Artificial Intelligence is one of the most talked about yet least understood technologies around right now.

Despite being in the works for years, and in popular culture even longer, most of us are still not sure of what to make of it.

Beyond the fun of creating images on DALL-E and toying around with ChatGPT, organizations are trying to figure out how to integrate it into their teams to improve efficiency and productivity.

Sure, it might be useful in helping to get that first draft of an email going. But what else can it do for us beyond writing out some generic texts? And how does it apply from a UCaaS POV and help us in the rest of our work?

Defining Artificial Intelligence

For clarity’s sake, it should be said that Artificial Intelligence is a general term for a wide range of technologies that leverage impressive computing power and data analytics to increase productivity and gain insights from across massive data sets.

This includes technologies like machine learning and deep learning with their subsets of neural networks like large language models. The most well-known version being OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

It should be said as well that AI tools are only as good as their data sets. This can be a problem because they can on occasion make things up like we saw on more than one occasion when lawyers were fined for submitting fake cases generated by ChatGPT.

They are also highly dependent on how good we are at asking the right questions. An AI tool can access all your company’s data. But it is still up to you to know what questions are relevant. Though that may change as it improves.

AI in UCaaS

So how does AI shift from a shiny new toy to something useful for work?

The short answer is that we are still trying to figure out how best to use it, but we are seeing some early uses in having AI joining our conference calls.

Speaking with CallTower’s Chief Revenue Officer William Rubio, he says that Cisco Webex and Zoom are already leveraging AI tools for useful features like summarizing calls and helping users to pick out what they think are the most valuable bits of information from a conversation.

These might be action items to follow up on after the call or even basic note-taking that allows the participants to focus on the call’s content basic note taking that allows the participants to focus on the content of the call.

Not to be left out, Microsoft is also a significant player in the AI space. Beyond their investment in OpenAI, the good folks up in Redwood have been hard at work on their own innovation that goes harder and wider than the competition.

The Differential: Harnessing the Power of Microsoft 365’s Ecosystem

For most organizations, Microsoft is the default. Their suite of services under the umbrella of Microsoft 365 is the standard for how work gets done. Tools like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, and Teams form the backbone of business.

Rubio tells UC Today that, “by adding a layer of AI in the form of Copilot on top of this work suite, Microsoft is able to connect all of your solutions together, automating interactions between them to supercharge productivity.”

Take for example you have a call on Teams.

What if Copilot could then take the summary of that call and create a presentation for you in PowerPoint? The ability to go across different tools, removing the busy work, opens a lot of opportunities.

How to use Copilot in a Call Center

Humans will always bring nuance and creativity to their work. But if there is one thing that computers are good at it is dealing with large sets of data very quickly.

So how does this apply for UCaaS use cases?

Rubio gives the example of a call center management team that is looking to analyze and optimize their operations.

“Copilot can look at all of my data to tell me how many calls my agents took, how many calls were resolved, and how many calls an agent missed,” he says.

“It can also give me wider picture insights like where my peak times are or where my customers are getting a bottleneck that I’m not doing the resolution. While we have access this data today, we’re still dependent on humans to review the data which can take significant time and does not enable us to take effective action. AI shortens the process, providing real-time analysis of data and recommending actions based on your data.”

Using these insights, Rubio says customers can take actions like determining if they need more staffing and can better prepare for seasonal changes.

Overcoming Security Challenges to Adopting AI Tools

Speaking with CallTower’s Rubio, he says that they are working with their customers to ensure that the rollout of Copilot is not just smooth and effective, but also secure.

Lock Down and Limit Access to Sensitive Resources

Make sure that you are taking proper precautions when it comes to what you allow Copilot to access for different people within your organization.

This can be a bit of a balancing act because the more resources that you give Copilot access to, the more it can draw data from or take action on, thereby giving you better services.

The problem can come when it comes to keeping different information confidential.

Take for example spreadsheets in SharePoint containing employee salaries. You would not want just anyone in the organization to be able to ask Copilot how much their coworkers or say folks on the board are getting paid.

So, even if an employee cannot make changes to the spreadsheet, there is information in it that we would rather not be able to query.

Regulated Industries May Be Left Out

If you are in highly regulated industries like financial or healthcare, check if and how you can use third-party services to hand your conversations and data.

Patient or customer data faces additional risks and limitations for how it can be accessed, stored, and managed under wide ranging regulations like HIPAA.

To our government friends, this is going to be a tricky one. The good news is that there is a pathway to rolling out Copilot for GCC High customers. However, it is likely to still be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Slow but Steady March to the AI Future of Work

Many organizations are taking their time assessing how they can take advantage of these innovative technologies and stay within their industries’ standards. Especially in the more regulated spaces.

But we can expect that they will find solutions and adjust to allow increased access to tools like Copilot, similarly to how they eventually opened up to using public cloud services like Microsoft Azure and AWS.

Figuring out the right way to integrate AI solutions like Copilot into your business is a much smoother process when you work with a partner who is already helping organizations navigate the implementation.

This means asking the right questions from all the stakeholders, finding the right mix of technologies with a “solutions over vendors” approach, and leveraging deep relationships with Microsoft to provide the critical layer of support to ensure that services run smoothly.

To learn more about how CallTower works with clients to achieve their productivity goals, schedule a consultation today with one of their experts.



from UC Today https://ift.tt/6YuS4dC