NICE flipped the script when it announced general availability of CXOne Mpower at Interactions 2024, its annual customer gathering. While it positions Mpower as a new and unique, cloud-based platform leveraging AI for CX, it is more accurately an elegant integration of products, features and functions already available under the CXOne and Enlighten brands. For CXOne that includes omnichannel agent workspaces, call and screen recording, quality management, feedback management, knowledge management, workforce management, performance management and interaction analytics. Enlighten’s set of offerings include Autopilot (self-service), Copilot for Agents (agent assist), XO (voice and text analytics and insight extraction), Copilot for Supervisors (supporting natural language queries of key performance indicators and conversations), and Actions (Generative AI-based responses and recommendations).

Fellow analyst Blair Pleasant provides an excellent rundown of the product enhancements as well as the general gestalt of Interactions 2024 here. As Blair notes, the “M” in Mpower refers to extended memory. The time-tested and field-proven products mentioned above are augmented by tools and interstitial technologies that enable a company to handle asynchronous, multi-channel interactions as a single conversation. The features include:

• “Continuous CX Memory”: built from historical experiences that reflect customer preferences.
• “Contextual Insights”: inserted into conversations when they are most needed
• “Interconnected Data”: designed to provide a 360 degree view of all CX stakeholders
• “Unified Apps & Workflows”: invoked to inform optimal outcomes across all conversations

Collectively they create what Barak Eilam referred to in his keynote address as an “experience continuum” where customers and agents alike pass seamlessly between live and virtual assistants. The experience is effortless and highly personalized.

Introducing “Skillability” and “Reverse Prompting”

CX Mpower is, in effect, a data-centric “CX AI state machine” aware of the signals that trigger action and the metadata that support continuity and personalized actions. For agents, Eilam coined the term “skillability” to capture how the interchange customers and live agents have with bots has evolved. What starts as a query from human to bot is now a conversation whereby those customers or agents provide suggestions that help improve future responses. Eilam referred to this process as “reverse prompting”. It will be a means for us mortals to refine the output we get from publicly available GenAI resources like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini.

The capabilities were showcased in a couple of demonstrations featuring a fictitious mobile carrier that was able to provide very timely and highly personalized assistance in making a buying decision through both automated and live agents even when the conversation was interrupted by a phone call. Capabilities were validated by real-world use cases from Sony Electronics, using CX AI to make sure customers were connected to the correct resource across a broad spectrum of product lines and challenges, as well as the window treatment specialist Hunter Douglas which was able to employ Enlighten Autopilot to provide answers to customer-generated questions at levels of accuracy in the 90% range, when rival offerings were below 50%.

Which Brings Us to Pricing and Packaging

For all the complex actions and use cases that CXOne and Enlighten handle, the most radical aspect of CXOne mPower is its pricing strategy. All of the features, functions and services mentioned above are offered for the price of $249 per agent per month, with an additional $0.25 charged “per session” involving Enlighten Copilot or Autopilot. NICE offers six different CXOne packages ranging from a low of $71 per agent per month for Digital Agent (a “digital-first” offering) to $209 for a “complete suite” that brings together omnichannel agents, voice and digital recording, supervisor workspace and visual dashboards along with resources to support Quality Management, Workforce Management, Analytics and Voice of the Customer.

Thus CXOne Mpower places a $40 per month fixed price on the use of GenAI for intelligent automation that supports agent augmentation, self-service and continuous memory. Consumption based use of copilots carries a $0.25 “charge per session” which introduces a modicum of predictability when agents or supervisors query their copilots or a customer invokes LLM-informed autopilots. For clarification, a “session” can involve multiple turns and take place over time. The $0.25 represents what can be considered “reasonable use” of the LLM to resolve a query or complete an action. Taking as much as a day to decide on which mobile phone suits your needs is a possibility. Asking an autopilot to write a term paper or compose a limerick will not be permitted.

But Wait! There’s More

For just $5 per subscriber per month, NICE now offers1CX, a unified communications as a service (UCaaS) service that includes organization-wide communication and collaboration over a multiplicity of channels.To do so, NICE is white labeling the services of 3CX , a Cyprus based cloud telephony service provider founded in 2005.

NICE’s product introductions signal its sensitivity to the expressed needs of enterprises all sizes to have pricing and packaging of both AI-infused CCaaS and UCaaS services that are simple, predictable, and affordable. Zoom, Microsoft, Webex, Genesys and other leaders are already joining the fray. CXOne Enlighten and 1CX marks a welcome a step forward in LLMs’ long march to maturity.

Categories: Intelligent Assistants