Once upon a time… My baby was a baby.  I blinked and she’s starting kindergarten in the fall.  My first baby always fell asleep in my arms.  Then I blinked and now he loves to remind me that he’ll soon to be taller than I am.  Maybe because I’m getting older or it’s the end of another school year, I’ve been thinking about this more often.  Lately, I find myself in those neighborhood cookout conversations with other parents where we reminisce about when our kids were toddlers and imagine a future when they’re driving, going to college, getting married… and having their own babies.  It feels surreal.

Time flies.

Times are constantly changing, too.  Across industries, shifts in consumer behavior demand less intrusive authentication, social connectivity and hyper-personalization of everything.  You and your competitors are using proximity, preferences and the proliferation of channels to create exceptional experiences.  Meanwhile, we all stand face-to-face with a consumer base that expects and demands a completely frictionless experience.

Yes, we know that customer experience is the differentiator these days above product and price.  In the Age of the Consumer, the customer is queen, and she expects to be treated as such.  But today’s differentiation is tomorrow’s standard.  It’s no longer just about effectively managing a conversation. It’s not even about an individual customer journey. It’s about managing customer lifecycles through connected moments to engage both the customer and the employee. Get this right and your company can expect tremendous outcomes. The difference between an ordinary and an extraordinary relationship is your ability to engage and to be engaged, to create one lifecycle for your customer, and to make your relationship effortless.

Time and time again, I see companies of all sizes in need of a platform that supports current and future technology. They want to differentiate rapidly. The right platform becomes an engagement engine that integrates all channels with context and can optimize their workforce and processes.

Why does this matter?  It is the basis for providing world-class customer experience.

G-NINE is the innovation framework that Genesys uses to create and communicate what’s next with our engagement engine (the Genesys Customer Experience Platform).  Much more than just a laundry list of new features, G-NINE is where magnificent customer experiences come to life.  Product strategy is only one of many aspects of our business guided by G-NINE, and our continuous investment in PureCloud, PureConnect, and PureEngage are all within this framework.

Some of the innovations we are focused on are:

Cerebral Power

The future of magnificent customer experiences includes artificial intelligence (AI).  It may seem ahead of its time, but the cerebral power and advanced algorithms of machine learning can already beat humans at chess, jeopardy, and diagnose cancer with more precision than medical professionals.  Being a math and computer science geek, I find machine learning fascinating. A type of AI that provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed when exposed to new data blows my geek mind!  AI enables us to have predictive engagement, predictive matching, and predictive analytics.  Speaking of AI, it’s time you met Kate:  Our customer-service-specific AI.  Kate is purely focused on delivering magnificent experiences, and she brings her own predefined micro-applications and natural language understanding to make your business more efficient and provide a better customer experience.  In other words, Kate is a strong, independent girl that really likes to help people.  She’s smart, too.

The Power of the Human Touch

Don’t worry. The rise of automation and AI doesn’t mean that robots are going to take over the world, or the world of customer experience. I still see that over half of all consumers prefer to talk to a real person when they have a complex issue. And with the increased adoption of video engagement, consumers can have meaningful conversations that include body language and eye contact. The future of magnificent experiences will be even smarter, leveraging deep understanding of customer conversations in and across all channels. This happens through the power of an engagement engine that is context-aware and multimodal. Customer service interactions will mainstream into continuous conversations that your customers control via emerging channels like IOT and messaging apps du jour (think Facebook Messenger, Slack, Skype, WeChat, and more).  Furthermore, combine Kate with your live staff to solve customer problems and you have blended AI: a key differentiator for your business.

Smarter Business

With any mix of human and machine, time is money.  And the future of magnificent experiences also depends on rapid time-to-value.  Openness, integration capabilities, and flexible consumption models reduce time-to-market and technology spend while accelerating the ability to innovate.  G-NINE shares innovations across PureCloud, PureConnect, and PureEngage via micro-services-based technology that provides fast, compliant and secure solutions.  You will have the power of choice in a comprehensive and personalized prescription of services to define and deliver on your overall CX strategy.  With G-NINE, we expand our predefined library of repeatable use cases that help organizations achieve incremental business benefits quickly. That’s smart, too.

With G-NINE, the future of magnificent customer experiences will be what we remember in moments connected. It will be smarter and less human more often, but will also connect us to the power of the human touch more easily and in better ways.

Whether it be with our kids, conversations, or customer experience, time will continue to fly in our ever-changing world.  It may all feel surreal. But to stay ahead or even keep up, you don’t have a moment to waste.

For more on how you can build your future with G-NINE, check out some additional examples here.