Inference Enables Conversational AI for Cisco's On-Premises Contact Center Platforms

Inference Solutions, a provider of intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) for sales and service organizations, today launched solutions that extend the self-service capabilities of Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM), Unified Contact Center Enterprise, and Unified Contact Center Express (UCCE/X). Companies using these on-premises solutions can now upgrade their existing interactive voice response systems with cloud-based virtual agents powered by conversational artificial intelligence.

With Inference, companies can continue using UCM and UCCE/X while deploying cloud-based virtual agents managed by Inference. When organizations are ready to move their on-premises Cisco users to cloud-based solutions, their virtual agents will make that transition.

"Millions of [unified communications and contact center] seats are deployed on premises, and organizations not ready to completely transition to the cloud can use Inference's cloud-based virtual agents for automated, AI-enabled self-service," said Callan Schebella, CEO of Inference, in a statement. "Whether an organization uses an on-premises, hosted, or cloud-based solution, our platform enables them to serve and support their customers with advanced, conversational self-service experiences."

Inference Virtual Agents automate the routine and repetitive conversations handled by live agents, using speech recognition, text-to-speech, and natural language processing from multiple vendors, including Google and IBM.