Make Influencer Marketing a Part of Your B2B Mix with These 5 Philosophies

Influencer marketing is a well-established strategy in the B2C sphere. That’s a given. We’ve all witnessed the success consumer-facing brands have had when a stylized product image is placed in an influencers’ Instagram feed.

But if you think influencer marketing isn’t a viable strategy for B2B, think again. Increasingly, B2B marketers are experimenting with influencer marketing, but—truthfully—they’ve been doing it for years. Think of all the customers that have contributed perspectives to your case studies or speaking panels. Think of the brand advocates who have contributed to a white paper or co-presented in a webinar.

For years, B2B marketers have trusted and benefitted form the core principle of influencer marketing: an independent, trusted third-party has a great and genuine ability to connect with your audience in a meaningful way.

Shifts in traditional marketing tactics will only continue to make influencer marketing more important. As paid advertising becomes more expensive, and, in some cases, less effective, companies of all shapes and sizes are turning to earned exposure through influencer marketing.

And I would argue influencer marketing is more important for B2B than B2C. The average purchase size in B2B typically dwarfs that of B2C. Thus, there is greater risk associated with B2B decision making, and when risk is higher customers seek to avoid mistakes by doing their homework. The impact of referrals and word of mouth are more critical to your organization’s success: Ninety-one percent of B2B purchases are at least influenced by word of mouth.

While the tenets of influencer marketing work similarly for B2B and B2C, the strategy takes a slightly different form in B2B. Here are the differences you need to keep in mind:

1. Expand Your Definition.

When most people think of influencer marketing, they think of Instagram. Yes, there are influencers on Instagram, but they are also on YouTube. There are influential bloggers and vloggers. Influencers run private Facebook and LinkedIn communities. They are your current customers. They are your partners, and they can be your employees. The truth is they are everywhere.

Influence does not correlate to a particular social network. Influence is about the ability to create a community. Thus, an influencer is a person who has built an engaged community through content that aligns around ideas, questions, and goals.

2. Stretch Your Time Horizon

Because B2B purchase decisions are often more nuanced and comprehensive than consumer purchases, the impact of B2B influencer marketing takes longer to root. Further, because most B2B purchases involve a number of decision makers, it will take longer for the impact of B2B influencer marketing to touch those people. Incidentally, this is why, we should all use more influencers in cooperation with account-based marketing.

At Convince & Convert we estimate you shouldn’t expect results from a B2B influencer marketing program for at least six months, and you should seek to work with B2B influencers for a year at a time. This differs a lot from B2C influencer programs, which can be as short as a month in duration.

3. Focus on More than Social Strength

Social media reach is often used as a key measure of influence, but it isn’t the only way to gauge influencer marketing strength. Some of the most powerful influencers in the world are not active at all in social media.

When creating an influencer marketing program, consider people who may not be social mavens but are respected thinkers, authors, speakers, podcasters, and researchers. Using social reach as the primary criteria makes it easier and faster find influencers, but doing that alone will miss influential people your customers respect.

4. Emphasize Co-Creation

B2B influencers aren’t supposed to repeat your talking points or retweet your account word for word. If that’s the game plan, just buy some ads. The more influencers have a chance to put their own take on the benefits of your products and services, the more impactful they are on your behalf.

The best way to make a mark with an influencer is to find the right people and educate them. Clearly explain what you are looking to accomplish and why it’s important. Then, listen. Give your influencers an opportunity to come up with ideas on how to create interesting content, how to engage with key customers, how to enable your sales team, and more.

5. Be Acutely-Aware of Conflicts

B2B influencer marketing programs are more likely to have circumstances where a proposed influencer cannot participate, or at least can’t participate in the way your business believes is ideal, due to existing relationships, company partnerships, or job restrictions.

Many B2C influencers make all or part of their living recommending products. This isn’t the case with B2B influencers. In the B2B sphere, influencers have a day job and are influential in part because of that position. That day job is typically a reason a B2B influencer yields influence.

