The combination of UC and CC technology is not a new phenomenon, but the rate at which the two are coming together has accelerated dramatically over the last 18 months. 

As with so many trends in the world of IT, much of this has been driven by the pandemic. 

The immediate need to work remotely last year dispersed much of the contact center world, with agents having to interact with both customers and colleagues from home.  

AI-driven automation in the contact center came to the aid of many businesses, removing much of the complexity for remote agents and driving demand for next-generation CC technology. 

In many ways, this became the perfect use case for the benefits of a combined unified comms and contact center offering, and certainly helped pave the way for the recently launched partnership between Nextiva and Five9. 

The new offering will see Nextiva’s UCaaS technology bundled with Five9s CCaaS tech and sold as a unified solution – giving customers a single vendor to build a solution with. 

While the pandemic may have been an immediate factor behind the new deal, Nextiva Chief Revenue Officer, Eric Martorano, explained that demand for better customer experience has been a driving force since well before 2020. 

“Not only is customer experience paramount to a business, but it can also be a differentiating competitive advantage to compete in their markets” 

“To succeed and outperform their competitors, businesses are shifting the way they think about their contact centers – from being a siloed cost center, to positioning them as a strategic hub to deliver customer experiences that help drive business growth.”  

Having a combined UC and CC offering can arm a call center agent with the tools to deal with customer queries quickly – perhaps by accessing resources across a unified system or by communicating with a subject matter expert in a different department. Ultimately, the partnership is about equipping businesses to serve their customers in the best possible way.  

Organizations will go through Nextiva to purchase the combined offering, but Five9 will work closely with Nextiva to ensure systems are configured correctly from the onset, reducing implementation time and cost. Nextiva will manage support for both systems, giving customers a single port of call. 

“Our close partnership with Five9 allows us to strategically partner with our customers in helping them reimagine their customer experience and grow their business, while making it easier for them to manage their communication tech stack,” Martorano added. 

The AI-Powered Contact Centre 

The first iteration of this partnership came when Nextiva partnered with Inference Solutions in 2016, owing to the latter’s credentials in intelligent virtual agents (IVAs). This technology has since become an important part of Five9’s portfolio after it acquired Inference last year. 

IVAs can free up a huge amount of time for agents by handling simple tasks, leaving agents to deal with more complex issues. They also stop customers having to wait in a queue for something that can be resolved without human-to-human interaction.  

“We’ve recognized with Five9 that AI-driven automation and the digital workforce is taking off,” Martorano added. “This will drive further partnership with AI-enabled CCaaS and UCaaS between Five9 and Nextiva. 

The Future 

The solution is set to be unveiled by Nextiva this summer and will also be available via the firm’s channel partners. 

The first phase of the integration will enable seamless calls between the Nextiva UC platform and Five9’s CC platform, and this is just the start of the partnership. 

Five9 said that future releases of the integration will focus on the enhancing the agent experience, integrated call controls and making it easier to consult with experts across departments. 

Watch this space… 

 

 



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