PolyAI and Twilio have teamed up to integrate PolyAI's conversational assistant with Twilio's Flex and Programmable Voice, Twilio's contact center platform. The collaboration follows PolyAI's successful Series B funding round of $40 million, in which Twilio Ventures participated.
Integrating PolyAI with Twilio Flex and Programmable Voice solutions creates a feature that enables customers to leverage conversational assistants to solve their inquiries over the phone. This integration also allows transferring calls back to contact center agents and sharing important information about the interaction to enable personalization and improve business intelligence.
"PolyAI's unique delivery model for conversational assistants now allows Twilio Flex customers to access PolyAI's proprietary technology along with our expertise in speech recognition, conversational design, machine learning and dialogue design. This allows them to deploy solutions that elevate the typical call center workflow into a branded conversational experience," said Michael Chen, Head of Partnerships, PolyAI.
Even though there are many self-service options for customers, a study by Gartner found that only 9% of inquiries are fully resolved using digital self-service channels. In fact, even when customers can easily find answers online, 71% of them still prefer to make phone calls to get their queries resolved.
Twilio customers can now easily access the PolyAI integration through a Marketplace Stream Connector within the Twilio console, allowing them to manage their connections to PolyAI and other services.
"Conversational agents are a crucial capability that allows businesses to innovate and transform IVR systems into the customer-centric experiences that customers demand. PolyAI integration with Twilio Flex and Twilio Programmable Voice makes it easier for every business to personalize customer engagements and leave impressions that turn into repeat business," said Andy O'Dower, Head of Product, Twilio.
With the Studio Widget, Twilio customers can easily transfer incoming calls to PolyAI's conversational assistant without the need for coding, as well as connect relevant metrics and analytics. In addition, Live Agent Handoffs to the contact center can be easily managed through the widget.
Meanwhile, Twilio Segment has recently released its fourth annual Customer Data Platform Report, showing that customer data platforms (CDPs) have become important for companies as they deal with more customer data than ever before.
