Creating Collaborative, Future-Ready Meeting Spaces

Today’s technology is already enabling collaborative, immersive and highly productive meetings, offering a high-quality, frictionless experience both for physically onsite users and remotely connected ones.

According to a recent survey by Eagle Hill Consulting, half of workers prefer flexible working models. Hybrid work stopped being an exception long ago to become not only a kind of standard (62% of US companies adopted it somehow, as reported by Flex Index), but, primarily, a demand for talent. 

To attract and retain the best resources on the market, companies need to rethink their working spaces: modern, innovative environments that offer a productivity and collaboration level to engage even remote workers to come to the office and achieve an experience unattainable in their homes or anywhere else, thanks to their 3-pillar support: video, audio and architecture. 

In fact, these common spaces offer screens to view content, interactive whiteboards for real-time collaboration in the most natural way possible, microphones and speakers to enable maximum audio quality and the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to collaborate with simultaneous interpretations to any language, debate transcripts, or debriefings for those who did not make it. 

The days when a single multipurpose room was equipped, used either for an in-person meeting as well as for a videoconference or team training, are long gone. 

However, it is essential to highlight the importance of having users adequately trained for the appropriate adoption of these technologies and to contribute to work teams’ productivity. And this is precisely one of the service distinctive features delivered by some companies -such as Cirion Technologies- in their implementation process.

Versatility: the key word

Organizations need multiple collaboration spaces nowadays; each of them adjusted to different needs — some small for highly interactive meetings with a few people, others slightly larger when a speaker is addressing to a restricted audience, some huge for events that bring more people together… 

“Versatility” is the key word in any case. These environments must be easily managed and configured, and should offer, as one of their main requirements, the same quality of experience and frictionless connectivity both for the people physically there as well as for “visitors” accessing from anywhere through their devices. 

When the design is appropriate, all people are at the same focal point with respect to the screen, the audio can be heard perfectly from all positions and even the tables and headboards are designed so that two users do not interfere with each other at all. 

As technology advances at full speed and offers new device alternatives at every moment, as well as collaboration and technological tools, having a strategic partner in charge of planning, designing, and implementing these meeting rooms as a managed service, is of the essence. Thus, companies are able to continue focusing on their core business, freeing themselves from maintenance, connections quality or updates, with the peace of mind that everything will be always running. 

Trends indicate that even more intelligent and immersive technologies will be adopted in the next future, such as virtual, mixed and augmented realities, taking the experience to the next levels. Even so, we can affirm that technologies available today allow us to enjoy the concept of “meeting rooms of the future”, as we speak. 

Author:

Fernando Riedel
Voice and Collaboration Specialist
Cirion Technologies

Transforming Productivity: Key Tasks AI Can Automate for Businesses

What specific tasks can AI automate?

Generative AI has not just changed all professions, it’s also transforming our perception of how to work. Many repetitive parts of the production process that are automatable are now easier to do because of AI models.

All of this gives us the opportunity of discovering the essence of what being human means and the true gist of work.

A beautiful and new existence is ahead of us, where we focus on what makes us distinctive as a species, on our curiosity, consciousness, dreams, emotional intelligence and vision, while the algorithms we create assist us in producing and executing our own vision. (If you want to delve into this vision, make sure to read our previous paper “Let’s make the future depend on us, let’s be aware of AI”)

This article explores how artificial intelligence (AI) can improve business productivity, addressing shared challenges and proposing effective solutions. Main items described below:

Productivity challenges:

• Lack of employee engagement.
• Frequent interruptions due to tools and apps shifts.
• Low-impact tasks consume valuable time.

Strategies to increase productivity:

• Encourage increased employee engagement.
• Implement AI to automate repetitive tasks.
• Enhance tools and workflows through collaboration platforms with AI embedded in their applications (e.g., AI Companion in Zoom, or Copilot in MS Teams).

