SAN RAMON: Five9 Inc. announced the execution of a definitive agreement to acquire Inference Solutions, the most widely deployed Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) platform.
“Intelligent and personalized self-service has become the preferred approach to service for customers,” said Donna Fluss, President, DMG Consulting, LLC.
“IVAs, which are AI-enabled omni-channel self-service solutions, are going to play a major role in the future of customer service as they provide an outstanding service experience, while automating activities that previously required the attention of live agents. The acquisition of Inference by Five9 gives them a leading IVA solution, greatly expanding their self-service offerings.”
As a result of the global pandemic, customers are engaging with brands through contact centers more than ever.
Typically, customers who call into a contact center must first get through frustrating touch tone menu trees, or deal with inefficient and limited speech recognition, leaving them frustrated by the time they talk to a live agent. Consequently, to deliver a better self-service experience and relieve stress on agents, companies are increasingly looking to Intelligent Virtual Agents.
IVAs utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to communicate like humans, recognizing speech and text, understanding intent, deciphering different languages, and responding in a way that mimics human conversations.
IVAs are rapidly becoming a requirement of the modern contact center and represent a major evolution from touch-tone or voice activated IVRs, which depend upon structured, fixed grammar interactions. By contrast, IVAs are conversational, more accurate and user-friendly. IVAs are being viewed as effective ‘digital workers’ for businesses, resulting in significant savings through increased call deflection rates, better-informed agents, or both.
“We believe adding Inference to the Five9 portfolio accelerates our leadership position in AI while also providing customers with a market leading IVA at a time when customers need efficient real-time assistance,” said Rowan Trollope, CEO, Five9.
“Customer engagement is now more paramount than ever. Inference is a proven leader with a best in class IVA solution. We are excited to build upon our successful partnership with this acquisition.”
In addition to its market leading solution, the acquisition of Inference adds to the company’s global footprint with operations in Australia and expands marquee global service provider relationships, such as Evolve IT in Europe, Telstra in APAC, and AT&T in North America.
The Inference platform allows organizations of any size to benefit from the latest advances in speech-enabled Intelligent Virtual Agent technology. Previously, such technologies were only available to large organizations with significant budgets and highly skilled in-house development teams. Inference essentially democratizes these technologies and dramatically expands the addressable market.
“Intelligent Virtual Agents enable a quicker, more efficient, self-service experience,” said Callan Schebella, CEO and Founder, Inference Solutions. “To meet today’s heightened customer expectations, we need to continue to innovate with disruptive technology. Our team at Inference is proud to join Five9, a recognized industry leader, and we look forward to shaping the future of customer service.”
Five9 is an industry-leading provider of cloud contact center solutions, bringing the power of cloud innovation to more than 2,000 customers worldwide and facilitating more than six billion call minutes annually.
The Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center provides digital engagement, analytics, workflow automation, workforce optimization, and practical AI to create more human customer experiences, to engage and empower agents, and deliver tangible business results. Designed to be reliable, secure, compliant, and scalable, the Five9 platform helps contact centers increase productivity, be agile, boost revenue, and create customer trust and loyalty.
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