Enghouse Holdings UK Limited, a subsidiary of Enghouse Systems Limited, has acquired Aculab PLC, a provider of communication and AI software solutions.

Aculab offers a range of solutions including a communications platform as a service (CPaaS), AI-driven technologies, voice and face biometrics, gateways, and media processing products.

The acquisition expands Enghouse’s gateway business, adds a CPaaS solution, and includes AI-enabled products in their portfolio.

Steve Sadler, Chairman & CEO of Enghouse, said:

“Aculab’s team and products expand our existing gateway business, adds a CPaaS solution, and several AI enabled products to the Enghouse Interactive’s product portfolio. We are very pleased to welcome Aculab’s customers, partners and employees to Enghouse.”

“We are excited to join Enghouse, particularly because of the synergies between the two companies,” said Ladan Baghai-Ravary, CEO of Aculab. “I am pleased with the acquisition by Enghouse, seeing it as a great opportunity to expand the company’s reach while ensuring its innovative legacy continues,” said Alan Pound, Chairman & Founder of Aculab.

Enghouse Systems, a Canadian company, focuses on enterprise software solutions for various industries such as contact centers, healthcare, and telecommunications. Aculab, a UK-based telecommunications company founded in 1978, is known for its innovative solutions in telephony, speech processing, and AI technologies.

Aculab’s offerings include cloud-based communication services, AI-driven voice biometrics, and advanced speech processing tools like text-to-speech and automatic speech recognition. The company serves industries globally and is recognized for its reliability and technological excellence in enhancing communication systems.

Microsoft has introduced multilingual autonomous voice agents using Copilot Studio, a significant advancement in their AI capabilities.

The voice agents are designed to handle multiple languages effortlessly, requiring just a simple configuration. This ensures that business logic and integrations remain consistent across different languages, streamlining the deployment process for companies operating in multilingual environments. In regions with diverse languages, these bots can dynamically select languages during conversations based on user input or the dialed phone number.

This feature enhances user experience by providing seamless and contextually appropriate responses, regardless of the language spoken by the user. For example, if a user starts a conversation in English but switches to Spanish, the bot can seamlessly continue the conversation in Spanish without any interruption.

Administrators have the flexibility to set up routing rules for calls that require human assistance. This means calls can be directed to customer service representatives who are fluent in the caller’s language, ensuring that complex queries or issues are handled effectively. This routing capability is particularly beneficial for global businesses that need to provide support in multiple languages.

The voice agents will be available in 26 languages, providing wide linguistic coverage. This extensive language support underscores Microsoft’s commitment to making their AI solutions accessible and effective for a global audience.

The integration of these multilingual capabilities into Copilot Studio for the Dynamics 365 Contact Center represents a significant step forward in the development of autonomous agents, enabling businesses to scale their support operations efficiently while maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction.

More informaton can be found here.

Twilio has introduced ConversationRelay, a voice AI platform that simplifies voice AI development by managing technical complexities and enabling natural, scalable voice interactions.

ConversationRelay integrates seamlessly with existing Large Language Models (LLMs) to support human-like conversational pacing, Speech-to-Text (STT), and Text-to-Speech (TTS) capabilities.

Twilio expanded RCS Business Messaging to iOS 18.1, offering branded messaging capabilities, interactive features, and advanced engagement metrics for businesses.

RCS Business Messaging provides rich content options like quick-reply buttons, carousels, and branded experiences, enhancing customer interactions beyond traditional SMS.

Twilio’s focus on conversational AI and enriched messaging tools demonstrates its commitment to empowering developers with versatile solutions for evolving customer communication needs.

Predictions suggest Twilio will introduce pre-built conversational templates for ConversationRelay and expand RCS features to drive cross-industry adoption and deepen AI integrations.

Twilio’s strategic focus on ConversationRelay and RCS Business Messaging positions the company as a leader in AI-enabled communication, enabling transformative innovations in conversational AI and omnichannel engagement.

Salesforce has announced Agentforce 2.0: the newest version of Agentforce, the first digital labor platform for enterprises — a complete AI system for augmenting teams with trusted, autonomous AI agents in the flow of work.

