Voice Intelligence Forecasts and Releases Drive Deeper, Actionable Customer Understanding
Twilio (NYSE: TWLO), the customer engagement platform that powers real-time, personalized experiences for today's leading brands, announces CustomerAI that will unlock the power of artificial intelligence (AI) for hundreds of thousands of companies. New predictive and generative AI tools, along with CDP innovations that support powerful AI use cases, are among the brand's launches during the company's annual event, SIGNAL 2023.
Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio.
“The tectonic shift in technology we have seen over the past year challenges the scale and magnitude of the invention of the Internet. AI has truly captured the hearts and minds of entrepreneurs around the world,” comments Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio. “I believe the real value unlock for AI will be the pairing of large language models with first-party data sets – which is where Twilio differentiates itself. With CustomerAI, artificial intelligence becomes customer-aware, empowering businesses to drive data-driven, personal interactions at every touchpoint.”
“Today, we are announcing a series of new CustomerAI capabilities that make AI more accessible, driving dynamic customer engagement that adapts to each individual user. Each interaction creates new data and signals, and each new signal recirculates to inform the next AI-based communication,” said Kathryn Murphy, senior vice president of products at Twilio. “This system creates precise 1:1 personalization that ensures each customer is uniquely served, in turn accelerating brands’ competitive advantage and business results by increasing customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty.”
With CustomerAI, brands can expand their insight into customer data, activate it more comprehensively, and become better informed through deeper understanding.
SIGNAL 2023 announcements include:
Twilio Launches CustomerAI Predictions and Voice Intelligence to Drive Deeper Customer Understanding with Predictive AI and Insights
In today's competitive environment, marketers need new ways to attract, convert and retain high-value customers. AI and machine learning (ML) models can help anticipate actions regarding future customer behavior, but effective and complex models require real-time data and data science expertise. As CustomerAI Predictions, Twilio is putting the power of predictive AI at marketers’ fingertips. Without having to rely on technical teams, these experts can now create out-of-the-box hyper-targeted audiences, trigger customer journeys, and personalize multichannel experiences based on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), likelihood of purchase or churn, or any other event tracked in the Segment platform. The new feature is powered by unified, real-time data in Segment, essential for training high-quality AI models. Brands like Box, for example, are already using CustomerAI Predictions to save time, optimize campaign performance, and unlock revenue opportunities.
Voice continues to be a critical customer service channel as call volumes increase. Historically, companies have struggled to learn from call content because voice data is unstructured. Voice Intelligence changes that, using a transcription tool and a language operator that employs conversational speech recognition to intelligently extract insights. Using Natural Language Understanding (NLU), it reports on trends like common feedback, competitive insights, and compliance risks.
Twilio Flex and Voice customers can also manage regulatory requirements with automated personal information (PII) redaction. One organization, using the beta version of the functionality, reported that lead attribution management margins improved in 21% due to streamlined processes and reduced human errors. Brands like Spoke Phone are already putting Voice Intelligence to work.
Twilio also announces the general availability of its Twilio Virtual Agent with native Google Dialogflow CX Voice integration.
Twilio Announces Generative AI Tools to Help Power Customer Data and Adaptive Engagement in Twilio Engage, Flex, and Segment
Today, marketers want and need to dedicate their time to creating growth strategies, but they can be held back by manual tasks. With generative AI coming soon to Twilio Engage and Segment, they can save precious time, increase productivity, and focus on optimization for stronger results. For example, with the new CustomerAI Generative Email Coming to Twilio Engage, marketers will be able to insert simple text prompts that turn ideas into HTML in seconds. This builds on the AI features currently available in Twilio Engage, such as Smart Titles, Smart Image Generator, and Smart Buttons, which suggest the most suitable content for conversion. Meanwhile, marketers will be able to skip the manual process of architecting customer journeys thanks to new journeys generative of CustomerAI Generative Journeys. These experts will soon be able to describe the type of campaign (promotional, return, etc.), audience definition, and channels they want to use, and Twilio Engage will automatically create the journey using generative AI.
Generative AI capabilities are also new releases targeting Twilio Flex, as per recently announced with Google Cloud. For example, Flex customers will be able to deploy CustomerAI Agent Assist, which will generate recommendations for contact center agents with personalized “next best actions” they should take when interacting with a specific customer, as well as quick AI-generated summaries for efficient termination of the call. Additionally, the upcoming release of Flex Unify in GA will natively present agents with Segment's rich customer profile data in real time. With agents empowered to interact in a more personalized way, contact centers can increase CLV and boost sales conversions.
Twilio Introduces Segment B2B Edition and Zero Copy Architecture to Deliver a Composable, AI-Ready Customer Data Platform (CDP) that Enhances Business Insights into Customers
As AI continues to gain prominence, innovative marketing and product professionals are moving beyond generic personalization based on demographics or location. But to achieve great personalization, companies need a clean, consistent database. The new Twilio's Segment B2B Edition with Linked Profiles will allow companies to establish relationships between all of their customer data in an expanded data graph. Segment has always brought data together into unified profiles, but in addition to real-time consumer profiles, many organizations have business data sets (containing information such as company accounts, subscriptions, products, homes, and more) stored in their data warehouse . Now, using Linked Profiles, companies can create a relationship graph that links events, experiences, and customer profiles to these additional data sets. With a better line of sight across data, graphed for each customer, companies can train AI models, create advanced segmentation, and power next-generation personalized recommendations and activations across channels.