Wrong perception of productivity:

• Despite feeling productive, many employees work more than 8 hours a day, spending a lot of time composing emails, chat messages, editing tutorial videos or drafting meeting minutes.
• Importance of work-life balance: In addition to the above, promoting a healthy work and personal life balance is of the essence. A balanced work environment not only improves productivity, but employees’ satisfaction and well-being.

Understanding current trends is key to be at the forefront of process optimization since business automation is continuously evolving.

We are now going to analyze 3 significant business automation trends for the upcoming 12 months, which set the B2B task automation standards, particularly focused on artificial intelligence.

1. Predictive Analytics for decision-making: Predictive analytics are a branch of advanced analytics that makes predictions about future outcomes using historical data combined with statistical modeling, data mining techniques and machine learning.
2. Use of Chatbots and Virtual Assistants: Implementation of these technologies not only optimizes workflow, but it may also improve employees’ satisfaction and well-being by reducing repetitive workload and providing ongoing, accessible support.
3. Conversation analysis: Identification of conversational patterns.  Conversation analysis not only helps to better understand how we communicate but can also improve communication efficiency and effectiveness in different contexts. Conversation structure, recurring patterns and themes, empirical data and practical applications.

Artificial intelligence (AI) implementation in a company can be divided into several stages:

1. Assessment: Evaluate your business needs and objectives to determine how AI can help you achieve them.
2. Planning: Create a detailed plan including required resources, estimated implementation time, and key performance indicators.
3. Process Automation: AI facilitates the automation of repetitive and low-complexity tasks, reducing execution timelines and increasing efficiency. Furthermore, it enables complex processes automation, thus reducing errors and increasing accuracy.
4. Collaboration Tools: To improve your team’s collaboration and communication, consider collaboration tools like those offered by Cirion Technologies, which are part of AI.

Remember that each company is unique, therefore customizing AI implementation to your specific needs is key. 

Author:
Lic. Fernando Riedel
Voice and Collaboration Specialist
Cirion Technologies

In today’s fast-paced work environment, maximizing productivity and improving collaboration are top priorities. Fortunately, AI technology can help with that, and many organizations are reaping the benefits. A global survey conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of Zoom[i] revealed that more than 75% of leaders whose teams used AI reported that their collaborators completed tasks faster, were more productive, and produced higher quality work.

Through a complete article published on the Zoom blog, Mahesh Ram, Head of AI Product Strategy in Zoom, tells us as follows: Zoom AI Companion, their generative AI assistant can help you revolutionize the way you work and communicate.  Included at no additional cost with the paid services assigned to your Zoom user account, it is designed to seamlessly integrate with Zoom collaboration tools, delivering a range of capabilities that can help you work smarter and more intuitively.

Many of our clients at Cirion Technologies already license Zoom and use it for communication and collaboration purposes. Therefore, we are going to explain how to activate AI Companion, explore its key functionalities and share some tips and tricks to help you leverage this amazing AI assistant in the guide below.

What Zoom AI Companion can do for you

Whether you’re new to AI or have been exploring its benefits for some time, you may be wondering how AI Companion can help you. One of the best qualities of AI Companion is its native integration with the rest of Zoom’s tools and, like everything else on this platform, it’s simple and easy to use. Due to space reasons, I will only mention three very practical ones for daily activities:

1. Message compose

Employees spend more time drafting and sending emails and chat messages than anything else at work, according to the Morning Consult survey about Zoom.  Furthermore, 44% of employees said these tasks take longer than desired.

As an AI writing assistant, AI Companion can compose emails with the right tone and length, helping you create professional and effective communications.

You can also use it to compose Chat responses with the right tone and length, which will help you save time and enable efficient communication within your team.

2. Summarize information to help you stay up to date

If you’re short of time and have a stack of chat messages to catch up on, AI Companion can quickly summarize your chat threads, allowing you to understand the big picture and respond accordingly.

AI Companion can also provide meeting summaries, therefore taking notes during meetings to remember discussed topics or next steps is no longer necessary. Besides, must not necessarily be recorded for AI Companion to generate a summary of it.

