster in a new era of prosperity… just in time for the fifth installment.

Victor Morrison, Business Development Director

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Dr. Richard A. Davis - Leave a comment

ChoiceView is Now Built into Amazon Connect

ChoiceView® is the easiest and fastest way to create true visual IVRs and visual phonebots in Amazon Connect!

Radish’s patented ChoiceView technology is now available to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) development community. ChoiceView transforms ordinary calls to businesses and organizations into ‘voice with visual’ calls. With ChoiceView for Amazon Connect, businesses and Amazon developers can easily create and scale visual IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems and visual phonebots that leverage all the AI and Natural Language Processing power of Amazon Connect plus all the visual power of ChoiceView.

No separate server needs to be setup or configured. Just include ChoiceView directly in an Amazon Connect contact flow and you’re ready to go. Amazon estimates that developers already familiar with Amazon Connect can get up and running with ChoiceView in 5 minutes.

ChoiceView addresses many different use cases involving customer support, patients communicating with doctors, and any phone call involving complex information transfer. ChoiceView supports both intelligent virtual agents and live agents in contact centers. Learn more about ChoiceView for Amazon Connect.

Radish received a grant from AWS to develop ChoiceView as an AWS Lambda function accessible in Amazon Connect contact flows. With ChoiceView, the voice-only Amazon Connect service becomes a multimedia platform that allows callers with a smartphone — or virtually any phone and browser combination — to interact with visual live agents and visually enhanced virtual agents. Callers don’t have to install a mobile app, or preregister, or set up a profile in advance. See the full media release at PRWeb.

       

Posted on September 29, 2019 by Dr. Richard A. Davis - Leave a comment

To Bot or Not to Bot

I recently conducted a Radish seminar at SpeechTEK 2019 entitled, Marry Visuals With Bots for Twice the Customer Experience. It highlighted how Radish’s ChoiceView® solution allows bots, as well as live agents, to engage with customers using both voice and visuals. You can see what I’m talking about in this phonebot video.

It was an interesting experience for me, especially since I had been on the conversational AI sidelines for 18 months and felt like Rip Van Winkle waking up to see how close call centers are to actually “crossing the chasm.” Becoming more efficient has long been in play for contact centers. We’ve all collectively suffered through a mind-numbing barrage of bad call center technology. This year’s SpeechTEK conference confirmed that conversational AI is fast emerging, and when combined with visual engagement technology, can open up many new possibilities. Contact centers find themselves at the precipice of achieving the heretofore mutually exclusive goal of becoming more efficient and more effective at engaging consumers, and by no small order of magnitude.

As I networked, presented, and attended the various sessions, the affirmations were fast and furious that with ChoiceView, Radish has the perfect technology to complement this impending explosion. Whether it’s implemented directly in a contact center or built into another vendor’s technology platform, ChoiceView offers a significant increase in engagement power! ChoiceView is financially accessible, technically elegant (i.e., easy on your IT resources), and can seamlessly complement whatever existing or planned contact center infrastructure and/or features are in play.

The last point SpeechTEK drove home for me (as I was jolted awake from my long Van Winkle slumber) was the fact that the experts are predicting the death of mobile apps as we know them. It should be comforting to any organization that ChoiceView is well positioned to mitigate the need for a big fat, expensive, and often times ineffective separate mobile app strategy. ChoiceView can enable the best possible mobile web experience and do away with the challenges of building an app, getting it downloaded and then actually having it used on a regular basis. Importantly, with ChoiceView, first-time customers can engage with your contact center visually in the middle of a “voice only” conversation with very little effort needed on their part. In addition, being an Amazon Connect partner now means Radish Systems offers a virtually risk-free road-map for organizations to take their first meaningful steps toward conversational AI and a 3-dimensional experience facilitated by an intelligent and well-trained bot.

So thank you, SpeechTEK, for confirming that the question is no longer, “To Bot or not to Bot!” The question is how? And that a ChoiceView enhanced 3-D experience is readily available and on the best possible road map to get there. Whether your organization deploys a bot or a live agent or some combination of the two, whether it be a mobile app, web app, or website, ChoiceView can seamlessly add the powerful value of visual engagement to create a three dimensional experience.

Victor Morrison, Business Development Director

Posted on June 13, 2019 by Dr. Richard A. Davis - Leave a comment

From Candlestick Phones to Phonebots!

Most of us never used a candlestick phone, but nowdays use phonebots more than we know. So, what’s a phonebot, anyhow? It’s a software robot that can do many things. A typical phonebot responds to a caller’s voice and prompts, such as “Press 2 for Customer Service.

Phonebots are the voices of most IVRs (Interactive Voice Response) systems. It’s well known that most callers don’t like voice-only IVRs. Some are so frustrated that they demand a human voice instead of navigating endless voice menus. Some callers abandon companies with “bad” voice-only IVRs.

But Radish’s ChoiceView phonebots are smarter! ChoiceView uses AI (artificial intelligence) and integrates visual information for fast, smart, natural responses. ChoiceView Phonebots work on top of any IVR system installed in a contact center. They’re unique, especially because they’re ‘voice with visuals’ and overcome caller frustrations with“Now I see what you’re talking about!”  Learn more https://youtu.be/FCFGZLp7qOE

 

 

 

Posted on March 7, 2019 by idahalasz - Leave a comment

Try Visuals with Amazon Connect!

Radish seeks customers for a controlled introduction of ChoiceView on Amazon Connect. Please help us evaluate how adding visuals can improve ordinary phone communications! Studies show that calls are resolved 4x to 5x faster with visuals and people understand 6x better when both seeing and hearing information.

ChoiceView provides a very simple way to add multimedia capabilities to the voice-only Amazon Connect platform for IVRs, phonebots, and live agents — just include the ChoiceView lambda function in a contact flow. The resulting contact flow uses all of the AI, natural language processing and Lex capabilities inherent in Amazon Connect, plus provides visual menus, visual interactive forms, and visual responses along with the voice. Callers simply make a phone call as usual and see visuals in a browser. There’s no mobile app required, so it works with first-time callers. Since it’s an ordinary phone call, it’s totally compatible with the phone network and business phone systems. The result is an extremely powerful and cost-effective way for companies to better serve callers in many market segments.

NOTE: Customers participating in this controlled introduction will receive a substantial discount on the ChoiceView implementation and will be able to offer a state-of-the-art customer experience to their callers. Learn more and see ChoiceView in action.

Posted on February 22, 2019 by idahalasz - Leave a comment