This release introduces a new library of pre-built skills and workflow integrations for rapid customization, the ability to deploy Agentforce in Slack, and advancements in agentic reasoning and retrieval augmented generation (RAG). These advances will enable companies to scale their workforce with customized agents capable of handling complex, multi-step tasks with even more precision and accuracy.

Key Points

• Agentforce 2.0 is the digital labor platform for enterprises, enabling a limitless workforce through AI agents for any department, assembled using a new library of pre-built skills, and that can take action across any system or workflow
• Agentforce 2.0 makes autonomous AI part of every team, empowering every employee to collaborate with Agentforce in Slack
• Agentforce 2.0 features enhanced reasoning and data retrieval to deliver precise answers and orchestrate actions in response to complex, multi-step questions
• Customers like Accenture, The Adecco Group, Finnair, Heathrow Airport, IBM, Indeed, Saks Global, and SharkNinja are embracing Agentforce to augment their teams with digital labor — streamlining business operations and unlocking new capacity for growth

Why it’s relevant: Every team has more work to do than resources available, leading to poorer customer interactions and lengthy backlogs. Organizations are turning to AI to help, but have a low tolerance for inadequate solutions that provide generic responses. Existing solutions such as copilots struggle to provide accurate, trusted responses to complex requests — such as personalized guidance on a job application — and cannot take action on their own — like nurturing a lead with product recommendations. Organizations need a new type of platform designed to supply digital labor in the form of autonomous AI agents that can reason over data and tap into workflows to take action on behalf of overwhelmed teams.

Agentforce 2.0 cements our position as the leader in digital labor solutions, allowing any company to build a limitless workforce that can truly transform their business.

Marc Benioff, Chair and CEO, Salesforce, said:

“Agentforce 2.0 takes our revolutionary Salesforce digital labor platform to another level, with new reasoning, integration and customization features that supercharge autonomous agents with unprecedented levels of intelligence, precision and accuracy. The demand for Agentforce has been amazing — no other company comes close to offering this complete AI solution for enterprises. We’re seamlessly bringing together AI, data, apps, and automation with humans to reshape how work gets done. Agentforce 2.0 cements our position as the leader in digital labor solutions, allowing any company to build a limitless workforce that can truly transform their business.”

How the Adecco Group Uses Agentforce to Scale Personalized Recruiting with Digital Labor: 

“At the Adecco Group, we are committed to creating meaningful connections between candidates and opportunities. By centralizing data across over 40 systems with Salesforce’s Data Cloud and leveraging Agentforce, we’re transforming the candidate experience. Agentforce will help prequalify candidates, enhance CVs, and ensure faster job placements. Agentforce agents also operate 24/7, freeing recruiters to focus on meaningful connections while delivering speed and personalization at scale.” – Greg Shewmaker, Senior Vice President of Global Operations and AI, The Adecco Group

New Library of Skills Brings Agentforce to Every Team and Workflow: 

Time and integration challenges make it difficult to build customized agents for individual business teams or departments. Agentforce 2.0 eliminates these barriers with a new library of pre-built agent skills‌ — ‌tasks Agentforce can perform‌ — ‌spanning CRM, Slack, Tableau, and partner-developed skills on the AppExchange. This latest release empowers customers to extend Agentforce to any system or workflow using MuleSoft. It also features an enhanced Agent Builder capable of interpreting natural language instructions, such as ‘Onboard New Product Managers,’ to auto-generate new agents. These agents seamlessly combine pre-made skills with custom logic built in Salesforce, offering unparalleled flexibility and speed.