This is yet another reason why you need to give yourself enough time to find and activate B2B influencer marketing programs. Sixty days is the minimum lead time necessary to research and approach influencers and determine what type of program is feasible without the risk of conflict.

While the principles of influencer marketing are similar in B2B and B2C, the practice of this marketing discipline is not. For a B2B marketer, the programs, approaches, timeline and mindset are all distinctive to your customer and their journey. Understanding how to put those differences into practice can help you drive greater visibility and credibility and convert trust into engagement.

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Wi-Fi’s New 6 GHz Spectrum is a New Frontier

The world’s wireless systems are getting huge upgrades this year and next: 5G cellular is beginning its rollout, with the promise of much faster speeds; and Wi-Fi is getting a big upgrade too, with the release of Wi-Fi 6 devices that will give us not just better speed, but better battery life and reliability. There’s one thing that Wi-Fi really needs, though, so we can take the best advantage of its new promise. More radio-frequency spectrum.

In 2020, we will finally get it: A big chunk of new wireless spectrum in the 6 Gigahertz (GHz) band – potentially from 5.925 GHz up to 7.125 GHz.

When Wi-Fi was first developed, it used spectrum in the 2.4 GHz range. From the start, the air was crowded. 2.4 GHz was, and is, used by many other device types, including cordless phones, Bluetooth devices, and some IoT protocols.

In 1997, parts of the 5 GHz spectrum opened up, which the newer standards like 802.11n (now called Wi-Fi 4) can use, and which 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) must use. Access to 5 GHz spectrum was last expanded in 2003, with a new subset of the band that can only be used by devices that dynamically avoid previous allocations for 5 GHz radar.

Since then, the use of Wi-Fi has grown dramatically, taking on more of the global data traffic (which is also growing). All that traffic has had to crowd into those frequency bands. There’s not enough capacity in them for future needs.

Please note: In this story, we discuss 5 GHz and 6 GHz, which are frequency bands, as well as the wireless standards 5G and Wi-Fi 6. The frequency ranges may sound like they are related to the wireless standards, but the terminology similarity is a coincidence.

By 2022, Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 79 percent of Internet traffic.

In 2020, for the first time in 17 years, we expect that Wi-Fi will get additional airspace. While we don’t know all the conditions that regulators will require for use of the 6 GHz band, we do expect access to a  broad swath of spectrum.  More importantly, that spectrum will, at least at first, be uncrowded by legacy devices, and will contain more contiguous, uninterrupted ranges of spectrum than any of the existing Wi-Fi bands.

Here’s why that matters.

A Closed Course 

I’ve written previously about the benefits coming to us in Wi-Fi 6 (Wi-Fi 6 Powers Real-World Wireless Enterprise Applications). The new version of Wi-Fi gets us better performance and improved battery life, for starters. But the full advantages of Wi-Fi 6 can only be realized when Wi-Fi 6 equipment isn’t trying to work around other radio standards. When a Wi-Fi 6 radio is sharing spectrum with Wi-Fi 5 (or other) radios, it may find it has to compete with those transmissions for spectrum. In particular, it can’t take full advantage of the protocols for scheduled transmitting and receiving, which could impact performance and battery life.

When a Wi-Fi 6 radio is sharing spectrum with Wi-Fi 5 (or other) radios, it may find it has to compete with nearby transmissions for spectrum, lowering performance and efficiency. In Wi-Fi 6, an access point (AP) can schedule how the devices it’s communicating with can use the spectrum millisecond-by-millisecond. The AP can also schedule multiple devices at the same time by aggregating devices into different frequencies. Such scheduling and aggregation is one of the reasons Wi-Fi 6 can offer such improved performance.

Furthermore, legacy Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5 devices will be not be allowed in the 6 GHz band, so that Wi-Fi 6 radios on this frequency will not have to compensate for other Wi-Fi radios barging into their transmissions. The 6 GHz band will allow Wi-Fi 6 to meet the potential designed into it.

