The Intelligent Customer Experience
PARTNER FAQs
NOTE: This FAQ covers MiContact Center Business and Contact Center Messenger integration with Google Contact Center AI – Virtual Agent and Agent Assist functionality.
What’s Google Contact Center AI (CCAI)?
The first use case delivered from Mitel’s Contact Center Messenger integration with Google Contact Center AI (CCAI) is referred to as “Virtual Agent” – a more sophisticated, AI-enabled chatbot solution. While Contact Center Messenger can provide sophisticated self-service experiences powered by MiContact Center Business workflows, the Virtual Agent capability powered by Google Cloud removes the administrative burden of explicitly routing users through the self-service experience based on user defined keywords, and enables customers to leverage Google’s Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to understand customer sentiment and intent to provide the best served response, as opposed to simply routing to the next response based on keywords. Using the Virtual Agent capability in conjunction with Contact Center Messenger, businesses can better interpret customer needs and meet their customer experience demands, resolve customer issues using knowledge base material and access previous interactions that can be analyzed further to make the Virtual Agent experience more conversational, and therefore more human-like.
The second use case delivered from Mitel’s Contact Center Messenger integration with Google CCAI is referred to as “Agent Assist”. Recognizing that not all Virtual Agent conversations will end via self-service, Contact Center Messenger can seamlessly pivot a Virtual Agent conversation to a live assisted conversation with a contact center agent. When this happens, the AI stays in the media path of the live conversation and continues to search the company’s knowledge base to provide suggested responses to the agent via the Ignite interface in real time, similar to how supervisors would manually silent monitor and whisper coach agents on live interactions. This sophisticated Agent Assist functionality allows businesses to improve the quality and consistency of the customer experiences they serve, while ensuring continuous agent coaching experiences – all delivered from AI to ensure supervisors can focus on more high value tasks.
Which Google Cloud components are used as part of the Contact Center AI solution?
The CCAI solution is powered by Google Cloud’s Dialogflow and Topic Modeler components.
Dialogflow – Dialogflow is an end-to-end, build-once deploy-everywhere development suite for creating conversational interfaces for websites, mobile applications, popular messaging platforms, and IoT devices. You can use it to build interfaces (such as chatbots and conversational IVR) that enable natural and rich interactions between users and businesses.
Topic Modeler – The Conversational Topic Modeler uses Google AI to analyze historical audio and chat logs to uncover insights about topics and trends in customer interactions. These topics and trends can also contribute to the development of a virtual agent that is tailored to the contact center’s requirements as well as surfacing areas to improve agent training and knowledge base content.
What are the unique selling points for Google Contact Center AI?
Last year, Mitel and Google Cloud announced a partnership on Google Cloud’s CCAI initiative. Google Cloud is widely acknowledged as the leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies designed to improve the quality of people’s lives, leveraging a full suite of AI, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Understanding capabilities. Mitel brings with it 20+ years of contact center market leadership and a focus on delivering the best customer experiences, from omnichannel capabilities, to workflow and routing expertise, to advanced customer experience reporting.
Together, Mitel and Google Cloud have designed an intelligent customer experience that leverages Google Cloud’s Natural Language Understanding and sentiment detection, confidence scoring, and the ability to search customer-specific knowledge bases to easily integrate AI into Mitel’s Contact Center Messenger platform.
With Mitel’s MiContact Center Business and Google Cloud’s CCAI, your contact center can provide intelligent self-service capabilities, make live agents more efficient and effective, and ultimately, turn your contact center into a business analytics engine.
Some key benefits that make it stand out amongst the competition are:
Simple, flexible, and secure
Rapid deployment
Highly accurate Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and intent detection
Seamlessly pivot from the virtual agent to a live human agent with conversation history
Real-time agent assistance for relevant, accurate and consistent live experiences
Real-time insights to continually improve CX using Machine Learning
What if I don’t use MiContact Center Business but want access to Google Contact Center AI?
MiContact Center Business offers a standalone, non-voice, omnichannel offering called “MiContact Center Multimedia” that could be used in hybrid deployments with other Mitel or non-Mitel contact center systems to provide access to our Contact Center Messenger solution, with the option to add Google CCAI Virtual Agent and Agent Assist functionality.
Is Google Contact Center AI a retail cloud offer?