• New CRM Skills for Agent-First Customer Experiences: New skills for sales teams such as Sales Development and Sales Coaching enable the creation of autonomous AI agents that can nurture leads based on your rules of engagement, as well as agents that can join your prospecting calls and provide instant feedback on interactions with customers, helping reps do their best work at massive scale. Additional skills include Marketing Campaign and Commerce Merchant skills, scheduling skills for service engagements, and new skills for field service workers.
• Take Action Across Any App or Workflow with MuleSoft: MuleSoft now enables Agentforce to get work done across your business. With MuleSoft for Flow, it’s easier than ever to create low-code workflows that span any system, with pre-built connectors for building multi-system workflows fast. As teams look to turn their APIs into Agentforce actions, the new MuleSoft API Catalog enables builders and Salesforce Admins to view, discover, and manage APIs across Salesforce, MuleSoft, Heroku, and any external services from one central location for rapid reuse. And the new MuleSoft Topic Center expands on this by enabling teams to infuse Agentforce metadata into every API they build, ensuring that any point of connectivity can be automatically turned into an Agentforce skill or action, making every API “agent-first” by default.
• Tableau Skills for Analytics and Insights: New Tableau Topics and Actions deliver data visualizations and predictions for deeper understanding of agent responses and accurate, business context-rich answers using Tableau Semantics. This unlocks new conversational analytics use cases, further lowering the barrier to data access for everyone.
• Slack Skills for Engaging in Channels and Conversations: With Slack Actions now available in Agent Builder, a team can enhance Agentforce with, for example, the ability to send a DM to provide a summary of what’s happening with a project, or update a Slack Canvas when a customer asks for changes to an ongoing project.
• Partner Skills Through the AppExchange: Agentforce is backed by the first-ever enterprise ecosystem of agent skills — enabling customers to extend their Agentforce with custom Topics and Actions ranging from new agent types such as the AI Employee Service Agent with Workday, to new, partner-built actions from Asymbl, Docusign, and Neuron 7.
• Agentforce Now Recommends Skills for the Work You Need Done: Create new agents in seconds using natural language descriptions. Agent Builder now uses Agentforce to compose new agents for the work you need done by auto-generating relevant topics and instructions while pulling from the library of skills and actions already available to you, ensuring teams can go live with new digital labor fast.

How Accenture Uses Agentforce to Scale Sales Productivity with Digital Labor: 

“At Accenture, we embrace emerging technologies first so we can help our clients go fast. Our sales team within Accenture’s Salesforce Business Group and Accenture Song are starting to use Agentforce to automate contact and close plan creation, surface insights through enterprise search, and keep teams aligned with dynamic updates. It’s helping to increase time-to-effectiveness, accelerate decision-making, and is allowing them to focus on delivering innovative solutions for their clients.” – Stephanie Sadowski, Salesforce Business Group lead at Accenture 

Agentforce in Slack — Humans with Agents Working Together Where Work Happens: As organizations look to unlock value from AI agents, they need solutions that are embedded where their employees already are. Agentforce 2.0 is deployable in Slack, bringing customizable digital labor into the messages (DMs) and channels where work happens.

• Bring Agentforce to any Message or Channel: Agentforce 2.0 enables teams to easily bring Agentforce into any Slack conversation. Slack users can start a conversation directly from the Agentforce Hub, or @ mention Agentforce agents through DMs or in channels, tapping into their digital labor force directly in the flow of work.
• New Slack Actions in Agent Builder: Agent Builder now features pre-built Slack Actions such as “Create Canvas” or “Message Channel” that enable teams to rapidly enhance existing agents or create new ones that can effortlessly engage with your teams in Slack.
• Unlock conversational context with Enterprise Search: Slack contains a wealth of domain knowledge across DMs, channels, and Canvases that reflect the unique nature of your business. With Slack Enterprise Search, Agentforce can draw from conversational data — enhancing the relevancy of responses and actions by drawing from public and permissioned information in Slack.

How Indeed Uses Agentforce to Scale Personalized Job Seeker Engagement with Digital Labor: 

“Indeed is the world’s leading job site, with three people hired every second through its platform. At the heart of Indeed’s success is its ability to match the 580 million profiles created by job seekers with over 3 million hiring employers. By harnessing the power of Data Cloud, Indeed has enhanced its data architecture, creating a solid foundation for its go-to-market strategies and enhancing connections to its rich job seeker profiles,” said Indeed CIO Anthony Moisant. “By leveraging Agentforce, Indeed can stay focused on its mission to help people find jobs while advancing its goals, including reducing time-to-hire by 50% and helping 30 million individuals facing barriers to employment secure jobs by fiscal year 2030.” – Anthony Moisant, CIO, Indeed

Expert Answers to Complex Questions and Execute Actions with Agentforce 2.0: The Atlas Reasoning Engine is the brain behind Agentforce, enabling it to retrieve relevant data, then reason and act. With Agentforce 2.0, Salesforce is introducing enhanced reasoning and retrieval to handle deeply nuanced questions, powered by new capabilities in Data Cloud that fuel Agentforce with greater context — complementing structured and unstructured data with business-specific metadata for greater accuracy across the most complex, multi-faceted requests.

