RingCentral has released RingCentral AI Receptionist (AIR), a new Agentic AI solution that can automatically pick up and address customer voice calls.

“The launch of RingCentral AI Receptionist marks our foray into agentic AI and the creation of a new category in AI-powered business call handling,”

Kira Makagon, President & Chief Operating Officer of RingCentral, said.

Using generative AI, this AIR can absorb customer questions, answer them with the correct business-related information, and even transfer callers to the right place, much like traditional full-time receptionists do.

Examining AIR

This release from RingCentral represents one step in employing agentic AI in a meaningful way in the UC sphere.

Unlike contact center intelligent virtual agents (IVAs), which can be complex and costly to deploy, RingCentral AIR is embedded into the RingCentral phone system.

Doing this enables any business to easily deploy this AI call automation solution to transform their business. This is especially important when considering who this solution is currently aimed at.

“What it’s built for are small to mid-size businesses to be able to start using AI to service their customers in a way that is simplistic,”

John Finch, Global VP Product Marketing at RingCentral, told UC Today.

“It resolves quick routine customer inquiries, it routes the calls to the right people, and it gives confirmations to appointments or even company URLs for additional information on inquiries.”

Although currently focused on smaller businesses, RingCentral says their RingCentral AIR is scalable for growth.

Key Capabilities Include:

  • Resolves routine customer inquiries: Uses generative AI with context from websites and documents to answer routine customer questions about the company’s services, business hours, and location.
  • Scalable for multiple locations or departments: Can be deployed for a single storefront or multiple business locations.
  • Intelligent call routing: Connects callers to the right person or department based on natural conversation.
  • SMS confirmations: Delivers important details like locations, addresses, and email addresses on request via SMS.
  • Call transcripts and analytics: Provides transcripts for every call to give insights into what customers are calling about. Helps businesses understand peak hours via analytics around call volumes and trends.
  • Customizable voice and language options: Supports English today; Spanish will launch by the end of Q1, with additional languages to follow.
  • Future-ready with appointment scheduling: AI-powered appointment scheduling coming soon.

Unlike IVRs, RingCentral decided to roll out agentic AI abilities focusing on voice for a number of reasons.

One is because voice remains a preferred way in which customers communicate. Another is because missing a call in a business context may mean missing that business altogether.

Unlike an email—which first shows the customer has the time and willingness to communicate in this medium—a missed call often leaves no idea as to what the call was regarding.

This means that not only do agents have to go back and call them, but chasing up these leads may fall by the wayside for more confirmed leads during busier times.

“Talking to customers, we realized they didn’t even know that they were missing calls,” Finch explained to UC Today.

“They would just know that they were getting some voicemails maybe during the day when they were on to other things. But those missed voicemails could have been opportunities forgotten about altogether when those could be sales.”

Therefore, having a port of call for customers to interact beyond voicemails is not only intended to alleviate agent call volume but also ensure those that are missed don’t equate to lost business.

The new RingCentral AIR is integrated directly into the RingCentral platform, meaning no IT setup is required to deploy, and users can customize things like opening messages and even AI voice easily via the dashboard.

Rollout of RingCentral AIR

RingCentral AIR has currently been available for early use by a few select customers.

From security to home tech to healthcare, all those use cases have seen reported improvements in their operations.

The security company reported instant resolution to over 50% of its inbound calls; the home tech service company claims it handled 60% of inbound calls; and the healthcare provider said they eliminated call wait times from 12 seconds to 0 seconds.

Currently, the RingCentral AIR is able to use AI for customer interactions, but this will soon expand to applying AI on the transcripts for further actionable insights.

“As we further develop it will be fully integrated with RingSense capability,” Finch said.

Finch mentioned that these features, along with others, “will be launching very soon as we get towards general availability.”

Such tipped features revealed to UC Today include integration with booking systems and CRMs so that the RingCentral AIR can turn conversations into scheduled calls or events in your UC’s system calendar.

The broader rollout is planned for Q2 2025. RingCentral AI Receptionist is currently available to select U.S. businesses during its controlled availability phase, with a one-month, 200-minute free trial included.



from UC Today https://ift.tt/fEkuaiC