The sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, is often credited with saying, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” This would, in fact, be an easy task if there weren’t so many choices for which future to create. That’s why one of the best parts of my job is thinking about what’s next, what big technology breakthroughs are on the horizon and how we can make them relevant to our customers. Creating the future for the market leader in customer experience, however, requires more than “being visionary”. What sets us apart as an organization is a) the ability to envision a desirable future, b) to anticipate if, when, and how customers and prospects intend to live in it, and c) to find a way to most effectively deliver the promises and business value of that future to your customers. In other words, anyone can paint a big vision, but very few turn it into economic success for their customers, partners and themselves.

The ability to anticipate which future our prospects and customers will most fully embrace is more important in the customer experience and contact center industry today than it has ever been. That’s because this industry is amid tremendous change on multiple dimensions. Customer support channels are multiplying. Consumer preferences are shifting. Companies are thinking less about single interactions with customers and more about the totality of the customer journey. And, the role of contact center employees is increasing in value– as easier work is automated through AI and more complex situations are left for humans to handle. AI is truly transforming all that we do (in addition to being a bit over-hyped right now).

Given all this change, it was heartening to see Genesys positioned furthest for completeness of vision in the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) in North America. We believe our position in the leader’s quadrant reflects both, our ability to anticipate customer needs in light of current industry changes and our ability to deliver break-through cloud solutions addressing those needs while leveraging a leading-edge architecture and development approach.

Envisioning the future of the contact center

The old ways of communicating with customers don’t cut it anymore. Businesses need to constantly rethink how they can market, sell and serve their customers using technology. Today, this is the lynchpin for winning new customers and turning existing customers into brand loyalists. In this context, the benefits of AI are no longer reserved for enterprises with dedicated engineers devoted to unlocking it’s potential. AI is being democratized, and Genesys is leading the charge:  For the past several years, we have focused on finding new ways to inject AI, machine learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing capabilities and more across the entire customer journey. When businesses tap technologies like these, they’re able to connect every moment as consumers travel between channels (phone, web chat, text and more) and departments with results far superior to previous rule-based technologies.

Anticipating how customers want to embrace this future

We have built a series of AI solutions that individually provide compelling benefits. However, when combined with each other, they deliver exponentially better outcomes as a result of greatly enriched data sourced from the entire customer journey from within our AI platform. For example, Predictive Engagement uses machine learning and predictive analytics to enable businesses to engage and intervene in a customer’s journey at precisely the right moment to nurture a lead, advance a sale, preempt churn and more. Simply put, it gives businesses a real-time, dynamic way to drive targeted business results. As a stand-alone product, the solution is very compelling. Yet, Predictive Engagement combined with our AI-based voice, chat and messaging bots provides even greater performance. By factoring in every moment, every action and interaction in the customer lifecycle, the bots continuously get smarter. The data derived from the Predictive Engagement solution and our bots can then be shared with our Predictive Routing algorithm to enable optimized customer and agent matches that enhance the likelihood of achieving specific goals. Again, the overall value of such a synergetic approach is greater than the combined value of the individual solutions.

Delivering the future – as you like it

Genesys is leveraging the cloud, microservices and agile DevOps methodology to innovate faster than ever. In fact, we are updating our customer solutions multiple times a day, and thus are bringing innovations to our customers at much higher velocity than in the past. The elasticity of the cloud also dramatically enhances the performance and further proliferates the adoption of AI. And finally, we’re making sure that our innovations work with both our existing on-premises and cloud solutions.

We are living in the experience age, when how things happen matters as much as what is happening. Keeping pace with today’s speed of innovation is no small feat. And I’m proud to say our ability to anticipate the future is what enables us to deliver cutting-edge solutions. It’s made us the partner of choice for thousands of companies around the world, including 60 of the world’s top 100 brands.

While Gartner’s recognition of Genesys as a Leader is gratifying, watching businesses adopt our breakthrough solutions to deliver superior customer value is the ultimate reward.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.