Wide Lanes 

Wi-Fi spectrum, in all frequency ranges, is broken up into channels. When a radio uses Wi-Fi, it picks a channel to transmit on, and the energy it puts into adjacent channels is limited by design so it doesn’t bleed into neighboring channels. Current channels in the 2.4 and 5 GHz range are mostly 20 MHz or 40 MHz wide, with a very few that use 80 MHz or even 160 MHz. The wider the channels (literally, the bandwidth), the faster the data throughput can be. There aren’t enough wide-band channels on the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequencies to support wireless network growth.

Wi-Fi 6 at 6 GHz gets more channels that are 160 GHz wide, which will allow many more simultaneous users to transmit and receive at the highest possible speed.

The 5G Imperative 

The new 6 GHz spectrum is valuable not just to Wi-Fi, so we hope that the cellular and local wireless communities can cooperate on ways to share these frequencies. But in the shorter term, when 6 GHz frequencies become available to Wi-Fi, this expansion will also serve the cellular business. In fact, 5G cellular will need Wi-Fi to have this new capacity.

As more users take up 5G cellular and become accustomed to even higher speeds when they are mobile and outdoors, they will expect that experience to seamlessly transfer to their indoor spaces. The current 5 GHz Wi-Fi spectrum will strain to carry that load. Cellular carriers need solid solutions to take care of their customers when they move into spaces not well-covered by their outdoor networks.

With Wi-Fi getting additional capacity, the likelihood of building seamless hand-off experiences goes up. This will improve satisfaction and productivity for all wireless users no matter what networks they use.

We also expect that the cellular carriers will want to take full advantage of OpenRoaming to make the wireless experience as seamless as possible.

Bonus: Location Accuracy

Wi-Fi can be used for more than data transfer. It can also geolocate devices using it – an important capability since satellite-based GPS doesn’t generally work well in the in-building domain of Wi-Fi.

The 6 GHz band will allow for greater location accuracy than other Wi-Fi bands, because location accuracy is proportional to channel width, and as we discussed above, almost all the 6 GHz channels are wider than channel widths now used in 2.4 and 5 GHz.

Improved and reliable location accuracy can lead to entirely new solutions and business benefits. Already our own Cisco DNA Spaces is providing new analytics that go straight to the bottom line for business.

When, Not If

While we don’t know precisely which parts of the 6 GHz spectrum will be opened up to Wi-Fi 6, nor exactly when, we are highly confident that sometime in 2020 we’ll know how much of that frequency will become available. The proposal on the table as I write this is for one half of the 6 GHz band to be freed up in the US, with more to come a year following; and forabout 500 megahertz of the range to open up in Europe.

We are gratified to see the various standard-setting and regulatory agencies we work with moving in a direction that will serve the needs of business and users, and keep expanding the scope of what we can achieve with wireless networking.

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How Wi-Fi Can Help Drive Digital Transformation

Wireless networks have helped millions of employees connect to corporate networks and the Internet. But thinking about Wi-Fi as simply a tool to connect people to networks is incomplete. Instead of viewing wireless networks simply as a way to move data, we should really be thinking about Wi-Fi as a tool to drive business outcomes.  For starters, we can use location awareness that the infrastructure provides about connected things and their users. Machine learning can aggregate millions of anonymized data points on wireless network usage, and create insights that can spur our digital transformation.

Don’t get me wrong. A wireless network is still great at powering the modern office. It allows employees to take their phones and laptops and log on without being tethered to a desk. It’s also a necessary amenity for visitors to your facilities. But if you configure your wireless network in the right way, there’s a vast amount of telemetry you can collect about not only user and device connectivity but also application performance. That data, in turn, can enable workplace digitization and personalization, in ways that go straight to your bottom line.

The Mobility Imperative

Today, for example, employees waste a lot of time when moving around a campus. A lot of the time they’re looking for available conference rooms, which seem to always be in short supply. Wouldn’t it be great if the wireless network could tell them which conference rooms were currently empty, as well as where the colleagues they were supposed to be meeting with are at that moment? How much time would that save your company every month? Digitizing physical spaces will allow employees to use their time more efficiently.