• Enhanced Reasoning with Advanced Retrievers: Agentforce’s Atlas Reasoning Engine can now handle a wider variety of interactions, including those with multiple layers that require deeper thought. For example, a question that is straightforward, such as “what is the status of my portfolio?” will employ basic reasoning for rapid responses. A deeper question, such as “What would be the right investment vehicle for my child’s college fund based on my current income and risk preferences?” would use enhanced reasoning with advanced data retrievers — improving the answer by refining the query before pulling both relevant data and context-specific metadata in Data Cloud. The Atlas Reasoning Engine assesses its own response and loops through a variety of tools and sources in what’s known as an ‘agentic loop,’ enabling it to provide a trusted, well-researched response or action to nuanced and more complex requests, and do so without writing custom code.
• Enhanced RAG with Enriched Indexing: RAG enables Agentforce to quickly find relevant information in unstructured content. To power enhanced reasoning in the Atlas Reasoning Engine, Data Cloud can now enrich RAG chunks — the snippets of retrieved data — with metadata from the Salesforce Platform. Enriching RAG indexes with metadata context adapts Agentforce 2.0 to the unique conventions of your business without additional work, improving accuracy and relevancy for even the most intricate requests, while increasing trust through inline citations that point to the exact sources Agentforce pulled from to answer a given question.

How Salesforce provides faster, more personalized customer support with Agentforce: The Salesforce Help page receives more than 60 million visits a year from customers who need assistance with product support and account queries. Agentforce on help.salesforce.com provides customers with personalized, 24/7 service, while seamlessly escalating to human reps with the full case history and context when needed. Since launching in October, Agentforce is now solving 83% of customer queries without a human, has halved the number of issues that require human intervention, and has nearly doubled its average number of weekly conversations.

To celebrate the holiday season, Moneypenny and VoiceNation in Duluth made it rain gift cards for Rainbow Village, donating 40 gift cards that will empower families to buy their holiday gifts.

Additionally, the phone answering and digital communications provider, which has an ongoing partnership with Rainbow Village, collected items from the wish list like heated blankets for the local non-profit that serves families currently experiencing homelessness.

“As the holiday season approached, we were proud to continue our partnership with Rainbow Village, an incredible organization dedicated to transforming the lives of homeless families and individuals,” said Richard Culberson CEO of Moneypenny North America. “Together, we aim to support their mission through various initiatives that provide shelter, education, and resources to those in need. We invited our clients and employees to also join us because every little bit helps.”

Through the ongoing Moneypenny and VoiceNation partnership with Rainbow Village, employees sign-up to volunteer with both Rainbow Village’s Afterschool Club and Life Skills Evenings. For the weekday afterschool program Moneypenny and VoiceNation volunteers help children with their pre-planned activities, ranging from STEM, crafts, free play, financial literacy, and emotional intelligence for children aged 5 to 18.

With a US headquarters in Duluth, Moneypenny handles more than 20 million calls and chats for businesses annually, supporting companies of all shapes and sizes across the US and UK with call answering, live chat and bespoke and proactive digital customer communication services.

About Moneypenny and VoiceNation

With US headquarters in Atlanta, Moneypenny and VoiceNation are America’s leading virtual receptionist and phone answering providers offering 24/7 communication solutions. Collectively, Moneypenny and VoiceNation employ over 1,000 people handling millions of calls, chats and bespoke tech solutions for thousands of businesses of all shapes and sizes from sole traders right up to multinational corporations.

Cho-Time (SSF Group) enters strategic partnership with yoummday to revolutionise Its BPO operations with scalable technology and multilingual talent.

The leading German business process outsourcing (BPO) provider Cho-Time (SSF Group) is partnering with yoummday, the platform for customer experience (CX) technology solutions. This collaboration enables Cho-Time (SSF Group) to utilise yoummday’s platform for cost-effective, scalable expansion and access to a global multilingual talent pool available 24/7.

In an industry facing increasing demands for personalised customer experiences, cost efficiency, and access to skilled talent, this partnership provides Cho-Time (SSF Group) with a competitive advantage. By leveraging yoummday’s scalable platform and global talent pool, Cho-Time (SSF Group) addresses challenges such as labor shortage and operational cost pressure, positioning both companies at the forefront of industry innovation.

