Avaya has boosted its cloud-based collaboration portfolio with the completion of the acquisition of Seattle-based contact centre-as-a-service specialist Spoken Communications.
Spoken offers a suite of customer experience management applications, powered by conversational artificial intelligence capabilities.
In addition, the purchase of the Spoken platform and intellectual property – comprising some 170 patents and patent applications – will underpin Avaya’s move into Big Data, Machine Learning and AI.
“This acquisition is the latest example of how Avaya is now moving at cloud speed and investing for the future to provide our customers and partners with the innovative cloud solutions they need,” said Avaya CEO and president Jim Chirico.
Avaya said it had already integrated Spoken’s multi-tenant architecture and its own customer experience technologies, noting that the companies had been in a co-development collaboration for the past year – during which the partnership had brought several cloud-based services to market.
Avaya customers will now also be able to access Spoken’s specialised agent software applications as well as its IntelligentWire contact centre automation services.
The IntelligentWire services use AI and learning technologies on live voice conversations to reduce workload after a call has ended, drive intelligent responses and provide insight into the customer experience.