In the communications business, the artificial intelligence wars are on.
As an analyst, I tend to focus on market transitions as that’s when significant share change happens. When the cloud first came to unified communications and contact centers, Webex established itself as a leader, which enabled it to be acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. The pandemic and working from home shift saw Microsoft Teams and Zoom take a disproportionate share.
Now, the industry is on the precipice of the next major transition: the infusion of AI into customer and employee experience platforms. This creates the opportunity for challengers to build a better mousetrap and wrestle some share away from the market leaders. This week, Cisco is holding its WebexOne event, and it’s using the event to showcase its AI-driven innovations targeting employee collaboration and customer service to be a disruptor in the market.
Cisco has invested heavily in AI across its portfolio, but the collaboration business unit has led the way. Webex made several AI-related announcements that address the broader trends in workplace automation and customer service transformation, particularly within hybrid work environments and the evolving demands of customer expectations.
I attended a briefing with senior Cisco executives to preview the announcements. Aruna Ravichandran, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Cisco Collaboration, led the briefing, which was joined by Jeetu Patel (pictured), Cisco’s executive vice president and chief product officer, and Anurag Dhingra, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco Collaboration.
Patel set the stage by saying that the company had boosted innovation in a way that has embedded it in the team culture. “It’s just a part of how they work,” he said. “And thinking about what we are doing with AI right now will blow you away. The first time I saw it, I couldn’t believe it was this good, and the more you start using it, the more you get excited about it.”
That set a high bar. Here are details on all the AI-related announcements:
Enhancing employee collaboration
One of the key announcements at WebexOne was the introduction of new AI-powered tools to improve collaboration and employee experiences within the workplace. These innovations include AI-enhanced spatial meeting capabilities, more efficient audio management tools, and the integration of virtual assistants into workflows. The company unveiled several new tools, including Spatial Meetings and the Ceiling Microphone Pro.
With Spatial Meetings, Cisco aims to offer more immersive virtual collaboration experiences by using advanced 3D video technologies to make virtual meetings feel more physically present.
“Just to jog your memory, at the beginning of this year, Apple launched the Vision Pro product, and Webex was ready on day one to launch with Apple,” Dhingra said. “And our app for Vision Pro is the editor’s choice in the App Store because we leverage the true powers of the platform, things like completely different cameras and the ability to have tasking in a much more effective way.”
He added that Cisco is bringing Spatial Meetings to all conference rooms. The Ceiling Microphone Pro supports flexible and adaptive meeting environments by automatically adjusting its audio capture to accommodate room changes or speaker movements.
“This is the industry’s first adaptive AI microphone,” Dhingra said. “It’s zero-touch. It’s plug and play, configuring itself to deliver an amazing experience for everyone in the room.”
It appears that Cisco designed these solutions with the hybrid workplace in mind, addressing the challenge of keeping remote and on-site workers equally engaged and productive, regardless of their physical location. Webex has certainly had its ups and downs through the pandemic, hybrid work, and return to work, but its room systems have been and continue to be the best in class.
Improving IT productivity
The second part of Cisco’s strategy is improving information technology teams’ ability to manage hybrid workspaces more efficiently. With tools such as the Workspace Designer and Smart Diagnostics, IT teams can quickly diagnose issues and manage spaces using AI for automated solutions. This shift toward automation reduces manual tasks and increases the capacity for scaling operations, making it easier for organizations to manage the increasingly complex requirements of hybrid work.
Dhingra said Smart Diagnostics will help IP admins focus on critical problems. “AI will give you a lot of context. And when you combine that with an AI, this is a true enabler for at-scale deployments.” He said this will enable a small IT staff to manage thousands of rooms.
Workspace Designer creates a 3-D model of a conference room or meeting space and allows an administrator to place tables, cameras, microphones, displays and other meeting equipment to assess the design’s effectiveness. The tool shows where the audio gaps are, how complete the video coverage is, and other aspects that could cause a less-than-optimal meeting experience.