“yoummday’s platform is an integral addition to our growth strategy. With their diverse talent pool, pay-for-performance pricing, and robust security protocols, we can rapidly expand and deliver exceptional results for our clients,” said Ralf Hoffmeister, CEO of Cho-Time (SSF Group).

By integrating yoummday’s AI-driven operational tools and extensive multilingual freelancer marketplace, Cho-Time (SSF Group) can expand its operations without the need for physical office spaces, reducing overheads while maintaining the flexibility to scale campaigns globally. This partnership combines Cho-Time (SSF Group)’s training protocols, commitment to the agent experience, and sales capabilities—including client acquisition, retention, cross-selling, and upselling—with yoummday’s technology, enabling enhanced productivity and exceptional customer outcomes.

This partnership aligns with both companies’ strategic visions. yoummday continues to innovate and expand the application of its platform, creating bespoke solutions for partners. For Cho-Time (SSF Group), this collaboration supports its long-term growth strategy, focusing on diversifying its campaign base and broadening its presence in international markets.

Dr. Klaus Harisch, CEO and Founder of yoummday

“We are proud to welcome Cho-Time (SSF Group) as long-term partner on our platform. This partnership marks a significant evolution in yoummday’s journey, demonstrating how companies can tailor our technology to meet their unique needs,” said Dr. Klaus Harisch, CEO and Founder of yoummday. “By accessing our multilingual talent pool and AI-powered tools, Cho-Time (SSF Group) is positioned to achieve exceptional agility, efficiency, and growth.”

By integrating yoummday’s security protocols, Cho-Time (SSF Group) ensures seamless and secure connections between its freelance agents and client systems. yoummday’s platform provides security and authentication to access a global freelance workforce for outsourcing tasks through measures such as multi-factor authentication, GPS-based geo-referencing, biometric video validation, AI-powered voice recognition, and keystroke dynamics analysis. These protocols, combined with ISO 27001 certification, uphold high standards of data security and enable GDPR-compliant home-office work from all over the world.

Prosper, a financial services company, has selected NICE to support its customer experience transformation efforts.

The company plans to use NICE’s CXone Mpower platform which includes tools like SmartReach, Enlighten AI and Workforce Management. By tapping into NICE’s AI capabilities, Prosper aims to boost customer satisfaction, enhance agent performance, and improve overall business operations.

“With the powerful combination of NICE solutions including SmartReach, Prosper can efficiently connect with our customers at the right time, uncover valuable insights, and refine our engagement strategy to enhance the customer experience continuously,” said Jeff Killian, EVP Operations, Prosper. “NICE’s reputation stands out in the marketplace, and we are excited to see the outcomes we will achieve together to better serve our customers.”

Barry Cooper, President, CX Division, NICE, said, “Meeting the customer where they are on their journey, and understanding what that customer has already completed, is essential to providing seamless CX. Prosper’s dedication to deliver industry-leading experiences with NICE’s comprehensive CX AI platform displays its commitment by being proactive in understanding and addressing consumer needs with innovation purpose-built for Customer Experience.”

Founded in 2005, Prosper focuses on improving financial wellness with products like personal loans, home equity solutions, and the Prosper Card.

NICE, known for its AI-driven customer experience solutions, works with companies worldwide to optimize customer interactions and business results.

To learn more, visit www.prosper.com or www.nice.com.

Grupo Juguetron, a prominent Mexican company with numerous stores nationwide, has partnered with RELEX Solutions to enhance their supply chain and retail planning through advanced forecasting and replenishment capabilities.

The collaboration aims to boost operational efficiency, maintain optimal stock levels, and elevate customer satisfaction levels.

RELEX’s solution will be implemented across Juguetron’s distribution center and 114 stores in Mexico, facilitating improved planning for promotions, events, and seasonal demand.

“At Grupo Juguetron, we are committed to maintaining the tradition of bringing the magic of play to every home in Mexico. With the implementation of RELEX, we will not only optimize our supply chain but also ensure a more efficient and accurate experience to meet the needs of our customers,” said Isaac Sánchez, CIO, Grupo Juguetron.

