• Enhancing SFDC case creation experience: opening cases in new tabs

Auto-case creation in Salesforce now opens all new cases in a separate tab, regardless of contact status (known or unknown). Previously, cases for known contacts opened in edit mode within the current tab and closed upon saving or closing.

• Flow Designer canvas enhancements for streamlined development

The Webex Contact Center Flow Designer now features a suite of Canvas Enhancements designed to supercharge the productivity of flow developers and administrators.

• With the new Undo/Redo capability, flow developers can effortlessly backtrack or reapply changes, ensuring a smooth and error-free flow creation process.

• The Auto Arrange feature instantly organises your canvas, promoting clarity and maintainability of complex flows.

• The ability to Copy/Paste across different flows or subflows simplifies refactoring, promotes reusability, and fast-tracks subflow creation.

• The newly available keyboard shortcuts make it easy to navigate between actions seamlessly, significantly improving the developer experience and bringing a more intuitive design experience that allows users to focus on innovation rather than configuration.

These enhancements not only save valuable time but also align with our commitment to providing a user-friendly and efficient interface for the contact center ecosystem.

Click here for more details.

• Progressive 1:1 Popover Enhancement

This feature allows an organisation to pass customer data to the Desktop when the Dialing rate is set to 1.0 and the mode is progressive only. This allows the reserved agent to see in the configured flow variables showing customer data being dialed on their behalf, so they can have additional time to prepare for the call prior to connecting.

For more information, see Configure Voice Outbound Campaign Modes in Webex Contact Center.

• Agent initiated outbound SMS and Email support

Cisco has announced that supervisors with agent role permission can now initiate an outbound SMS or Email Task from the Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop. They can initiate an outbound task regardless of their current status, whether on a voice call, engaged in a digital interaction, or idle with no tasks assigned. This new feature allows supervisors to send updates to customers or external partners outside of the regular interactions on demand, and it will be available to all supervisors with access to digital channels powered by Webex Connect. However, the ability to start these outbound tasks will depend on the thresholds configured in the multi-media profile policy mapped to the supervisor.

• Retain email addresses in the To field

Agents can now add multiple email addresses in the To field when replying to all in a conversation. Additionally, agents can remove any email address from the list except the primary one.

• Introducing cookies consent for Livechat widget

Cisco has announced that businesses can ensure they respect their customers' privacy choices by allowing them to explicitly consent to cookies stored by our Livechat service before starting a chat session. Additionally, Cisco now offers an option to link a business's privacy URL to the widget so that customers can understand how their data is tracked and used by the business. This optional configuration will not impact existing widgets, meaning cookies will still load upon page visits. When this feature is enabled, end customers must accept cookies before initiating chat sessions.

• Livechat end customer widget network connectivity banners

End customers utilising live chat functionality will now receive a prominent network connectivity banner to keep them informed whenever there is a disruption in the network connection. This banner will alert users in real time if the network drops, ensuring they know of any potential interruptions to their chat experience. Additionally, once the network connection is restored, users will receive a notification confirming that the connection has been established. This enhancement aims to improve user awareness and provide a smoother communication experience during live chat sessions.

• Self-Service SMS (10DLC) and WhatsApp numbers

United States customers can now request phone numbers, including 10DLC, directly through the Webex Connect as a self-service feature. If you are located outside of the United States, you will still need to contact support for your phone number requests. However, the U.S. customers who have created brands using any third-party applications will need go through support to obtain the numbers.

For more information, see the article on Self-service SMS (10DLC) and WhatsApp numbers.

• Programmatic Flow Management with New List and Publish APIs

Webex Contact Center introduces new Flow List and Flow Publish APIs, available on the Developer Portal, for programmatic flow management. These APIs supplement the existing Import and Export APIs for flows and subflows, enabling the full automation of flow management for both new and migrating organisations. This update allows developers and partners to list, export, import, and publish flows and subflows programmatically between organisations, eliminating manual steps and thus enhancing efficiency in managing a large number of flows and subflows. This advancement also facilitates the creation of advanced deployment and migration scripts, making it easier to bulk transfer and publish flows between organisations.

For more information, see Flow APIs on Developer Portal.

• Improved handling of international phone numbers

Freshdesk's current system for formatting and interpreting incoming phone numbers (specifically the Automatic Number Identification, or ANI) is designed primarily for US phone numbers. Cisco is announcing that this enhancement ensures accurate formatting and processing of calls from customers outside the US, leading to a smoother and more efficient support experience.

