New generative AI innovations for code generation, text summarization and bot training data.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a long-standing pillar of Webex Connect, our cloud communications platform for enterprises.

By providing access to the latest Natural Language Programming (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and chatbot capabilities, businesses are able to intelligently automate customer interactions at scale.

At Webex, we are committed to developing our in-house AI capabilities to increase the speed-to-market of new solutions that improve CX. We are happy to announce that we are launching a number of new features that leverage the potential of generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM). These advancements showcase how generative AI tools can be seamlessly weaved into the CPaaS toolset to boost productivity.

What is generative AI?

Generative AI refers to artificial intelligence (AI) that utilizes algorithms to generate content, such as images, text, videos, audio, code, simulations and other types of data. It's capable of producing various outputs by understanding patterns and features from the data it's trained on and is transforming the content creation process.

Code generation in the Evaluate Node

Writing code is a complex and specialized skill. That’s why code repositories are an essential resource for developers, with GitHub boasting an impressive user base of over 100 million coders.

When it comes writing code in Webex Connect, it’s typically done in the Evaluate node, a powerful compute service available in the Flow Builder. The node is where developers can run custom JavaScript as part of complex flows that require advanced computations or data transformations. For example, it can be used for data standardization, determining promotional logic, parsing JSON, API response checks, etc.

To make developers lives easier, we have now integrated generative AI into the Evaluate node for AI code generation. Developers can open the node and describe the function they need, and generative AI will interpret the input and provide back relevant code which can be instantly tweaked and applied.

This enhancement will help developers to be more productive and reduce dependency on code repositories, accelerating the launch of new solutions by instantly producing the code they need.

Training Data Augmentation in the Bot Builder

Training new chatbots can be time consuming. Chatbot developers are often faced with a ‘cold start’ problem with bot building and need to manually add training data for each query the chatbot can solve. What's more, datasets also need to be diverse and well-balanced for chatbots to answer questions accurately.

All chatbots are designed to fulfil specific ‘intents’, goals the customer has in mind when they interact with the bot. There are multiple ways customers can express the same intent, therefore chatbots need to be able to identify various ways customers can ask the same question, also known as ‘variants’.

We are happy to share a generative AI-powered enhancement to our Bot Builder, new Training Data Augmentation capabilities. This new feature allows chatbot developers to quickly create new training data consisting of different variants invoking the same intent, improving data quality and increasing the speed to build.

Developers simply need to describe the type of variants they require and how many they’d like to produce, then generate these with a single click. Additionally, bot developers can define parameters for their variants, decide whether these parameters are required and set the level of creativity the AI should use. Finally, once chatbots have been fed newly generated variants, developers can test their bots all within the same platform.

This enhancement will improve chatbot accuracy by increasing the diversity of datasets, as well as saving time and manual work for developers.  

Chat summarization

Chatbots are a great way to provide quick answers to common customer queries, but escalation to a live agent is still needed to help solve more complex requests.

Often customers seek help through a chatbot first, before being handed over to an agent to provide further support. However, key context can be lost in the bot-to-agent handover, forcing customers to repeat their concern all over again.

Our new chat summarization feature uses Webex Connect to automatically summarize an entire chatbot conversation and deliver this at the point of handoff to a live agent. When escalation is required, a brief, intelligent summary of the chatbot’s transcript is instantly generated in easy to understand, human language. The generated summary then seamlessly appears in the agent desktop at the point of handover. This feature works frictionlessly with Webex Contact Center but can be integrated into any contact center solution as required.

This new enhancement ensures that no context is lost in the bot-to-agent handover, as well as providing a boost to agent productivity by reducing the time to serve each customer.

AI personalized outbound videos

Video is more than just a media format—it's a compelling tool that captivates users. For businesses, video presents an opportunity to consolidate large amounts of information into to an engaging bite-sized format, with use cases ranging from welcome messages and product promotions to appointment reminders and self-help guides.

We are pleased to announce we are testing a new Webex Connect offering that enables businesses to harness AI to create and send personalized video communications across multiple channels at scale. Using dynamic AI, every element of the video can be edited and customized to each customer, including copy, avatars, images, backgrounds, and narration.

Providing highly personalized and compelling experiences to every customer forms part of the future of CX, and AI-generated videos is helping to make that a reality.

Get in touch to learn more about Webex Connect

AI is helping to drive productivity in new and exciting ways and the enhancements covered in this blog are helping to optimize Webex Connect for our users.

If you would like to learn more about how your business can benefit from the communications, automation, and AI capabilities of Webex Connect to improve CX and drive operational efficiency, get in touch with us today.

If you are a developer, you can trial the capabilities of Webex Connect in the developer sandbox.