PureConnect Roadmap: More Features, Even More Investment

If you’ve followed our recent blogs, there’s a lot to take in about PureConnect and what we’ve already delivered in the past year. But there’s more on the near horizon for the mid-size and large organizations that depend on it. As an all-in-one multichannel engagement solution, it’s fast to deploy, simple to administer, flexible, tailorable and cost-effective. And because it’s available in the cloud and on-premise, it helps organizations that aren’t ready for or don’t want to run their business in a large public cloud, such as AWS, to serve critical needs like voice.

As one of 3 major Genesys solutions, PureConnect will be sharing more of our unique customer experience platform. In fact, Genesys has recommitted to this strategic direction with increased investment in PureConnect, as Genesys President Tom Eggemeier explains.

Where PureConnect is Going and Why

Let’s take a look at the 5 strategic priorities for PureConnect that are benefiting from these investments, as we roll out more features and functionality this year and beyond.

1)   Webification with full agent and supervisor experience in a web browser—and no features installed on the desktop.

We’re deep into new developments for our all-in-one client, which we call “Interaction Connect.” This simple, unified web-based application makes it easier for IT to deploy Genesys functionality onto all desktops. It also simplifies customer interactions and improves insight into their journeys by bringing together call control functionality, chat features, and status management.

For PureConnect Cloud (see more under priority #5), it means removing the need for MPLS, eliminating time-consuming installs with end-to-end virtual builds of your environment. As a single tenant cloud-based solution, updates and new features will be quickly deployed into existing environments, based on the rules (and schedule) you define. Look for webification of administrative features in 2018.

We’ve completed many agent use cases including full multichannel, Outbound, and queue statistics with more to come in 2018, along with more complex scripting capabilities.

2)   Two analytics initiatives: web-based dashboard visualization and intelligence

Data

For events logging, we’ve been rethinking how we store data in PureConnect so that more data, including unstructured data, can be derived from events. You’ll have all the data required to report on upcoming initiatives, such as digital or omnichannel, with better insights into IVR, skills, and interaction segments of your environment.

We’ll keep our existing PureConnect database structure in place so you can still use it while taking advantage of the new events data structure, thereby avoiding disruption to operations.

 Analytics

Our customers have told us they want non-technical users to be able to create dashboards and custom KPIs. Good idea! We’re working on out-of-the-box templates that can be customized, as desired, and we’re planning for “early adopter” templates next year.

Those of you who attended one of our CX17 events may have seen “sneak peek” demos about upcoming analytics functionality. As part of developing more commonalities among all Genesys solutions, we’re moving PureConnect to the MicroStrategy analytics platform. This is already in use by PureEngage. It lets you drill down or across into any metric or aggregated data, as well as external data that can be imported.

A longer-term priority for 2019 is adding smart predictive capabilities for proactive metrics and notifications. Later, we’ll add recommendations on how to resolve issues.

3)   Digital enhancements with first-class treatment of non-voice channels

Social media takes up an increasing amount of system storage, time for administrators and it can slow user productivity. One way PureConnect will address that is with native ability to scrap posts from social media sites. We’ll use the Genesys Social Hub in a hybrid cloud design. The Genesys Social Cloud will handle the connection to and scraping of Facebook and Twitter. For the administrator, it will be seamless, as configuration will be part of IA or a new web admin tool.

For Outbound, our native Interaction Dialer will handle voice, email, or SMS outbound campaigns. Video will use an Amazon-based hybrid implementation. Look for that in late 2018.

Building on this year’s launch of Blended AI by Genesys and Kate, we’re extending AI-based capabilities to PureConnect in 2019 for agentless intelligent web chat interaction. Prebuilt widgets will be available sooner, making it easier to deploy web chat and web callback onto your website.

4)   Omnichannel captures the full customer journey with contextual routing

Full history of PureConnect interactions and related data are becoming more critical. And omnichannel agent visualization is at the heart of it. Evolving to full omnichannel capabilities will give PureConnect users enterprise-level views of each customer’s full journey. This is in part by synchronizing PureConnect with external data systems such as SFDC and CRMS—the same principle used for PureEngage.

Agents can associate contacts with interactions or have it done automatically. These include external events such as website or store branch visits and payments. We’re adding more natively routed interactions as well, for example, sending a contact to the billing department if the customer was trying to make a website payment before calling.

Overall, new analytics features will give you the power and control to optimize your system for the best possible experience.

5)   PureConnect Cloud delivers more value from and to the cloud faster

We discussed the major new benefits of PureConnect Cloud in a recent blog post. Here are a few highlights from it:

• New infrastructure and container orchestration that enhances agility and efficiency
• Automating the build of customized, virtual private cloud infrastructures
• Rapid provisioning of entire highly available ecosystems—with instant recovery of any component
• Controls to segregate workloads, isolate tenants logically or physically, and customize security policies to harden your environment
• Ability to scale compute-heavy processes on an alternate private or public cloud. You can still keep proprietary and sensitive routines within the PureConnect Cloud secure environment

New Features and Next Steps for PureConnect

We’re looking forward to hearing more about your results from this year’s new features and those in the near future. There’s so much more coming that we can’t cover in a single blog. For example, look for hybrid services based on a common technology framework between PureCloud, PureConnect and PureEngage.

This major investment of Genesys resources will accelerate PureConnect innovation in five critical areas. It’s what customers like you have asked for and analyst research supports. Stay tuned for more details!

Watch this recent on-demand webinar and see a demo of PureConnect.