Q&A with Genesys: on the New Features, Capabilities, and the Rapid Growth of Genesys PureCloud

In today’s digital era, businesses communicate with customers across a lot of different channels – phone, text, web chat, social media, and email – just to name a few. This results in tons of data that helps companies analyze customer history and behavior to deliver highly responsive, predictive, and the kind of hyper-personalized experience customers demand.

For knowledge-centric companies, the best way to process these datasets in real-time is through the cloud. That is why so many businesses are moving to cloud contact center solutions. But managing customer interactions across sessions, and integrating different communication channels such as voice, messaging, email, etc., takes great effort and serious technical chops.

Fortunately, Genesys, the leading contact center solutions provider, delivers the right solution that leverages the true power of the cloud: Genesys PureCloud. As the fastest growing Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, Genesys PureCloud helps contact centers and businesses achieve better employee engagement and create greater customer experiences.

VoipReview spoke with Olivier Jouve, the Executive Vice President of PureCloud at Genesys, to discuss the new features and capabilities of Genesys PureCloud. Jouve also shares some insights and predictions about trends shaping up the future of cloud computing space as well as Genesys’ future roadmap.

Q: How has 2018 been for Genesys? What milestones have you achieved this year, and can you share some of your plans for 2019?

A: It has been an amazing year! Genesys counts more than half of the most valuable global brands among its customers, with hundreds of leading businesses from across all market segments and geographies adopting Genesys in the last year.

In the first three quarters of 2018 alone, Genesys signed deals with more than 500 customers for our PureCloud solution and boosted its PureCloud revenue nearly 130% compared with the same period last year. This makes PureCloud one of the fastest-growing Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms on the market today.

In the fall, we introduced the industry's first forecasting and scheduling service for workforce management powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Now businesses can use AI to predict the best possible staffing schedules with unprecedented speed and accuracy, saving time and money in the process. This capability is available through Genesys Automated Forecasting and Scheduling, the hallmark of our Winter Innovations product release aimed at empowering employees with solutions to work smarter through AI and automation.

Earlier in the year, we debuted Genesys Predictive Routing powered by new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, which uses historical performance data and matches customer and employee attributes to predict which contact center resource is the most likely to achieve targeted business goals. The powerful routing engine enables organizations to deliver the sales, marketing and service outcomes they want — such as higher customer satisfaction, increased employee efficiency, decreased costs, better collections and revenue, reduced handle times, and improved first contact resolution (FCR).

We’re also excited at the artificial intelligence (AI) driven collaboration with Google Cloud demonstrated with a global online retailer at the Google Cloud Next 2018 conference. This integration of Genesys with the Google Cloud Contact Center AI solution drives efficiency and improves customer experiences across marketing, sales and service.

Q: In November, you launched some new features of Genesys PureCloud. Can you tell us more about your platform’s new features and capabilities?

A: Currently, PureCloud manages an average of more than 3 million conversations per day and 4 billion API calls a month for businesses around the world, across every industry. New features and capabilities are released to the PureCloud platform every week.

A few highlights of features and capabilities include:

• Analytics. New filter, save and export capabilities provide customers with virtually limitless ways to view, filter and refine data.
• Digital. Support offered for SMS text interactions, Facebook Messenger, LINE, and Twitter.
• Workforce Management. The first-ever AI-powered automated forecasting and scheduling service for contact centers generate results with proven accuracy of 95%-97%.
• Embeddable Framework. Using this simple plug-and-play framework, now the PureCloud user interface can be embedded into third-party applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
• Premium Client Applications for the PureCloud platform. More than 60 PureCloud integrations are available, and over half of PureCloud customers are using one or more. Now customers can also access a free trial of third-party Premium Client Applications directly through the Genesys AppFoundry, allowing customers to go from installation to set-up in less than five minutes.

Q: In regards to the new features and capabilities of Genesys PureCloud, what has been the feedback from your consumers so far?

A: Every day we hear from customers how much they value the flexibility, scalability, and simple deployment of PureCloud, which enables them to quickly ramp-up and connect with consumers on their terms via phone, web chat, email, and text.

Smaller, fast-growing organizations with limited resources love PureCloud because of its simplicity and cost-effectiveness. Large, global enterprises applaud it for its infinite scalability and the flexibility of its public API. And no matter the size – everyone agrees – it just gets the job done.

Q: BookIt.com, Butterball, Company Nurse, and Performance Health Technology are popular brands in North America that recently made the move to PureCloud. What is your message to businesses that have yet to consider moving to the cloud and using your cloud-based customer experience solution?

A: The reality is that not every cloud solution offers the full benefits of the cloud. With its modern microservices-based architecture, PureCloud is a true cloud solution. PureCloud is flexible and adaptable, making it a great fit for a wide range of companies – from small and midsize up to larger contact centers that need 300 or more seats.

Genesys PureCloud is the first platform purpose-built to address emerging digital paradigms and scale to quickly meet the customer experience and interaction demands of the future. We do it by leveraging microservices architecture to rapidly build and/or extend next-generation software that supplies our customers with trending features delivered to the market faster than any of our competitors. This drives efficiency in the contact center by enhancing customer experiences across multiple channels of communication, enabling predictive analytics to streamline interactions, and creating ever-more personalized experiences for users.

Additionally, when businesses migrate from an on-premises solution to PureCloud, they can save major cash – as much as $2 million over three years when you factor in costs to scale the legacy solution. And, reduced maintenance, labor and IT support costs can mean major savings.

Q: Genesys PureCloud is one of the fastest growing Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms on the market with a proven return on investment (ROI) approximately amounting to 600%. What does this mean for the company?

A: The demand we’ve experienced for PureCloud validates our investment strategy in the cloud – specifically, that our modern microservices-based architecture is the way to go. It enables unmatched feature velocity and resiliency. Not to mention that in a just a couple years, it has positioned PureCloud ahead of competitors that have been in that market for decades. PureCloud really is setting a new standard. We’ve never seen any other product in our industry result in a higher ROI than PureCloud has proven to deliver in just three years.

Q: What are your predictions for the cloud computing space in 2019? What emerging trends or technologies are you most excited about and how is Genesys meeting these?

A: We will see more companies move to cloud-based contact center solutions in 2019. The reasons to do so are compelling. The cloud offers infinite scalability, enables businesses to avoid the high upfront investment typical of on-premises deployments, and provides for the rapid adoption of new innovations like artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and more.

In addition, the cloud enables businesses to analyze and process the copious amounts of data resulting from omnichannel customer interactions across voice and digital channels. More companies will move toward a cloud solution that enables them to efficiently deploy and use AI to help them process and identify actionable insights from consumer data so they can deliver the fast, contextual service consumers expect today while producing targeted business outcomes.

Q: What does the future hold for Genesys? Are there any new product offerings you’re brewing up?

A: For Genesys, 2019 is all about doubling down on AI. While we have already delivered multiple AI-infused applications and helped our customers achieve value from them, we will continue to implement the intelligent technology throughout our entire customer experience suite. That could include even more advanced AI-powered orchestration, automation, and self-service capabilities. In addition, we’re likely to continue to see a big push on voice channels, which have gotten a bit of a facelift with voice assistants and smart speakers.

About Genesys

Established in 1990, Genesys is the global leader in omnichannel customer experience and contact center solutions, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area and with major U.S. offices in Indianapolis and the Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle. With 5,000 employees and 1,000 partners, Genesys supports 11,000 customers in over 100 countries and currently works with more than half of the top 100 global brands. The Genesys Customer Experience Platform portfolio includes PureEngage, PureConnect, and PureCloud.