No, Google CCAI is a partner-delivered cloud offering. This means, the Mitel partner owns the contract and relationship with the customer, and the partner receives standard discounts from Mitel list prices, which you can then mark up and bill to the end-customer on a monthly basis.
When will Google Contact Center AI be available to Mitel UC partners?
Mitel announced the general availability of MiContact Center Business Release 9.2 on October 24, 2019 which introduces the CloudLink-based Contact Center Messenger platform that Google CCAI runs off of. Google CCAI – Virtual Agent functionality became generally available on November 8th, 2019. Mitel’s implementation of Google CCAI – Agent Assist functionality, including the Google Topic Modeler, will remain in technical preview (requiring Product Management approval) until MiContact Center Business Release 9.2.1 achieves GA, at which point the Agent Assist feature will become generally available. See Product Bulletin PB2019Aug15C Rev 4 on Mitel InfoChannel for a complete overview of the new offering.
Where is it available?
Mitel’s integration with Google CCAI is available globally, wherever MiContact Center Business is sold.
What languages are supported?
As of the time of publication, Google CCAI – Virtual Agent, which is powered by Google’s Dialogflow Enterprise solution, is available in the following languages: Chinese – Cantonese, Chinese – Simplified, Chinese – Traditional, Danish, Dutch, English – Australia, English – Canada, English - Great Britain, English – India, English – US, French – Canada, French – France, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese – Brazil, Portuguese – Portugal, Russian, Spanish - Latin America, Spanish – Spain, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Ukrainian. Note that MiContact Center Business only supports a subset of these languages and ensure customers are aware that Mitel user interfaces and documentation do not align one-to-one with Dialogflow’s support languages.
For more information click here:
Google CCAI – Agent Assist will be available in English only with other languages being scoped for consideration in a future release.
What media types are supported for use with Google Contact Center AI today?
Currently, MiContact Center Business’ integration with Google CCAI is available for use with Contact Center Messenger webchat only. Mitel expects to introduce social media support to Contact Center Messenger in Q1 2020, which will introduce support for common social messaging channels like Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Messaging, WhatsApp for Business, and several others. Mitel is also working towards the release of support for Google CCAI – Virtual Agent integrated with MiContact Center Business’ IVR Routing solution in Q1 2020 that would deliver a Speech-based virtual agent. Further product bulletins and content updates will be made available prior to these offerings becoming generally available.
Where is it hosted?
Google CCAI is always delivered via the public-cloud Google Cloud Platform (GCP), however, it can be integrated into MiContact Center Business in any of our supported configurations: on-site/on-premises, private cloud, partner delivered cloud, or Mitel retail cloud offerings.
Contact Center Messenger is built on Mitel’s CloudLink platform. CloudLink is Mitel’s next generation application development platform that enables Web-based applications built and delivered from the public cloud (Amazon Web Services) to securely and seamlessly integrate into existing Mitel on-site/cloud deployed solutions, allowing all Mitel customers to take advantage of next-generation application development regardless of where and how they are deployed.
What Mitel Partner Agreements need to be in place to sell Google Contact Center AI (CCAI)?
Google CCAI – Virtual Agent and Agent Assist functionality is available for any Mitel Tier 1 or Tier 2 Authorized Partner to sell. This sales engagement is direct through partners and not through distribution, so any partner who has not signed an Authorized Partner agreement will be required to do so. If an Authorized Partner program is not in place, Mitel UC resellers can work with their Mitel Channel Account Manager to follow the onboarding and application process.
What is required to sell and support Google Contact Center AI (CCAI)?
Partners are only required to complete the Mitel MiContact Center Business Installation and Maintenance (I&M) course in order to sell MiContact Center Business and the optional Google CCAI integration. All MiContact Center Business training (Sales, Sales Engineering, Installation & Maintenance, and End User) have been updated with the features and functionality available in Release 9.2 and are available on Mitel’s Learning Management System (LMS), accessible through Mitel’s MiAccess portal.
For partners looking to build more sophisticated Google CCAI practices, or for
customers who opt to be responsible for managing Dialogflow, Mitel recommends the following technical training:
Coursera (Google Recommended)
Udemy
Pluralsight
What’s the best way to get started with Dialogflow and Google Contact Center AI (CCAI)?