Even better: What if they didn’t have to suffer that endless commute to the office every morning? What if they could check into any office near their home, log into the corporate network, and have everything they need to get the job done, no matter where they are? How much happier and more productive would they be? Personalization will become increasingly important to employers, just as it is to consumer-facing industries such as retail, hospitality, and healthcare.

Much has been written about how IoT is changing the manufacturing process and supply chain, but it will also have profound impacts on the office. When you walk into that conference room and it recognizes you, sets the lighting exactly the way you like it, and fires up the devices you like to use, that’s a nice perk that makes work a little more pleasant. But when it automatically turns off the lights and HVAC when no one is the room and saves the company 10 percent on its electricity bills, that’s a change your CFO can get behind.

Value Beyond Connectivity

The wireless network is where Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) meet, providing improved efficiency and performance. Today, IoT solutions are fragmented. Besides millions of unsophisticated devices, there are a variety of incompatible communications protocols, operating systems, and tagging systems. Eventually, we believe common standards will win out, and sensors will become plug and play.

Similarly, while many organizations have implemented these kinds of capabilities as pilot programs or in limited locations, they’ve been expensive and difficult to scale. However, this is starting to change, and it’s something we at Cisco are keenly interested in. We are helping customers in verticals like retail, hospitality and healthcare to build fully automated infrastructures that provides full network assurance while providing connectivity to the multitude of IoT devices. Cisco’s intent-based networking architecture enables segmented network access for IoT devices with policy-based automation and integration of the IoT and IT infrastructure.

While we’re doing this, we’re anonymizing private data like IP addresses, personal information, and so on. We will ensure data protection, privacy and security, and adhere to existing and emerging regulatory frameworks, such as GDPR.

New Solutions

The abilities to digitize and personalize the workplace are already enabled in Cisco’s DNA Spaces, built into every Cisco or Meraki access point. Cisco DNA Spaces is in part indoor GPS for devices, allowing administrators to locate every machine that’s logged onto the network, in every building on campus, down to the floor level. Cisco’s next-generation Access Points with built in Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee capabilities will be able to provide even better location analytics and services.

Because you must log in to the network to use DNA Spaces, the network knows who you are, which means it can start to personalize your digital workspace based on your habits and preferences. It’s the beginnings of Office as a Service, where employees are no longer dependent on a particular building and can work wherever they want.

Transformation happens when organizations take existing resources and find new use cases for them that drive productivity, increase revenue, lower expenses, or help launch new lines of business. Every business in every industry needs to discover the use cases and technologies that provide the best ROI for them. More importantly, establish security, and data protection programs where users can choose how they want to proactively drive the value exchange.

My advice: Don’t overlook your Wi-Fi network. It could be the secret weapon in your journey to digital transformation.

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The Cisco Unified Communications Manager Evolution–Only the Fittest Will Survive

It took humans thousands of years to evolve. It took centuries to get from the Iron Age to the industrial and now the information age. Now every decade brings more innovation. So, what is the rush?

The world is changing exponentially everyday with innovation and change in every corner of the globe. Competition for your business has never been tougher or more dynamic. Change is now measured in single digit years and even in some cases months. The pace of change is staggering, often unseen until it is too late. The power of newer more agile business start-ups, with new business models using the latest technology are quicker to get to market. They are quicker to respond to demanding customer requirements and changing market conditions.

Anything that slows your business or your people down exposes you to unnecessary risk. It means you are running the gauntlet of survival of the fittest. If it is not today, it might be tomorrow that someone steals your customers if you are not evolving your business at pace.

Let’s take consumers and phones for example. We all do it; we upgrade to the latest phones for the best in cool new features and functionality. We want to be more connected and productive with our time, integrated into our groups of friends and contacts on a multitude of apps and channels. Do you remember when cameras on phones were a novelty? Now they are indispensable and integrated with apps and functions such as submitting your expense receipts. It has to be faster, smarter and more intuitive every time we upgrade.