“We are excited to begin this partnership with Juguetron, leveraging our expertise in specialty retail to deliver a robust forecasting and replenishment system,” said Carlos Victoria, Senior Vice President for the Americas at RELEX Solutions. “With our advanced demand forecasting and replenishment system in place, they will not only enhance their operational efficiency but also ensure optimal stock levels and improved customer satisfaction. This collaboration underscores our commitment to providing tailored solutions that drive significant business benefits.”

RELEX Solutions offers a unified supply chain and retail planning platform that aligns and optimizes various aspects of the value chain, benefiting companies like ADUSA, AutoZone, Coles, Dollar Tree, M&S Food, PetSmart, and The Home Depot.

HubSpot has announced the acquisition of Frame AI, an AI-powered conversation intelligence platform, to enhance its ability to provide real-time insights from unstructured data.

Frame AI’s technology converts unstructured data like emails, calls, and meetings into actionable recommendations, enabling businesses to anticipate customer needs and enhance customer experiences.

HubSpot, a customer platform for scaling businesses, offers engagement hubs, a Smart CRM, and a connected ecosystem with over 1,700 App Marketplace integrations to help businesses grow better.

The acquisition aims to leverage Frame AI’s capabilities to unify structured and unstructured data across the customer journey, empowering teams to transform conversations into actionable intelligence.

HubSpot plans to integrate conversational insights from Frame AI directly into Breeze, its family of AI technologies embedded across its customer platform.

“We’ve always admired HubSpot for its early and distinct choice in unifying customer data. It has been the heart of their platform, and we’re ready to help take it to the next level,” said George Davis, co-founder and CEO of Frame AI. “Whether it’s helping to optimize campaigns, close deals faster, or prevent churn, we’re excited to bring our experience in conversational intelligence to help HubSpot customers grow.”

The acquisition reflects HubSpot’s commitment to equipping businesses with tools to succeed in the era of AI, combining advanced technology with a user-friendly platform that scales alongside its customers.

Upon completion of the transaction, Frame AI will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of HubSpot.

Learn more at www.hubspot.com.

Tata Communications has unveiled Kaleyra AI—an innovative, AI-powered flagship portfolio poised to transform customer interactions.

This innovative suite will initially feature three distinct capabilities that surpass traditional communication tools. Seamlessly integrating with communication channels and live agent interfaces, the portfolio harnesses Generative AI (GenAI) to deliver a competitive advantage through streamlined, personalized, and highly engaging customer interactions.

The initial offerings include:

GenAI Template Generator for WhatsApp: The capability will enable the crafting of personalised templates and message variants for WhatsApp. The roadmap includes extending similar capabilities to other communication channels, such as SMS and rich communication services (RCS). By crafting messages that resonate with the audience and leveraging each channel’s points of strength, enterprises will be able to automate marketing tasks and augment response rates, while maintaining consistent brand voice and relevance with their customers.

Conversational AI Data Reporting: The advanced reporting capability will enable the transformation of complex data queries into insightful reports complete with engaging, easy-to-understand visualisations.
By processing natural language data queries from customers, it will deliver tailored, AI-powered analytics within seconds, enabling businesses to make swift, data-driven decisions and gain critical insights without their over reliance on business analytics teams.

Conversational AI No-Code Builder: Going beyond basic interactions, the capability will empower business users to create ‘interaction assistants’ that offer natural, conversational responses (without any programming knowledge) in text and rich media formats for both customers and workforces, simplifying complex data analysis and accelerating decision-making. The platform will also empower enterprise customer support and marketing teams to build rapport through intelligent and immersive engagement, thereby enhancing the overall user experience.

Mauro Carobene, Head of Customer Interaction Suite, Tata Communications commented:

“Kaleyra AI represents a powerful leap forward and will be a force multiplier for enterprises to accelerate business growth .For customer-facing roles, the portfolio will significantly improve engagement and interaction rates. In early controlled demos, we observed marked reductions in mean time-to-respond and resolve issues, especially during peak query volumes. For C-suite decision-makers, our generative AI-powered reporting and insights will enhance visibility into enterprise performance, all via a simple natural language interface.”

Kaleyra AI will initially be available in beta to a select group of Tata Communications customers early next year. A general release on Tata Communications’ AI Cloud is expected in the first half of 2025.