• Auto CSAT

Auto CSAT forecasts customer satisfaction (CSAT) after each interaction, helping contact centers gain insights and make decisions to boost customer satisfaction and agent performance. CSAT is crucial for understanding customer happiness with service. Cisco's proprietary models use operational data, interaction transcripts, and surveys to predict CSAT scores accurately. These scores can identify training needs, select calls for review, and ensure swift resolution for dissatisfied customers. The Auto CSAT scores are available in the Auto CSAT report on the AI Assistant Dashboard within the Analyzer.

For more information, see Measure customer satisfaction with Auto CSAT.

• Automated wellness breaks

Automated wellness breaks monitor and detect stress levels in real-time and send reminders to take breaks between tasks. Using real-time insights, the system provides wellness breaks when necessary, helping you manage stress effectively, maintain high performance, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

For more information, see Enhance wellbeing and engagement with automated wellness breaks.

• AI-generated call summaries

Agents can now handle customer conversations better with AI-generated summaries.

• AI-generated summaries for dropped calls: If a call gets disconnected unexpectedly, the Cisco AI Assistant instantly creates a summary of the conversation. When the customer calls back, the next agent can seamlessly continue the conversation, saving time and enhancing the customer experience. You can view insights and assess the importance of these summaries in the Dropped Call Summaries report on the AI Assistant Dashboard. For more information, see Dropped Calls Summary report.

• Virtual agent transfer summaries: Provides the comprehensive summaries of interactions with virtual agents, ensuring the agents have all the information needed to assist customers quickly and efficiently. This means less repetition for customers and faster resolutions!

The Analyzer report for the virtual agent transfer summaries will be available in the future.

For more information on enabling AI-generated call summaries for agents, see How to enable AI-generated summaries feature.

• Agent Wellbeing

AI-powered Agent Wellbeing features are designed to support Agents’ wellbeing, enhance productivity, and customer satisfaction. Using advanced analytics, the Webex Contact Center platform harnesses end-to-end data insights to monitor and detect agents' stress levels in real-time. Using the real-time insights, the system provides automated wellbeing breaks when needed, helping agents manage stress effectively, sustain high performance, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

For more information, see Improve agent wellbeing and performance with burnout detection and wellness breaks.

• Cisco AI Assistant for Contact Center

AI Assistant revolutionises customer service by enhancing your efficiency and elevating customer satisfaction!

Here's what the AI Assistant offers:

• AI-generated call summaries at various touchpoints throughout the agent-customer interaction.

• AI-powered Agent Wellbeing to support agent’s wellbeing, improve productivity and Customer satisfaction.

• Auto CSAT predicts customer satisfaction after each interaction, providing insights that help contact centers make smarter decisions, improve agent performance, and boost customer satisfaction.

• Topic Analytics to identify the primary reasons your customers are calling the contact center.

For getting started with the AI Assistant features, see Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center.

For information about enabling the AI Assistant features, see Enable Cisco AI Assistant for Contact Center.

• Feature improvements to Salesforce connector Version 1.7.0

Salesforce Connector version 1.7.0 introduces the following new features and improvements:

• Case Assignment: Agents can now assign a contact or account to a case during an active call when a single match is found.

• Enhanced Screenpop Handling: Improved screenpop behavior for consult and conference calls:

• No screen pop occurs on incoming consult calls or after leaving a conference.

• Screen pop occurs only for transferred calls originating from a conference call, and only if a screen pop has not already occurred.

• LogRocket Sanitisation: Enhanced sanitisation of logs sent to LogRocket ensures that only Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is masked, maximizing the information available to Support Agents.

• Topic Analytics

AI-powered Topic Analysis capability provides insights into the key reasons customers are calling into the contact center by collecting and analysing interaction data and extracting trends. This capability, using large language models (LLMs), is now available with the AI Assistant Add-on for the Flex 3.0 license.

For more information, see Get started with Topic Analytics.

• Webex WFO Digital Channels Support (Chat, SMS)

As customer interactions increasingly move to digital platforms, Webex WFO Quality Management has introduced enhancements to support omnichannel engagement. These updates ensure a comprehensive view of interactions and a seamless experience across various channels.

Key Highlights:

• Standard workflows for end-of-call and daily quality management now extend to digital interactions like chat, SMS, and legacy text.

• A 'Keep' action is available for text contacts, with configurable retention periods for digital and non-call contacts.

Contact Goal Administration:

• Contact Type: it includes Chat, and SMS in addition to Call and Text.

• Contact Goal Classifiers: When Text, Chat, or SMS is selected as the contact type, a Random option is available as a classifier, such as Random Chat.