However, it is not just about the cool features. If we do not upgrade our operating systems and applications, we run the risk of losing our privacy, getting hacked, scammed or defrauded by others. Therefore, we spend our time constantly upgrading just for security reasons alone. In today’s world, there are daily alerts and very compelling reasons to upgrade individual apps and platforms. We all recognize we cannot stand still in this ever-changing world. Finally, yet importantly, the upgrade process has to be made simple and easy. Otherwise as consumers we quickly loose interest and move on elsewhere.

Overcome the Inertia and Build for Success

So why is it then for some their Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM) deployment has stood still? Are businesses sweating their assets? Is the upgrade too much of a forklift exercise? Is it too complex? Do businesses have resource constraints? Is it not part of the business strategic initiatives? Are you waiting to move to the cloud? Are the features and functions offered not compelling enough or explained sufficiently? Are people wary of change or having to learn new interfaces and processes? Are the perceived costs of change to great? Maybe simply, “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it”?

Whatever your reason for every argument that suggests you want to maintain the status quo, there are many compelling reasons to upgrade today. This especially true for your Cisco Unified Communications Manager deployment. It is time for you to break the inertia and plan your evolution. At Cisco we have built very compelling features and enhancements at every major and minor release from early 9.x versions to the very latest in capabilities in release 12.5.

We have continued to enhance the solution, guided by the following principles:

◈ Delivering new, improved user experiences

◈ Simplifying administration and lowering the cost of ownership

◈ Enhancing security and compliance

◈ Connecting on-premises with Webex cloud collaboration capabilities

We have clear roadmaps to for customers wishing to move to full collaboration in the cloud. At the same time, we realize that many can not move and wish to remain on-premises. Our Collaboration Flex Plan enables you to plan transitions at your own pace; adding cloud-connected services like WebEx Teams and Meetings and offering options for hybrid deployment models. We are innovating and leading the development of intelligent systems that make the collaboration experience cognitive. We also want you to be able to take advantage of those capabilities as quickly as you can.

Either way we want to help your modernization journey and over the next few months. During this time, we will be sharing more detail on some of those compelling reasons to upgrade your Unified CM estate. In this series of evolution blogs, we will provide some compelling reasons to upgrade your Unified CM estate. The first of these has to be how we address the complexity and pain of upgrading on-premises systems.

Reduce Upgrade Effort by 50% With “One-Touch” Upgrades

So, we hear you! Our customers have been asking Cisco to simplify the upgrade process. In Unified CM 12.5 we did exactly that. We introduced “one touch upgrade” capabilities that reduce downtime and simplify the number of tasks you need to perform. This lets you ensure your network is ready to upgrade by spotting common problems and possible glitches that could cause your upgrades to fail. We are reducing and simplifying the steps you need to make to accomplish your upgrade. We have also optimized the upgrade and database replication process itself so that it takes less time and can be accomplished prior to your maintenance window. Watch this short video now to understand how “one touch upgrades” will give you an effective journey to quicker adoption of new releases, faster than ever before.

Holding on to old and out dated versions and endpoints, means ultimately, you miss the latest cool features and benefits. It exposes you to potential security issues, and the reality is even with the long lifetimes we support that you cannot keep older technology forever. Eventually the software and hardware will expire, and older versions will have to go out of support as the markets and business requirements constantly evolve and develop.

There never been a more compelling time to get current and keep your business agile, responsive to market conditions and customer demands. By using the very latest in Unified Communications and collaboration, your staff can be more pro-active and agile at taking the fight to your competitors.

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Relying on secure wireless in harsh environments

We announced our next generation heavy duty industrial wireless platform, the IW6300. This Class 1, Div 2, IP67 rated intrinsically safe WiFi mesh access point capable of handling some of the most challenging working environments. These harsh operating environments are often found in open mine pits, refineries, paper & pulp manufacturing plants, oil platforms, factory floors, and chemical plants.