Soon, AI Companion will be able to deliver recorded phone call analytics and SMS summaries and Zoom Phone voicemail, thus saving even more time. For the near future, you will also receive real-time feedback on your communication and presentation skills during meetings, which will let you improve on the spot.

3. Automate note taking for appropriate meetings

If you keep forgetting to turn on AI Companion’s meeting summary capability at the start of the meeting, just set it to start automatically. You can do this in your web portal settings under the AI Companion tab.

However, you may not want a summary for some meetings, such as one-to-ones and other calls where sensitive information might be addressed. In these cases you can edit your recurring meetings and choose to automatically start only the meeting summary for your weekly team calls, for example.

You’ll find this feature on the web portal by editing your recurring meetings (show “Options” and then check the appropriate box).

How to enable AI Companion

Now that you’re acquainted with some of the ways AI Companion can help you throughout your workday, here’s how you can start using it right away. You have access to AI Companion features available with paid services assigned to your Zoom user account at no additional cost[ii]. Just follow the steps below to turn it on:

1. Check with your administrator: By default, all AI Companion features are disabled, therefore administrators must first enable features through account and group level settings. If you’re in a Zoom meeting and you see the AI Companion Zoom icon in your toolbar, you can click it and follow the instructions to request that your admin enable that feature.
2. Log in to and update your Zoom client: Go to your Zoom client and make sure you’re logged in. Also check to make sure your client is updated (minimum version 5.16.0 required).
   

3. Go to your web portal account settings (click “Settings” in the left panel) and look for the AI Companion tab. For features that have user-level settings, you’ll be able to turn each capability on and off.
4. Begin exploring: You can find the AI Companion icon in multiple products within the Zoom client, such as in your Zoom Meetings controls toolbar or Zoom Team Chat window. Once you’ve located the AI Companion icon, you’re ready to start exploring its capabilities as an AI meeting assistant, writing helper, and more.

If you’re ready to enhance your productivity and collaboration, start using AI Companion today — all at no additional cost with the paid services assigned to your Zoom user account.

If you don’t have Zoom yet and are thinking about migrating your communications to this platform, then you have read this article at the right moment because at Cirion Technologies Voice & Collaboration we deliver Managed Zoom for fast and cost-effective communication.

Until our next meeting.

[i] Based on an online survey of 11,023 full-time knowledge workers in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. Conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of Zoom Video Communications, Inc., August 10-25, 2023.

[ii] Note: AI Companion may not be available for some vertical and regional customers.

Author:
Fernando Riedel
Voice & Collaboration Product Specialist
Cirion Technologies

And I said that a good salesperson’s features (charisma, honesty, trust, and temperance) are timeless and that customers’ changing expectations, the new ways of connecting and the innovative products presented on a weekly basis, led AMs (Account Managers or Business Representatives) to make use of all available tools to improve their skills and create better purchase experiences.

We also defined conversation intelligence as an AI and machine learning driven technology to analyze sales conversations and find high-impact information such as trending topics, customer sentiment engagement, and more.

We started by explaining how conversational intelligence is normally used in fields like sales, marketing, and customer service to help people and organizations improve their understanding of users and contact them more effectively, and we mentioned a comprehensive Zoom solution —Zoom Revenue Accelerator.

Today we will explore these features in depth, and mention some benefits, as well as their advantages and contract methods.

The changing world of sales

Conversational intelligence consists of analyzing and understanding human conversation nuances. This implies interpreting the subtleties of spoken language such as tone, pace and inflexion, as well as nonverbal signals, as body language and facial expressions.

Benefits offered by conversational intelligence are a game-changer, including:

• AI-driven coaching, to identify areas of improvement for an AM and weak spots in the overall sales process.
• Improved sales execution, to develop sales strategy tutorials, which automatically identify winning business messages, most common objections and the most effective responses.
• Productivity improvement to expedite the working day from your device by removing time-consuming, insignificant tasks such as note-taking or CRM updates.
• Extended forecast to feed other predictability tools with information captured form conversations including engagement levels, sentiment and actionables resulting from a meeting.
• Data-driven inductive information to face marketing and sales teams, with real data captured in conversations, thus improving employees’ training and onboarding.

