Q4 '24 release

 Platform-wide feature

 Paid-for feature

 Enhancement to paid-for feature

General Availability Features

Vonage Premier for Service Cloud Voice

Progressive Dialer (Connect) for Service Cloud Voice 

Connect (dialer embedded in Salesforce) is a core part of the Vonage Contact Center platform. Our current preview dialing has been enhanced to enable progressive dialing. Progressive dialing automatically progresses to the next number or record based on the previous call’s disposition code. A supervisor creates progressive dialing lists, which are lists of contacts that the supervisor wants their agents to call directly from within Salesforce. In Q4 ‘24 we added this capability to our Service Cloud Voice integration. The configuration for the dialer for SCV is the same as for the core VCC platform.

Send real-time conversation events 

Sending real-time conversation events allows Vonage to send sentiment signals to Salesforce. Using sentiment information, Salesforce can help guide the agent during a call; for example, by launching the correct Salesforce Next Best Action, in a timely and accurate manner, if the customer is showing signs of churn.

Vonage Enhanced Noise Cancellation for WebRTC 

Background noise is a significant issue for contact centers. This can be noise around agents (for example, fans, air conditioning, or — for home workers — pets and children), voices of other people in the background (for example, other agents in a densely packed office), and even background noise around the consumer. Background noise impacts agent and consumer experience by causing frustration and requiring people to repeat themselves. This can result in longer calls and lower satisfaction.

Vonage Enhanced Noise Cancellation was added to VCC in Q2 ‘24. In Q4 ‘24, we extended this capability to our Service Cloud Voice integration.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure support for WebRTC for WebRTC

An increasing number of enterprise customers are using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to manage the environment contact center agents use daily. Using WebRTC with VDI can present challenges such as increased latency and packet loss, which reduce call audio quality. These challenges occur because audio is not routed directly to the agent but through the remote desktop server instead.

VDI support for WebRTC was added to VCC in Q2 ‘24. In Q4 ‘24 we extended this capability to our Service Cloud Voice integration.

Agent warning when local issues may affect WebRTC for WebRTC 

Many WebRTC call quality issues relate to local configuration, equipment, and infrastructure. This is common for all IP telephony and conferencing solutions. Such problems are difficult for Vonage to diagnose and correct as they relate to conditions, which are outside of our control and that we don’t provide support for or manage.

In Q4 ‘23, VCC was enhanced to report these local issues to agents in real time. In Q4 ‘24, we extended this capability to our Service Cloud Voice integration.

Headset controls for WebRTC 

WebRTC provides the best user experience for agents by bringing all the VCC call controls into ContactPad. Without WebRTC, agents must answer the call on a physical device, for example, and then use ContactPad for all other call controls. The agent has to find and switch to ContactPad to answer, reject, hang up, mute, and unmute calls, even if they are busy elsewhere.

Headset controls for WebRTC was added to VCC in Q1 ‘24. In Q4 ‘24, we extended this capability to our Service Cloud Voice integration.

Salesforce Open CTI

Support Enhanced Omni-Channel with external routing 

Enhanced Omni-Channel is an updated UI model in Salesforce that allows agents to handle multiple interactions differently. In Q4 '24, we released support for Enhanced Omni-Channel with external routing for Open CTI.

Support external routing for the newer Messaging In-app/Web channel 

Messaging for In-App and Web is an updated messaging model in Salesforce. It is a core part of Enhanced Omni-Channel that enables agents to handle multiple interactions. From this release, we support newer Messaging In-app and Web channels with external routing for Open CTI.

Conversation Analyzer

Historical Analytics: Sentiment analysis 

Following the release, users can to use Historical Analytics to understand, analyze, and act on the insights created by the sentiment generated throughout the calls. The data available in Salesforce, APIs, and soon in Historical Analytics allows users to create conversational insights. As an example, users can discover which calls, and thus agents, have the most, or least, positive or negative sentiment and what the sentiment is throughout the call. This enables users to identify calls that started well and ended poorly from a sentiment perspective. Sentiment analysis in Historical Analytics will be available only in English.

Agent Experience

Add notes during an interaction in ContactPad 

Agents can now add notes directly in ContactPad during an interaction. They can capture notes alongside the existing disposition codes. Supervisors can see these notes alongside the call recording in Interaction Content.

Administration

Enhanced license management

We have introduced a significant enhancement to license management in VCC.

The refreshed Licenses tab offers a comprehensive overview of the licenses held by customers for each license type. It provides details of available and assigned licenses for each license type.

Open

This enhancement streamlines license management, making it easier for administrators to manage and analyze licenses.

Insights

Team Monitoring: Optional phone number columns 

We are excited to introduce a new optional Phone column for the agent phone in Team Monitoring. This column is hidden by default, but users can show it using the show/hide column feature, as shown in the following image:

Open

Once added, an icon that indicates whether the agent is using computer audio or physical phone is displayed, followed by the agent’s phone number.

Open

Real-time Analytics: Control access to Agent state summary in Real-time Analytics

We are happy to announce an enhancement to agents' timelines in Real-time Analytics. From now on, users can control other users' access to Agent state summary timelines. It is a dashboard-based permission that only the dashboard's owner can manage. This permission is turned on by default, allowing the dashboard's users to access other agent's timelines. When turned off, a user can display only their own Agent state summary timelines.

Open

Real-time Analytics: UX improvements

Within the Q4 2024 release, we introduced several user experience improvements to Real-time Analytics.

Donut widget changes
Colors used in the donut widget when exploring agents by presence state or interaction state will be aligned with the colors used in the badges to present the states. In addition, small changes were introduced to the donut thickness and borders.

Open

Badge designs
The badges showing states and thresholds within Real-time Analytics are aligned with their shape with Team Monitoring to introduce consistency across product areas.

Open

Real-time Analytics: Virtual Assistant reporting

Accounts integrated with VonageAI Studio Virtual Assistant and using the new Virtual Assistant applet in their interaction plans can now view real-time indications of interactions handled by the VonageAI virtual self-service bot. This information is displayed on the Inspect interaction timeline. Additionally, new Virtual Agent metrics are available in Real-Time Analytics dashboards for enhanced visibility.

Open

Open

Historical Analytics: Mark as favorite 

We have introduced the possibility to mark Historical Analytics dashboards as favorites. This enhancement allows users to tag their most frequently accessed dashboards, which, once marked as favorites, will be displayed at the top of the table or in the top rows within the tiles view.

The favorites section presents these dashboards, in alphabetical order, followed by the remaining dashboards, also listed alphabetically. VCC users should already be familiar with this action, as we offer favorite functionality in Team Monitoring and Real-time Analytics already.

Open

Historical Analytics: Agent summary dataset — now generally available