The focus on increasing the capabilities of IT staff mirrors industry trends in which technology is increasingly expected to handle routine tasks, freeing up human resources for higher-level problem-solving and strategic work. Cisco’s innovations, such as integrating the Desk Phone 9800 Series with performance monitoring tools, further illustrate the importance of seamless, tech-driven support for hybrid work environments.
The Workspace Designer addresses a gap in Cisco’s go-to-market strategy regarding meeting rooms. The company has invested heavily in building out its offices in Atlanta, Paris, New York, and other locations to showcase Cisco technology. Though customers who toured the facility liked what they saw, converting this into sales was a challenge as it wasn’t always obvious what equipment to put where. Workspace Designer enables customers to try things virtually, ensuring they are purchasing the best possible technology for each space.
Customer service transformation with AI-driven solutions
Cisco also announced new AI tools aimed at transforming customer service. The Webex AI Agent and the AI Agent Studio mark Cisco’s attempt to modernize how companies interact with customers. These solutions tap into conversational AI to offer customers quicker, more effective self-service options, eliminating the need for prolonged interactions with human agents for routine inquiries.
By introducing the AI Agent, Cisco is positioning itself in a market increasingly focused on reducing customer wait times and improving satisfaction. This technology uses conversational intelligence to efficiently resolve customer queries, which Cisco says will improve customer satisfaction scores. This type of automation has become more critical as businesses face higher customer expectations for instant responses, driven by an overall shift toward digital-first interactions.
One notable feature of the Webex AI Agent is its capability to handle simple inquiries autonomously, allowing human agents to focus on more complex customer issues. What was interesting about the Cisco demo was the quality of the virtual agent. During the demo, the speaker started asking about human resources benefits and, at one point, interrupted the agent and asked a new question. The virtual agent was able to pivot quickly, much like a human.
This should have some significant implications for customer experience. Historically, we have deferred to text-based conversations with bots and virtual agents because the audio experience was always bad. What Cisco showed was conversational and lifelike, enabling customers to talk to a brand naturally and have their inquiries answered.
As the technology improves, I predict that the industry will eventually reach a point where customers will prefer the virtual agent over a human one for simple transactions. The same shift happened in banking about 25 years ago. Early in the shift to online banking, many people pushed back as banking was viewed as something you should talk to a human about. However, today, every bank offers feature-rich mobile and online banking, which people prefer today.
The company designed AI Agent Studio to simplify the setup of AI-based customer service, allowing IT administrators and business users to deploy these solutions more quickly. This low-code environment underscores the industry’s movement toward empowering nontechnical users to manage complex technological systems, a trend that allows companies to scale more effectively.
Some final thoughts
These announcements reflect AI’s growing role in workplace collaboration and customer service across industries. By improving employee experiences and customer satisfaction, Cisco is tapping into two key areas of organizational performance.
There is a push to make work environments more engaging, collaborative, and efficient for employees, particularly in hybrid or fully remote settings. For customers, the introduction of automated agents and intelligent support tools addresses the increased demand for quicker, more effective service solutions.
Cisco’s investment in AI-powered tools aligns with broader industry trends where companies seek ways to reduce operational costs while improving customer and employee satisfaction. Including AI in nearly every aspect of their product portfolio also speaks to the broader expectation that AI will play a foundational role in business operations and customer interactions.
However, the significance of these announcements also hinges on how successfully these tools can be implemented in real-world scenarios. Though Cisco has outlined several use cases for these new AI features, the practical challenges of deployment, integration with existing systems, and user adoption rates will likely determine the long-term impact of these innovations.
Cisco’s announcements underscore the company’s ambition to leverage AI to address critical challenges in hybrid work environments and customer service. These innovations suggest that Cisco is positioning itself to meet the evolving needs of both employees and customers by offering scalable, intelligent and automated solutions.
Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.