What’s new

Those familiar with Cisco’s industrial products will be quick to point out that the IW6300 isn’t our first wireless product to work in these harsh environments. In fact, our current HazLoc certified WiFi access points, the Cisco Aironet 1552 series, have been going strong for over eight years, including models that offer embedded industrial wireless protocol support from our industrial partners Emerson and Honeywell. The IW6300 builds upon the Cisco 1552 series capability of delivering rock-solid, secure WiFi connectivity to the harshest working environments by adding updated WiFi standards with improved throughput (802.11ac Wave 2), improved security (WPA3), better RF interference avoidance (Cisco CleanAir), reduced size & weight, improved temperature range, additional PoE options, future Cisco IOx edge compute support, and modular IoT expansion capability. This modular expansion capability is significant because it allows companies the flexibility of deploying WiFi coverage for connected worker solutions and later expand the solution to handle future IIoT connectivity modules, including the popular industrial wireless standards of ISA100 and WirelessHART, to support connected factory and connected plant solutions.

Connecting the unconnected

Reliable and secure WiFi has become the new normal in the carpeted office spaces, allowing office workers access to the corporate network and SaaS applications anywhere they go in the corporate offices, however, the non-carpeted spaces of factories, plants, mines and production facilities have remained widely unconnected, limiting the productivity improvements that connected workers are capable of delivering. The Cisco IW6300 heavy duty series access point will allow companies to deploy pervasive high-speed secure WiFi mesh connectivity to the non-carpeted spaces for both IT and OT connected worker applications with the flexibility to add industrial wireless support through an optional IoT add-on module. The ability for this platform leverage WiFi mesh, connecting remote mesh access points to the network without wires through the root access points, lowers the cost while improving the deployment time in areas with harsh environmental conditionals.

Simplify with new capabilities

While many industrial wireless protocols are capable of forming their own industrial wireless mesh, the ability to leverage a WiFi mesh network to backhaul sensor traffic just makes everything easier. By adding an Industrial IoT module to the IW6300, the industrial protocols see fewer “hops” in the industrial wireless network, have higher backhaul throughput, and all of the benefits of having the 802.15.4 IoT wireless gateways directly connected to the Ethernet network, without the cost of physically connecting them to the wired network. Another major advantage of leveraging the Cisco IW6300 to backhaul field device sensor traffic via the IoT expansion module is our ability to separate the IT traffic from the OT traffic. Many industrial and manufacturing companies follow industrial automation and control systems best practices for security, like those found in ISA99 and IEC62443, that segment ICS traffic from IT and end-user traffic. With an add on IoT module for the IW6300, we’re able to support these standards and keep WiFi user traffic segmented from IoT wireless sensor traffic.

Digital transformation is a journey and the Cisco IW6300 is the next generation industrial wireless platform to enable wireless connectivity in some of the most difficult to reach areas. I’m excited to see what kind of worker productivity, operational efficiency and improved safety outcomes our partners like Honeywell will be able to help our joint customers achieve through this next generation industrial wireless solution.

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Cisco Vision Brings Data to Life at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach

There is truly nothing more special than the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. The storied history; the incredible views; the atmosphere unlike any other. As the best golfers in the world face golf’s ultimate test, Cisco is delivering advanced data and analytics straight from the practice range all championship long.

As the Official Technology Partner of the United States Golf Association (USGA) and its championships, Cisco is not only providing a first-of-its-kind course-wide Wi-Fi network, but we’re also deploying Cisco Vision – our dynamic content delivery system – in strategic locations around the course, from the Media Center to Fan Central to Cisco’s hospitality spaces, and most visibly on a large video screen on the practice range.

All week long, as players practice and finetune their games, Cisco Vision is displaying a variety of advanced statistics and data in real-time in collaboration with Toptracer, a third-party software provider. Toptracer’s technology tracks the flight of every golf ball hit on the practice range this week in a camera feed, analyzes key data points such as distance, apex, ball speed and more, and feeds it into Cisco Vision to be displayed to fans on-site at the range and those watching at home.

Over the course of the week, more than 50,000 shots will come to life on the big screen, capturing all the moments that the fans – and the players – want to see. Whether it is a booming 280 yard drive from two-time defending champion Brooks Koepka, or precision work from 2011 U.S. Open champion Rory McIlroy, the players are just as engaged with the data as the fans, knowing that at the U.S. Open, the slightest edge can make all the difference.

