Eight items to close out September, and two of them change how a customer experiences the interaction rather than how an admin configures it.
TL;DR
- Customer-first callback places the call to the customer before connecting an agent, reversing the usual order.
- Step-up authentication lets an unauthenticated web messaging conversation become an authenticated one partway through.
- Sensitive data masking now covers Dutch, German, Swiss German, Brazilian and European Portuguese, and US and Spain Spanish voice interactions.
- A new notification topic fires when outbound web messaging fails to reach the customer.
Customer Engagement
Customer-first callback is a genuine change in behaviour. The platform calls the customer first, waits until they are ready to speak, and only then connects an agent. The conventional order reserves an agent and then dials, which burns agent time on ring-out, voicemail, and wrong numbers.
Whether it suits you depends on what your agents cost relative to how often callbacks fail to connect. High callback volume with a poor connect rate is where this pays. It also changes the customer experience, because the customer now answers a call and waits briefly rather than being greeted immediately, so it is worth listening to what that hold sounds like before rolling it out broadly.
Step-up authentication solves a specific and common problem. A web messaging conversation starts anonymously, the customer asks something that requires identity, and previously the options were to escalate out of the channel or accept a weaker check. Now the conversation can transition to an authenticated session in place, driven by an agent or a bot.
If you have digital journeys that stall at the identity question, this is the item to look at. The design question is where in the flow you ask, because asking too early costs you conversations and asking too late means the agent has already worked the request.
Developers can also subscribe to a new notification topic for outbound web messaging delivery failures, which makes it possible to react to an undelivered message automatically rather than discovering it in a report. Agentless notification fallbacks are the obvious use.
Data and Reporting
Sensitive data masking added Dutch (nl-NL), German (de-DE), Swiss German (de-CH), Portuguese for Brazil and Portugal (pt-BR, pt-PT), and Spanish for the US and Spain (es-US, es-ES) on voice interactions. If you run European voice traffic and have been masking only English, this closes most of that gap in one release.
Employee Productivity and Platform
Poly and HP Edge E Series phones are now supported as Genesys Cloud managed phones, on media tier 1.0.0.18140 or later. Check the media tier version before ordering handsets, because the support depends on it.
Knowledge authors can resize images and tables directly in the knowledge workbench, which removes a round trip through an external editor.
Genesys also obtained a Unified License for Virtual Network Operators from the India Department of Telecommunications, letting Genesys Cloud Services India sell contact center solutions directly in that region. That is a commercial change rather than a technical one, but it matters if you have been buying Indian capacity through an intermediary.
What this means for your contact center
Customer-first callback and step-up authentication are both worth evaluating, and both are experience changes rather than configuration tweaks. Pilot them on one queue or one journey before deciding.
The masking languages are the easy win. If you take voice in any of those seven locales, enabling masking is a small change with a direct compliance benefit.
What to check
- Measure your current callback connect rate and average agent ring-out time before deciding whether customer-first callback pays for itself.
- Listen to what a customer actually hears on a customer-first callback before enabling it beyond a pilot queue.
- Map where in each digital journey identity is required, and place the step-up prompt there rather than at the start.
- Enable sensitive data masking for any of the seven newly supported locales you take voice traffic in.
- Confirm your media tier version before ordering Poly or HP Edge E Series handsets.
Full details are in the official Genesys Cloud release notes for September 30, 2024. Questions about how any of this lands in your environment? Email me.
Tracking a deadline? Every announced Genesys Cloud deprecation is on the deprecation tracker.