Easy to Enable

Application Management streamlines digital channel enablement, which reduces deployment time and complexity and allows easy channel optimisation.

For more information, see the following topics:

• Contact Goal Administration

• Workflow administration

• Enable digital channels

• Omnichannel Quality Management Enhancements.

• Webex WFO Digital Channels Support (Email)

Webex WFO Quality Management now provides enhanced omnichannel capabilities, which enable organisations to deliver a seamless, high-quality experience across both digital and voice interactions.

You can now add digital channels in Application Management, including chat, SMS, and email.

New digital support features for email include improved search, workflow management, media player upgrades, customisable retention settings, and more.

Webex WFO Quality Management enables teams to conduct quicker, more insightful reviews and streamline workflows, which helps them understand and address customer needs across multiple channels.

For more information, see the following topics:

• Contact Goal Administration

• Workflow administration

• Enable digital channels.

• Digital surveys for post-interaction feedback and Baseline Survey Report in Analyzer

Streamline feedback collection with Digital Surveys in Webex Contact Center! Now, you can easily design and deploy post-interaction surveys to gather meaningful customer insights.

With an intuitive survey builder, you can:

• Create multilingual surveys in just a few clicks, making them accessible to a global audience.

• Add diverse question types, including short/long text, single/multiple-answer options, and key metrics like NPS, CSAT, and CES.

• Leverage engaging rating styles like Smiley, Star, and Scale to capture customer sentiment.

Personalise each survey with your brand logo, colors, and more. Once set up, surveys are automatically delivered to customers after interactions, enabling seamless feedback collection.

To make analysis simple, the Baseline Survey Report in Analyzer gives you rich insights into survey responses, agent performance, and customer interactions.

For more information, see Configure surveys for digital channels.

Click here for the vidcast for Digital surveys for post-interaction feedback.

Click here for the vidcast for Baseline survey report.

• Enhanced Zendesk Integration

Agent productivity and customer support is now more streamlined and boosted with exciting new enhancements to our Zendesk Connector! Agents can now create Zendesk tickets and new customer tickets directly from Agent Desktop. They can also automatically populate ticket fields and link them to various contacts.

For more information, see Integrate Webex Contact Center with Zendesk.

• Baseline Survey Reports for Supervisors

Gain valuable insights into customer feedback with the Baseline Survey Report in Analyzer! While survey creation is managed by Admins, you can have full access to detailed reports based on your role-based access control (RBAC) permissions.

The Baseline Survey Report provides:

• Survey responses: Understand customer sentiment with data from post-interaction surveys.

• Agent performance details: See which agents handled calls, including first and last agent information, email IDs, and queue details.

• Interaction metrics: Dive into call durations, session IDs, and survey completion times.

This powerful reporting tool ensures you stay informed about customer experiences and agent performance, helping you drive improvements across your team.

For more information, see the Post Interaction Surveys report in the Webex Contact Center Analyzer User Guide.

Click here for the vidcast.

• Enhanced callback retry

The callback retry feature in Webex Contact Center is enhanced to capture the actual reason for callback failure, allowing flow developers to configure callback retries. With the inclusion of a new activity in Flow Designer called CallProgressAnalysis, you can set the CPA parameters to perform a voicemail or answering machine detection (AMD) for a callback.

For more information, see Call Progress Analysis.

• Better together with Webex: Enhanced call handling experience in the Agent Desktop

This feature consolidates Webex Calling Notification and Desktop Popover in the Agent Desktop, eliminating information overlap. Agents can now answer calls directly from the desktop without having any overlap with the Webex App call window. This feature is only available with Webex App 44.12 or later. For agents to use this feature, ensure that you have enabled Webex Calling in Control Hub.

For information on how this feature works for Agents, see Optimize Webex Contact Center Desktop call notifications with Webex App as a client and Set up and manage your notifications.

• Compliance Announcement

Cisco introduces a new compliance announcement capability to Webex Contact Center. This feature allows a recorded message to be played at the start of an agent interaction with a caller. The message is heard by both the agent and the caller.

Flow Designer is enhanced with a new announcement activity which allows the administrator to manage various in call announcements including compliance announcement.

For more information, see Set Announcements.

• Agent personal greeting

Cisco introduces a new Agent Personal Greeting capability to Webex Contact Center. This feature allows an agent's personally recorded greeting to be played automatically when they are connected to a customer call.

Flow Designer is enhanced with a new activity that allows personal greetings to be included in inbound flows. This activity enables the designer to dynamically select the agent greeting based on variables passed to the announcement activity.

