With almost all call centres looking to us AI to automate an increasing number of conversations with customers, what does the future of customer service look like? And what's the future of work going to look like for your staff? What can you do today to prepare for an AI-first future, both from a customer experience and staffing perspective?Lots of big questions will need answering in 2021, and to get you started, we're joined by Head of Vonage AI, Noam Fine, to answer those questions and more about the future of customer service, the future of customer experience and the future of work for CS agents and managers.LinksVonage AIConnect with Noam Fine on LinkedIn See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

VUX World

AI and the future of customer service with Noam Fine, Vonage AI

Dan joins us to share his insights on the most important recent developments in voice AI technology and how it's enabling business transformation, as well as some of the emerging trends we're likely to see unfold in 2021.Voice AI is disrupting all kinds of industries and providing opportunities for almost every and any business unit. None, perhaps, has the potential to prosper more than the contact centre.With the potential to automate front end conversations and assist live agents, conversational AI could be the underlying capability that enables organisations to both increase self-service and improve customer experience, while creating operational efficiencies and empowering staff.Dan Miller, Lead Analyst and Founder of Opus Research, has more than his fair share of experience both with contact centre technology and speech technology on the whole. For over 30 years, Dan's been working with and covering voice AI and conversational technologies with a focus on organisational transformation.Linksopusresearch.netFollow Dan on Twitter See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Voice AI in the contact centre: 2021 trends, with Dan Miller, Opus Research

One of the hot topics on every UX designer's lips is conversation design. How do you do it? Is it something I can do? And what skill sets do I currently have that put me in a good position?Stuart Silverstein, season UX and service designer, also has deep experience in designing conversational user interfaces, from messenger applications to voice bots and IVR assistants.Stuart joins us to walk through his learning journey with voice AI and discusses how UX designers can incorporate conversation design and VUX into their existing skillsets.We also chat about the differences and similarities between traditional UX design and VUX design, as well as the value of voice, and the potential for voice AI to revolutionise the contact centre.SPONSORED BY THE CONVERSATION DESIGN INSTITUTECompanies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people to help them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!Conversation Design Institute leads in training and certification for Conversation Designers, Conversational Copywriters, and AI Trainers. Our human-centric workflow has proven itself around the world. Our certificates ensure you create winning conversational experiences.As advocates for the Conversation Design profession, we continue to work closely with tech partners, agencies and other key players in the industry. With this support, Conversation Design Institute is well on its way to becoming the number one platform in conversation design.Save 25% with code CDI972VUX25OFFFIND OUT MORELinksstuartsilverstein.com Stuart Silverstein on Medium Stuart on LinkedIn Stuart on Facebook See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Incorporating VUI into your UX repertoire with Stuart Silverstein

Voice commerce: the state of playWe've been speaking about the potential of voice first devices to change shopping behaviour and drive sales and engagement for a while. I wrote about it in the Harvard Business Review over a year ago. Yet, we're not seeing a huge amount of use cases executed. So are people actually using their voice assistants to shop? And, if so, what can brands do about it?Vixen Labs commissioned a unique, UK-centric consumer research report to understand the current state of play when it comes to voice shopping. What assistants are people using? What are the using them for? How are their shopping habits changing and what role is voice playing? And, crucially, what does it mean for brands and those with something to sell? Co-founder and CEO, James Poulter, returns to the podcast to share all.SPONSORED BY THE CONVERSATION DESIGN INSTITUTECompanies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people to help them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!Conversation Design Institute leads in training and certification for Conversation Designers, Conversational Copywriters, and AI Trainers. Our human-centric workflow has proven itself around the world. Our certificates ensure you create winning conversational experiences.As advocates for the Conversation Design profession, we continue to work closely with tech partners, agencies and other key players in the industry. With this support, Conversation Design Institute is well on its way to becoming the number one platform in conversation design.Save 25% with code CDI972VUX25OFFFIND OUT MORELinksDownload the Vixen Labs Voice Commerce ReportConnect with James on LinkedInFollow Vixen Labs on Twitter See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Voice commerce: The current state of play with James Poulter