And this is just the beginning. As part of our ongoing partnership with the USGA, we will continue to explore ways that data, analytics and technology can provide meaningful insights to allow players to advance their game, whether they are on the grandest of stages such as the U.S. Open, or at home on a local course.

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Bringing Reality to the Cognitive Contact Center

Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Analytics, and Collaboration Create Cognitive Experiences in the Contact Center

Every interaction between your contact center agents and your customers is a reflection of your brand – positive, negative, or neutral. According to a study by PwC, in the U.S. one bad experience alone will drive 32% of your customers away – even if they love your brand. That figure increases in Latin America to 49%.

We all want our customers to love our brand. So how do we avoid those bad experiences? How do we establish customer relationships and then grow and nurture them to make the next situation a better one – a more proactive, thoughtful, intelligent, and authentic one.

Our answer is by creating cognitive customer and agent experiences. This week at Cisco Live, my team and I will be spending time with our customers and partners demonstrating our solutions, discussing our vision, and sharing our ideas on what it means to have a cognitive and collaborative contact center.

Making it Cognitive

Cognition is what allows us to function as humans. Through cognition we’re able to better understand each other along with all the complexities of communication, evaluate and make judgments, reason our way through problems, and formulate appreciation. Our vision at Cisco is to change the world’s customer and agent experiences – and bringing cognition to those experiences is one of the best ways in which we can help you do that.

Empowering Your Agents

Three weeks ago I shared my view on the myths surrounding artificial intelligence’s role in the contact center. One misconception about AI is that it will replace people or eliminate jobs altogether. AI will likely have a greater role in augmenting, vs. replacing live agent assistance.

Your agents are the front line of your business and their daily interactions with your customers are essential to building meaningful and healthy long-term relationships. As with any relationship, your agents must demonstrate interest, understanding and empathy every time they interact with customers. They’re under pressure to turn potentially bad customer experiences into great ones. So investing in your agents makes good business sense. Companies are spending 1 trillion dollars worldwide a year, trying to understand and shape the journeys of their customers. However, what’s astounding is that companies spend 1000 times less on understanding their employees. Enabling artificial intelligence to work hand-in-hand with your agents is the best combination to helping them succeed.

Let’s take a look at a medical insurance company. Customers interact mostly through the company’s web portal. When the customer engages via chat, the chat interaction is handled by a Bot which is used to provide self-service and qualify the request. When the Bot recognizes a word or phrase indicating the need for a human agent, the Bot escalates the chat to a team of agents in a team collaboration workspace. The first agent to respond “yes” gets connected to the customer chat by the Bot. The agents don’t have any medical experience; they’re not doctors. But they have enough training and skill to handle first line questions. During the chat, AI is listening, and automatically displaying for the agent relevant articles and other pertinent information such as medical term definitions in real-time. However, during the chat, the agent needs expert advice from a medical professional. Without leaving their agent experience, the agent can easily find and reach a trained professional and collaborate about the customer request, while still chatting with the customer. The agent is able to answer the customer’s question on the first contact, and the customer leaves delighted from their experience.

This is a perfect example of agent augmentation – not replacement. Background intelligence is working hand-in-hand to augment the agent’s ability to serve their customer well. The Bot offloaded the initial simple task from the agent. Then the agent received AI assistance and human assistance in order to complete the engagement with the customer.

This powerful combination of AI, APIs, data analytics, contact center, and collaboration technology is the unique value Cisco brings to our customers.

A Compelling Portfolio

One more thing. I’m excited to announce that we’ll be joining the industry-recognized Webex family by renaming our cloud-based Customer Journey Platform solution to Webex Contact Center. Webex is our native cloud collaboration brand worldwide known for its reliability, scalability, security, and innovation – exactly the characteristics of our Webex Contact Center solution. This unique portfolio provides our customers a complete unified collaboration suite with calling, messaging, meetings, team collaboration, devices, and now contact center.

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