Nuance Harnesses AI to Turn Customers into “Friends”; Adds Social Media Engagement to Digital Portfolio
New Social Media Tool Breaks Down Silos of Engagement, Enabling Brands to Deploy Unified, Always-On Customer Service Across Omni-Channel Platforms

BURLINGTON, Mass., – November 8, 2017 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced Social Media Engagement, an expansion to its Digital Engagement Platform, that allows brands to engage with consumers directly on social channels using the same platform that is powering their traditional customer care programs. The new capability utilizes artificial intelligence to listen to consumer conversations on social networks and intelligently interact with them in context through messages, posts, and comments.

Across the globe, consumers stay in contact, track breaking news, livestream events, seek customer service, and more, all through their social networks. Social media usage continues to grow in terms of reach, networks, and frequency, in fact, 2.8 billion people were using social networks at the end of 2016 – 21% more than in 2015*. According to Forrester Research (“Mine The Emotions Behind Your Consumers' Social Media Behaviors,” September 26, 2017) social media allows brands to build awareness while also forging closer consumer relationships across channels and in new contexts; therefore, businesses need to follow-suit by developing cross-channel approaches for consumer interactions that includes social platforms.

“We’re in a new era of customer service where brands can make consumers their “friends” by having strategies in place to connect wherever and whenever the consumer chooses to engage instead of forcing them to call between certain hours,” said Robert Weideman, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise Division, Nuance. “The addition of Nuance Social Media Engagement allows brands to service one of the most popular channels of choice – social networks – through intelligent automation by responding to customers in real-time, and in the appropriate, personalized context. Social customer service, when connected to all digital service channels, will have a huge impact on brands’ ability to provide fast, accurate, and effective customer service that is an extension of human engagement.”

Nuance Social Media Engagement identifies important public Facebook and Twitter conversations through configured rules such as hashtags, mentions and natural language understanding to identify when customers are in need of immediate and personalized assistance. Artificial intelligence routes incoming messages to the right agent with the appropriate skillset to engage with customers directly on social media. Agents have access to important information, such as history of conversations and where consumers have previously engaged, and can easily provide assistance via social media or move an individual to another channel, without losing context. Each engagement is analyzed and fed back into the system to ensure brands are utilizing actionable insights and historic interactions to continuously optimize the customer experience across all channels.

The Digital Engagement Platform allows brands to engage consumers effortlessly on all channels such as websites, mobile apps, messaging platforms and now social networks through one unified platform – generating comprehensive insights through one view at the customer journey.

Key benefits of the Social Media Engagement feature include:

  • Reduction in contact center costs and agent handle times by combining engagements in all digital channels and presenting historic and contextual information in a streamlined way
  • Enhanced omni-channel customer engagement through unified reporting and analytics, as well as the ability to easily move conversations between all digital channels
  • Effortless social media engagement and improved customer satisfaction by listening to and engaging in communications happening on social media networks

Nuance is a recognized leader in providing automated and intelligent AI-powered customer engagement solutions to large enterprises around the world. There are over 6,500 enterprises using Nuance’s self-service technologies, processing an estimated 14 billion transactions each year. Nuance has over 700 professional services team members who integrate the Company’s customer service solutions deeply within the back-office systems of many of the leading telecommunications and financial institutions around the world, as well as leading healthcare, travel, and government organizations. In a single platform, Nuance is the only vendor to combine the tooling, intelligence and analytics of natural language processing (NLP) and cognitive technologies, as well as integrated security, to deliver automated and assisted solutions targeted to Enterprise needs.

For more information about Nuance Social Media Engagement, please visit here.

*Digital in 2017: Global Overview, Hootsuite & We Are Social, January 24, 2017

About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) is the pioneer and leader in conversational and cognitive AI innovations that bring intelligence to everyday work and life. The company delivers solutions that can understand, analyze and respond to human language to increase productivity and amplify human intelligence. With decades of domain and artificial intelligence expertise, Nuance works with thousands of organizations – in global industries that include healthcare, telecommunications, automotive, financial services, and retail – to create stronger relationships and better experiences for their customers and workforce. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com

Trademark reference: Nuance and the Nuance logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

Contact Information

For Press
US
Karen Link
Nuance Communications, Inc.
Tel: 781-565-4797
karen.link@nuance.com