As much as Amazon and Google dominate the voice AI headlines, one size doesn't always fit all. There's a trend within the voice industry of brands creating their own voice assistants. The BBC have created Beeb, Mercedes have My Mercedes, Capital One; Eno and plenty of others are following.And even those who aren't creating their own high-level digital assistant to serve as the AI front-end to the companies products and services, many are wanting narrow implementations of voice AI across apps, IVR, the web and other channels where Alexa and Google .While you can use Amazon Lex and Google DialogFlow for these instances, some companies don't want their data to be held with those companies. Some want more control or even need more control over the language model.This is where Voxta plays: enabling the capability for brands to implement their own assistants. Co-Founders Kavita Reddi and Sirish Reddi join us to share how they do it.We chat about the approach to creating custom voice assistants, the value of Voxta, the differences between voice AI in India and Europe and plenty more.SPONSORED BY THE CONVERSATION DESIGN INSTITUTECompanies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people to help them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!Conversation Design Institute leads in training and certification for Conversation Designers, Conversational Copywriters, and AI Trainers. Our human-centric workflow has proven itself around the world. Our certificates ensure you create winning conversational experiences.As advocates for the Conversation Design profession, we continue to work closely with tech partners, agencies and other key players in the industry. With this support, Conversation Design Institute is well on its way to becoming the number one platform in conversation design.Save 25% with code CDI972VUX25OFFFIND OUT MORELinksVoxta.comVoxta on TwitterConnect with Kavita on LinkedIn See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Creating independent voice assistants with Kavita Reddi and Sirish Reddi

Hannes Heikinheimo is the Co-Founder and CTO of Speechly, a voice AI company that specialises in adding voice capabilities to software products, and he joins us to discuss the benefits and steps you need to follow to do this.Hannes has deep experience in voice technologies, working with the Helsinki University of Technology, Nokia, Rovio and Apple, launching the Finnish Siri.We chat to Hannes about the Speechly technology, the drawbacks of traditional speech to text, the difficultly of language modelling the Finnish language, the advantage of voice-enalbed software, broader voice industry trends and how to add voice to your app.Companies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people to help them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!Conversation Design Institute leads in training and certification for Conversation Designers, Conversational Copywriters, and AI Trainers. Our human-centric workflow has proven itself around the world. Our certificates ensure you create winning conversational experiences.As advocates for the Conversation Design profession, we continue to work closely with tech partners, agencies and other key players in the industry. With this support, Conversation Design Institute is well on its way to becoming the number one platform in conversation design.Save 25% with code CDI972VUX25OFFFIND OUT MORELinksSpeechlyConnect with Hannes See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Adding voice to screens with Hannes Heikinheimo

SPONSORED BY THE CONVERSATION DESIGN INSTITUTEBecome a certified conversation designer and save 25% with code CDI972VUX25OFFFIND OUT MOREVOICE AI DISTUPTIONVoice AI is disrupting industries and providing new opportunities to innovate for those companies paying attention.Voice AI, like most technology innovations is an enabler. It enables businesses to explore new markets, unlock new value and, in some cases, reinvent themselves.But technological capability isn't enough to grease the wheels of innovation. You need to find a place within the market that adds value, and have the tools and skills to take advantage.One of the most exciting companies that offers those tools and skills to unlock voice AI innovation is SoundHound.SoundHound is helping organisations reimagine their services and create differentiation and value for brands and, in some cases, where you'd least expect it.In this episode of VUX World Live, we're joined by SoundHound VP, Product Marketing, Mike Zagorsek, to find out how SoundHound are enabling brands to disrupt using voice AI.From automotive, to finance to hospitality and beyond, the future is being played out today.Join us to be inspired about the potential for voice AI-enabled disruption and get some pointers on how you can approach the same initiatives with the same success.LinksHoundify.comMeet HoundSoundHoundSoundHound IncThe SoundHound Speech to Meaning blogMichael Zagorsek on LinkedInFollow Mike on TwitterSoundHound on Twitter See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How voice AI is disrupting industries with Mike Zagorsek

