Today Dialpad announced the acquisition of TalkIQ. Just like yesterday's 8x8 AI acquisition this underscores my belief that VoiceAI will be as ubiquitous as collaboration. That means if you're a telco and you're not moving down the AI path and you offer functions like IVR, Voice recording, contact center or conferencing, not to mention regular calling you will be nothing more than PSTN 1.0, not VoIP 3.0.
AI brings lots of new features to telcos, and as I also implied yesterday, Cloud+AI+Fast Network means smarter, faster and cheaper interaction. But all that said, there is the requisite need for human intelligence and that's where neural networks will come into play. Adding a neural brings the ability to learn from a human, and then act like them. For contact centers, as the AI learns what to do right in each situation, the ability to get things done flattens.
The announcement by Dialpad, in which I hold shares, is the first stroke in the direction of where AI helps the entire calling process. More will likely come from this over time, as the service enters beta today, with scheduled launch for later this year.
Comments