Twilio also introduces the Zero Copy Architecture to help companies ensure their data infrastructure is AI-ready. In partnership with Databricks and Snowflake, the new capabilities will allow customers to directly query data warehouse or data lake datasets, eliminating the need for data copying and additional ETL (“Extract-Transform-Load”) work, avoiding redundancy and resulting in more timely, secure and accurate insights. This also reduces the need to create and maintain data pipelines. Extending Twilio's CDP, Zero Copy offers a new path to data consumption and access. For AI models created in the data warehouse, Zero Copy “Data Sharing” technology will enable easier activation in downstream applications. Finally, Twilio Engage and Twilio Flex customers will be able to integrate user data into these applications more quickly and easily.
As Twilio develops and launches CustomerAI tools, it is leveraging its own proprietary technology as well as working with trusted industry leaders such as AWS, Google and OpenAI, which meet your privacy and data protection standards. Twilio is committed to developing CustomerAI safely and responsibly and published today its CustomerAI trust principles, along with information about the launch and availability of its AI nutrition facts labels. As part of this commitment, Twilio incorporates privacy and security by design into its product development lifecycle and will ensure that companies have full transparency and control of the data that informs AI-powered interactions with their customers.
At SIGNAL 2023, expect to hear how companies like Cisco, JetBlue, and WB Games are creating personalized, data-driven customer experiences at scale. This year's special guests include Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and AI researcher Dr. Anima Anandkumar. Participate virtually and register for free on here.
APPENDIX: TESTIMONIALS
David Wallace, director of customer research, data and analytics, IDC:
“Twilio’s CustomerAI helps customers easily understand how and where they can leverage AI to drive better results and business value in every interaction. These latest advances in predictive and generative AI offer new ways for users to deliver hyper-personalized touchpoints at scale. Additionally, new customer data platform capabilities and strategic partnerships will enable organizations to deliver enhanced customer experiences using the power of AI insights from unified customer data.”
Chris Koehler, CMO at Box:
“As marketers, the holy grail is reaching your current and potential customers in a way that is meaningful, relevant and addictive for them. CustomerAI Predictions has equipped Box's marketing team with the ability to predict customer behavior at a level that simply wasn't available to us before. We've been able to explore segmenting our audience based on predictive characteristics, like who is most likely to join us at in-person events or who is most likely to purchase, and this allows us to meet these people where they are in the customer journey. Tools like CustomerAI Predictions put marketers at the center of this new era of AI that is transforming the way companies engage and retain their customers.”
Chris Hecht, senior vice president of corporate development and partnerships at Databricks:
“We are excited about the Delta Sharing strategic partnership between Twilio and Databricks to enable companies to gain actionable insights and deliver personalized experiences at scale with Zero Copy. As delivering next-generation personalization and customer experiences continues to be a top priority for every enterprise, the combination of Databricks' Lakehouse architecture and Twilio Segment will be a game-changer for our joint customers looking to deliver the best in Real-time, individual experiences, powered by AI. We look forward to hearing more about this topic when our respective CEOs Ali Ghodsi and Jeff Lawson take the stage together at SIGNAL today.”
Craig Lisowski, head of data, information systems and trust at Nextdoor:
“Nextdoor is excited about the Databricks and Twilio Segment partnership. Together, they are paving the way for smarter insights and deeper understanding of data. Real-time data and historical data are key to helping Nextdoor create effective marketing programs for neighbors and businesses with a high level of personalization.”
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[1] Presented in June, the CustomerAI is a powerful technology layer that combines data from Twilio's customer engagement platform and large language models (LLMs) to create AI capabilities that unlock true customer relationships for brands.
[2] CustomerAI Predictions is generally available (GA) and accessible to Segment Unify and Twilio Engage customers globally starting today.
[3] 61% of customer service leaders surveyed report growth in total calls. 58% of service leaders expect call volumes to increase further over the next 18 months. (McKinsey's 2022 State of Customer Care Survey).
[4] Voice Intelligence is available globally in public beta (GA release is expected in 2024).
[5] CustomerAI Generative Email Design and CustomerAI Generative Journeys are expected to be available in public beta in 2024.
[6] GenAI Agent Assist on Flex is scheduled to be available globally in private beta in the coming months.
[7] Segment B2B Edition with Linked Profiles is scheduled to launch globally (starting with Event Enrichment GA) in the coming months.
[8] The Zero Copy Architecture pilot project is expected to be available worldwide in the coming months.
Forward-looking statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the future availability of AI-related features, functionality and capabilities in Twilio products, including Flex, Segment, Unify and Engage, and potential benefits to customers.
You should not rely on forward-looking statements as predictions of future events, the outcome of which is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements, including the described in more detail in our most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Forward-looking statements represent our beliefs and assumptions only as of the date such statements are made, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law.