Zoom Revenue Accelerator (maybe you heard about it as Zoom IQ for Sales) is a conversational intelligence solution designed for the Zoom platform available to help the business and marketing areas. By analyzing your sales conversations data, this AI solution provides critical information that business leaders can use to develop their teams, improve customers’ experience and make future-focused decisions.

Millions of business conversations take place via Zoom on a daily basis, through their Zoom Meeting and Zoom Phone apps. and now we would like to add another app. to help them reach their greatest potential.  Just as an example, below you will find a list of some functions you can access to by activating a Zoom Revenue Accelerator license:

• Voice analytics: For data-driven feedback on pace and delivery during sales calls, as well as customer engagement metrics.
• Auto-generated summaries: Streamline call review with AI-generated summaries that gather significant points into a few sentences.
• Actionables: Capture the next steps discussed in the conversation to keep the deal moving and customers engaged.

Finally, you should also know that Zoom Revenue Accelerator is exclusively available to current Business, Business Plus, and Enterprise customers with licenses for Zoom Meetings and/or Zoom Phone. A specific license is required; furthermore Zoom users with email accounts on shared domains (such as gmail.com, outlook.com, or yahoo.com) are not able to use it. Zoom Revenue Accelerator is not a standalone product. In addition, Zoom is not planning to offer it independently, at least clearly for now. It has a dashboard that shows your performance over time and metrics for all your meetings, you can quickly gain insights into the meeting with the help of Summary and Smart Chapters, and integration with CRM is admitted.

Until our next meeting.

Author:
Fernando Riedel
Voice & Collaboration Product Specialist
Cirion Technologies

Although AI itself is not new, the ongoing blast of data, in tandem with the seamless growth of computing power is having a significant impact on our daily personal as well as business lives.

This is an evolution of machine-human relationship and interaction. In the past century we started to use machines capable of doing some computations and delivering more efficient results than those produced by humans; our communication with machines was more complex, through language commands we needed to learn for execution purposes.

Our language skills improved over time, as though we were peers or colleagues and today we can talk to computers and tell them to do what we want just by talking to them, obtaining very fast results not only using natural language, but images and potentially other actionable items, as well.

Therefore, we are no longer interacting with an inferior entity that we need to command by knowing the language and providing limited instructions, as we speak; now and because of that ongoing and spinning evolution, “which enhanced our vocabulary” we are in a position to ask ourselves what we request from them, how we phrase it to improve their understanding, what will be the next thing these machines will learn, and at what point they will become self-taught.

I wouldn’t like to delve into this area more than I already have. But I do recommend for those interested in this topic, particularly some theories about where all this ends, reading what Eudald Carbonell (Spanish anthropologist) wrote in his book “El Homo ex novo” -one of his latest publications as Research co-director at the archaeological site of Atapuerca, Spain-, where human evidence from 1.4 million years ago was found. Homo sapiens—us—is in retreat giving place to sapiens prothesis, sapiens edit and humanoids. And they will all coexist in the same place by the end of this century.

The Homo ex novo is optimistic: it predicts that different types of humans and humanoids will help keep the ship afloat and create transhumanism and posthumanism. The reason is simple, he wrote-“We must make the future depend on us, on our efforts and actions, and not just on natural selection, the environment and chance.” Otherwise we could “be driven somewhere we don’t want to go.” Although some social actors deny climate change, the reality is still there: “Evolutionary determinism will also set the pace for us in our future,” claims Carbonell in this book, which I recommend reading.

But going back to the evolution where we stand today, which refers to how ask for things, in order to improve AI’s interpretation and understanding, and returning the closest answer to what we are looking for or wanting, it is here where Cirion Technologies is adding value for businesses, with some tools to improve the Collaborative services they provide.

AI-powered content generation can function as an invaluable resource to accelerate communication. AI natural language processing is able to collect complex data from different sources, turning them into comprehensive yet accessible reports, market summaries, and customized investment strategies. Less analytically, AI is capable of boosting communication by creating blog posts, videos and images, as well as graphics, freeing up the burden of creative staff resources for more strategic communications.