Agent greetings are uploaded by administrators or supervisors through a new Control Hub capability. Additionally, Cisco is working on a capability that allows greetings to be recorded via a telephony interface.

For more information, see Manage audio files and Set Announcements.

• IVR based campaign

As a part of proactive outreach functionality, IVR based campaigns enable administrators to configure Progressive and predictive pacing mode to dial out contacts using IVR based campaign. Also known as 'Agentless campaign', this feature enables customers to record messages and send the recorded messages to customers as part of the campaign calls. Additional functionality includes to queue the contact to an agent or send a digital notification based on the contact selection. A new report called IVR based campaign report is created for this feature.

For more information, see IVR Based Campaign Calls in the Configure Voice Outbound Campaign Modes in Webex Contact Center article.

• Removing number of agents scaling limits for Webex Contact Center

Webex Contact Center has now removed restrictions on customer agent limits, making it fully scalable to support any number of agents. This enhancement ensures that your contact center can grow seamlessly with your business, providing unmatched flexibility, and capacity. For more information, see System Limits section in Setup and Administration Guide.

• Enhanced Bridge Transfer

Bridge Transfer activity is now enhanced to dequeue the contact when sending a contact to a third party interactive voice response (IVR) or automatic call distribution (ACD). If the contact is not handled in the third party system, it can taken back to the original queue.

For more information, see Bridged transfer.

• Webex WFO: Global Language Support for Phrase Categories

Webex WFO now offers improved multilingual support, simplifying the management of mixed-language conversations while maintaining accuracy across various contexts. Users can now utilise the same category name in multiple languages.

Benefits:

• Accurate representation of multilingual contexts, including mixed-language conversations.

• Effective handling of consistent terms, such as brand names, that remain unchanged across languages.

• Enhanced flexibility in categorising the same word or phrase across different languages.

These enhancements make Webex WFO even more attuned to customer needs, providing a smoother and more user-friendly experience.

For more information, see the following topics:

Phrase Manager

Localisation.

• Webex WFO: Introducing Sessions for Streamlined Scheduling and Enhanced Agent Management

Sessions is now live, streamlining the scheduling and management of agent activities beyond traditional shift planning. It allows managers to efficiently allocate time for training and other unscheduled tasks across a group of agents.

With features like automated, evenly distributed activities and drag-and-drop scheduling, Sessions reduces administrative effort and enhances flexibility.

Benefits:

• Provides clear visibility into agent allocation and performance for data-driven decision-making.

• Boosts operational efficiency.

• Supports agent development and engagement.

• Helps contact center teams stay organised and balanced.

• Keeps teams focused on continuous improvement.

• Aligns with broader business objectives.

For more information, see Manage Sessions.

• Enhanced Customer Interaction Insights with Webex WFO's Speech Energy

Webex WFO now offers Speech Energy, which enhances visibility into customer interactions by detecting silence and talk-over events. This feature delivers crucial insights into customer conversations, helping teams quickly identify areas of improvement.

Benefits:

• Detection of silence and talk-over events highlights conversation stalls and overlapping speech, pinpointing areas for agent training.

• Analysis of these events helps uncover customer frustrations and optimise processes.

• Silence may indicate uncertainty, while talk-over suggests poor listening, aiding in refining agent interactions.

For more information, see Detecting Silence and Talkover Events.

• Webex AI Agent is Generally Available!

Cisco has announced the General Availability of Webex AI Agent, a platform for creating, deploying, and managing AI agents. These agents can be easily integrated into your contact center workflows to act as a self-service solution at the front door for customers.

Key features include:

• Scripted and Autonomous Modes: Scripted agents use conventional machine learning algorithms for Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to capture user intents and respond accordingly, while autonomous agents use Large Language Models (LLMs) to drive dialogue and manage state.

• Digital and Voice Channel Support: Launch scripted agents effortlessly on voice and digital channels, and autonomous agents on digital channels.

• Human Agent Handoff: Escalate conversations to human agents as part of your workflows, using built-in AI assistant integration for handoff summaries.

• Multi-Lingual Support: Configure agents to support multiple languages (refer to the List of supported languages documentation).

Non-English language support is currently in Beta. These languages will be made generally available once sufficient usage data and feedback are collected.

• Built-in Reporting: Access a wide range of out-of-the-box analytics and reporting within the AI agent studio.

• Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly connect with business systems and existing automation workflows via Webex Connect.

For more information on this offering, check out our Webex AI Agent Microsite and the Webex AI Agent Studio Administration guide.