We're joined by David Clark (BT) and Tim Atkinson (Google) to discuss the future of conversational commerce: RCS Messaging.SPONSORED BY THE CONVERSATION DESIGN INSTITUTECompanies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people to help them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!Conversation Design Institute leads in training and certification for Conversation Designers, Conversational Copywriters, and AI Trainers. Our human-centric workflow has proven itself around the world. Our certificates ensure you create winning conversational experiences.As advocates for the Conversation Design profession, we continue to work closely with tech partners, agencies and other key players in the industry. With this support, Conversation Design Institute is well on its way to becoming the number one platform in conversation design.FIND OUT MORELearn what RCS messaging is, and why it's set to enable the next level of two-way, automated B2C communication.Use it to scale your customer service, generate leads, fulfil self service transactions and generate revenue.In this episode of VUX World Live, we're going to dive into the ins and outs of RCS messaging: what it is, where it came from, why it's important, who can use it and how you can implement automated, authenticated, trusted conversational agents today.Already being used by millions of BT customers, the messaging market awaits. And, with over 90% open rates within the first 5 minutes of a message being sent, what's not to love?Here, we dive deep into what all of this means for the future of business communication. LinksRBM developer site: build RBM campaigns and agentsRegister to the RBM developer event 4th November 2020Businesses wanting to use RCS as part of a multichannel strategy can contact BT See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The future of voice commerce with David Clark and Tim Atkinson

In this episode, we're joined by Constant Companion CEO, Mark Gray, to discuss the opportunities and need for creating voice-first services for older adults.Constant Companion are providing voice OS access to care homes, retirement centres and individuals across the US, with demand for its services increasing exponentially this year. For a small monthly fee, your gran, grandad, parent or friend, can have an Alexa-enabled device installed and set up in their home that runs on top of the Constant Companion OS.Make calls, automate tasks, stay connected, be entertained, all safely and securely behind military-grade security. What else would you expect from Mark Gray, career-long cyber security expert.Mark join us this week to share the opportunities that exist in providing accessible, voice-based services to older adults. With an ageing population of folks who don't think of themselves as 'old', and that hold almost 80% of America's disposable income, what can you create for these voice tech-adopting, connection craving early adopters?LinksConstant CompanionMark Gray on LinkedIN See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alexa for caregiving with Mark Gray

Algolia uses Open AI to up the conversational AI search gameAlgolia announced a suite of AI products that help make the search experience more natural and simpler, as well as adding immense power to chat bots and voice bots.In this episode, we run through the new updates and discuss their importance and usefulness for the voice industry.We discuss:Algolia Understand: The new Natural Language Understanding API from Algolia.The new API from Algolia that offers Alexa-like natural language understanding. Understand your users’ intents, increase conversion - in search experiences, or anywhere else.Algolia Answers: The best technologies from Algolia and OpenAI to answer the most difficult natural language questions.Algolia Answers finds not just the document, but the exact answer that best responds to the searcher’s question. Q&A adds real-world semantic knowledge to tunable textual relevance to find answers deep within unstructured content.Algolia Dynamic Synonym Suggestions: Find the best content on every search.Let AI learn from how your users rewrite their queries to suggest synonyms, so next time they don’t have to rewrite.LinksFind out more See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Rundown: What's Algolia upto?

What happens when you serve audio adverts to smart speaker listeners and ask them to make a charitable donation right there and then on their smart speaker, using their voice? Say It Now CEO, Charlie Cadbury, joins us to share the answer.Amazon forecast voice commerce to be a $3.2billion market by 2022. That's not far away. And, during lockdown, in the UK, voice shopping rose from 22% up to 33% of smart speaker owners.I'll say that again: 33% of smart speaker owners in the UK say they have used their smart speaker for shopping this summer.Say It Now were one of the few lucky companies to be awarded Innovate UK funding to use technology to provide solutions to some of the core challenges brought about by Covid-19.One of those challenges is that charities across the country, organisations that survive on the kind donations of the public, took a huge hit. Donations are plummeting and some of the most vulnerable people in the country are at risk of missing out on vital support because charities are struggling to keep the lights on.In collaboration with DAX and a host of charities, Say It Now were awarded the funding to do the following: run adverts on smart speakers to raise awareness of the need for donations, and offer users a way of donating via their smart speaker.The campaign launched a couple of weeks ago and the data is starting to roll in. Is it working? Can voice advertising increase charitable donations? And what does that mean for the potential of voice commerce?Join us on VUX World Live, with Charlie Cadbury, to find out.LinksSay It Now websiteCharlie Cadbury on LinkedIn See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Voice advertising effects on charity donations with Charlie Cadbury