For banks and investment firms, this means that AI can not only speed up the communication process, but help ensure that communications are personalized, accurate, and aligned with customer and shareholder expectations. This can improve trust, increase stakeholder satisfaction, and potentially even create a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

In addition, something as tangible and applicable as the above, are the Chatbots that we develop for customer service, user services, marketing, sales and others. Applications designed for both CX (Customer eXperience) and EX (Employee eXperience). Having engaged and satisfied employees is critical nowadays, both to improve CX and to retain talent. Hence the emergence of Virtual Assistants such as Microsoft Copilot or Zoom AI Companion, generative AI assistants that help evolve (revolutionize?) the way you currently work and communicate.

If you are ready to improve your productivity and collaboration, contact us today and let us show you how aware we are of Artificial Intelligence possibilities and how we act accordingly to make the future depend on us and in the right way.

Until our next meeting,

Author:
Fernando Riedel
Voice & Collaboration Product Specialist
Cirion Technologies

CCaaS, gives you access to the flexibility required to meet market ever-changing demands and making sure that your Contact Center is a springboard to success. 

Customer experience is key to any company’s success.   One of the primary means for an effective management of this issue is through Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), a flexible and scalable approach to customer care. 

Throughout this text we will explore some valuable tips to allow managers /businesses enhance their customer experience using CCaaS: 

1. Choose the appropriate platform

Choosing the right platform is one of the most important decisions to set up an effective Contact Center. Don’t make this decision based solely on cost; consider how the app can drive your business growth and effectiveness. Make sure it will be flexible enough to adjust to your business specific needs. 

2. Integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI is revolutionizing the way Contact Centers operate. Integrating chatbots and virtual assistants can significantly boost efficiency by automating simple tasks and enabling human agents focus on more complex and meaningful customer interactions. 

3. Flexibility and scalability

Flexibility and scalability are some of the main advantages of CCaaS.  This allows your company to adjust Contact Center capacity based on demand, avoiding unnecessary costs with idle infrastructure. 

4. Omnichannel customer care

Today’s customers expect the flexibility to choose how they want to communicate with a business.  Make sure your Contact Center platform offers support for a multiplicity of channels, such as telephony, email, chat, WhatsApp and social networks. 

5. Ongoing care

Offering a seamless omnichannel experience is of the essence. If a customer starts a conversation on one channel and later switches to another, transition should be smooth, without having to repeat information. 

6. Get to know your customers

Personalization is the key to an exceptional customer experience. This is why understanding your audience profile and needs is essential.  Use data and analytics to offer relevant solutions and responses for each situation. 

7. Training and learning

Your representatives play a key role in customer experience. Invest in training to ensure they are well prepared to manage different types of queries and interactions. 

8. Understand the campaigns

When implementing marketing and sales campaigns, make sure your Contact Center team is aligned with the campaign goals and messages. Thus you will ensure a consistent and effective approach. 

9. Continuous assessment

Assess your Contact Center performance on a regular basis to identify areas for improvement. Analyze metrics such as wait time, resolution rate, and customer satisfaction to make necessary adjustments. 

10. Strategic alliances

Consider development of strategic alliances with vendors that offer complementary services, such as connectivity, internet and telephony. This might simplify management and improve contact center operations efficiency. 

An effective Contact Center is key to enhance customer experience. By choosing the right solution, investing in team development, and embracing innovative technologies, your company will be on the right pathway to providing exceptional service and building robust relationships with their multiple stakeholders. 

CCaaS will give you access to the flexibility required to meet market ever-changing demands and making sure that your Contact Center is a springboard to success, not just an operational cost. Bear in mind that success relies on combining cutting-edge technology with a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences.

Author: 
Henrique Dornas
Voice & UCC Manager
Cirion Brazil

Engineer from Inatel, with an MBA in Business Management from FGV. Over 25 years working at the IT and Telecommunications market.  Expert in unified Communications, collaboration, and voice solutions for businesses.