Learn how to design chatbots the Salesforce way. We're joined by Greg Bennett, Conversation Design Principal, Salesforce, to discuss how Salesforce approach designing conversations for chatbots for their clients.With 70% of people claiming they wouldn't use a chatbot again after a single bad experience, it's more important than ever to create conversations that build trust and deliver what user's need.So how does Salesforce do that? How do you build trust through dialogue design? And how do you make sure that your chatbot can deliver on the core things your users need? Let's find out.We'll also dive into the Einstein Bot Builder and find out what kind of use cases Salesforce clients are exploring and what kind of value they're finding from leveraging the combination of conversational AI and CRM technologies.Whether you're a conversation designer looking to keep abreast of the latest methodologies or a marketer/strategist looking to find value in conversational AI, this episode of VUX World will dive deep to help you achieve just that.LinksJoin Greg on LinkedInEmail GregGreg's websiteGreg on MediumBooksTxting, the gr8 deb8The stuff of thought That’s not what I meantHow we talk See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Conversation design best practice with Salesforce's Greg Bennett

After covering the top new Alexa features for marketers and the top features for developers, we were getting a lot of questions from the community about the new Alexa features announced during Alexa Live 2020. So, what better way to dive deep into them than by sitting down with someone who had a hand in creating a great deal of them.Paul Cutsinger is known within the voice community for being one of the first Alexa developer evangelists and teaching people all over the world how to build skills. Now, he's moved into more of a product role where he brings the next most needed features to the platform.In this live podcast episode, we chatted to Paul about his role and dove deep into the ins and outs of some of the best and newest Alexa features for designers, developers and marketers, as well as fielded questions from the audience on skill building best practice.LinksAmazon Alexa Skills KitAlexa Skills Challenge: Alexa ConversationsFollow Paul on LinkedIn and Twitter See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Amazon's Paul Cutsinger tells us what's new

Ron Jaworski, CEO Trinity Audio, joins us to share how to satisfy the user, the publisher and the advertiser with your audio strategy.The Holy Trinity of your audio strategyTrinity Audio's philosophy is to satisfy users, publishers and advertisers in an attempt to provide value to all three with audio. Trinity Audio's technology turns any webpage into audio using text to speech and allows publishers to then distribute that on their websites, as well as through any other audio channel, such as Spotify, podcast players, Flash Briefings, via an RSS feed. With ads built-in, publishers can repurpose existing content, distribute it in a variety of channels to reach more users, whilst generating incremental revenue at the same time. Your content strategy should have a Holy Trinity also: written, video and audio. Most publishers have the first two covered, but have been slow to start their audio revolution. In this episode, Ron Jaworski, CEO of Trinity Audio joins us to share how you can boost your audio strategy and get started in the right way. We discuss the current capability of Trinity, the future of real time audio production with AI for folly and SFX, and the value of bringing audio to your users. A shocking amount of people on the planet can't read of write, but they can listen. Many live in countries where the native tongue is a second language and tradition written comms doesn't land half as well as audio can. Through utilising an effective audio strategy, not only are you making your content available in more mediums to reach more users, you're also making your content available to those who would otherwise be excluded. Learn how to make your content available to those that need it, how to distribute your existing content into more channels and how to earn incremental revenue while you do it in this episode of VUX World Live.LinksTrinity AudioTrinity Audio on LinkedINTwitterYouTube See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Your audio strategy's Holy Trinity with Ron Jaworski

Einav Itamar is the founder and CEO of Voca.ai, a technology company specialising in IVR automation using conversational AI. He joins Dustin and Kane to chat about how to create human-like conversations for IVR bots, the impact of coronavirus on call centre demand and how organisations are approaching automating incoming call centre calls with AI.Need help with call centre automation? Book a free 20 minute consultation.Designing human-like voice bots for IVROne thing is for sure: Covid-19 hit call centres hard.Some saw the frailty of legacy systems and infrastructure that require you to be fixed at a desk. They had to close completely, unable to work remotely.Some could enable operatives to work from home, but they were snowed under with a barrage of calls. For some, it was well in excess of double call volumes.A few realised what was happening and acted. They implemented (or increased their usage of) conversational AI.Find out how they did, and how you can create human-like, automated conversations that allow you to increase self-service and scale your demand management with Einav Eitamar, CEO, Voca.ai.LinksSubscribe to This Week In Voice VIPVisit Voca.ai See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Designing human-like voice bots for IVR with Einav Itamar

Learn how to implement voice first strategy and create world-class voice experiences with VUX World. Every week, we speak to industry thought leaders and practitioners on the three core pillars of voice: strategy, design and development. We share the deep details of how they do what they do, so that you can do what you do, better.

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