There is a wealth of freely accessible training information available online for Google Cloud’s Dialogflow solution, the primary component of our Google CCAI integration, that can be used for Mitel partners and customers as they are getting started:
Documentation
YouTube Overview:
YouTube Dialogflow Basics:
YouTube Tutorials and Best Practices:
Once partners and customers have reviewed the getting started information, the easiest way to learn is to jump right in and start configuring Dialogflow. Mitel recommends that partners and customers follow these steps to get started:
Create a Google ID or use an existing Google ID NOTE: This requires entering a credit card to be entered in order to receive 12 months free.
Learn about Dialogflow
Follow the Documentation - Getting Started Guide to create your own account and build your first bot.Turning on “Small Talk” from the Dialogflow menu expands your conversational phrases.
After creating your first bot in the Getting Started guide, we recommend adding the “Weather(Node.js)” bot from the Samples section of the Docs. Click on the name to get to the Github repo andclick on “Add to Dialogflow” to add to your Dialogflow console. This will give you a good idea of how fulfillments are created within the solution.
What is the deal flow with Google Cloud?
Contact your Mitel Contact Center Sales Specialist to have them register the lead with Google Cloud’s CCAI team.
Google will approve the opportunity and assign the lead to the appropriate Google Cloud sales representative.
Google Cloud sales co-sells (i.e. acts as a sales coach) with the Mitel reseller and Mitel Contact Center Sales Specialist.
Partner provides list pricing and legal terms and closes the deal on their own paper.
What is the commercial offer through Mitel and how do I generate a quote? All Google CCAI licensing is OPEX, based on monthly bundles of usage. For on-site customers, the quoting and ordering process follows the same OPEX processes used for MiContact Center Outbound or Mitel Workforce Management. For MiCloud Flex retail, Partner Delivered or Partner Delivered Plus deployments, all quoting, and ordering processes follow existing workflows for these offerings today.
Google CCAI pricing is available now and can be accessed through Mitel MiAccess > CPQ Reports & Pricing > Pricing Reports, by clicking here.
All Google CCAI orders, new or add-on, require a mandatory engagement with Mitel Service Solutions who will coordinate a Mitel Statement of Work for the service.
Google CCAI Virtual Agent functionality is bundled in usage-based subscription entitlements that are charged prior to the month they are used with any overages charged in arrears the following month. A Virtual Agent "request" is defined as a response to a customer question or statement typed into the virtual agent widget and sent to the Google CCAI platform based on customer intent.
The following new part numbers have been added in Release 9.2 to bill customers for Virtual Agent usage:
54010522 Virtual Agent - 12,000 Request Bundle
54010523 Virtual Agent - 24,000 Request Bundle
54010524 Virtual Agent - 48,000 Request Bundle
54010525 Virtual Agent - 144,000 Request Bundle
54010526 Virtual Agent - 10x Request Overage
Agent Assist licensing is charged per seat, per hour of concurrent usage, and billed monthly in arrears based on the customer’s consumption. Seats will be metered by maximum number of concurrent seats in the hour and charged accordingly. Within the hour, Google will measure Mitel’s concurrent seats in 1-minute intervals. Google will rank the concurrent seats by ascending order, and charge for the 95th percentile of seats. Agent Assist is charged using the following Mitel part number:
54010666 Agent Assist x1 hr
Google CCAI is not available for quoting through Mitel CPQ at this time but will be added in the near future. In the meantime, please work with your Mitel contact center sales specialist to quote this service.
How do I know which Virtual Agent bundle to order for my customers?
When sizing the ideal bundle for the customer, some simple calculations can be used. For example:
Average number of chats per month x Average number of virtual agent “requests” per chat
So, let’s say:
Chats with virtual agent per month = 1000
Average virtual agent “requests” per chat = 15
Total of 15,000 virtual agent “requests” per month
Then the customer would need to decide:
Are they comfortable paying upfront for the lower 12,000 Request Bundle and paying more per individual request plus be charged in arrears for request overages?
Or would they be more comfortable taking on a higher commit with the 24,000 Request Bundle and pay less per individual request and be less likely to pay for request overages in arrears?
Are there other costs direct with Google Cloud related to this offer?
Google CCAI requires that customers sign up for their own private, secure instance of Google Cloud Platform, similar to how MiContact Center Business integrates with Twilio Programmable SMS. This can be done here. If a customer has an existing Google Cloud account, Mitel can simply whitelist the APIs required for CCAI to enable this functionality for this account.
Mitel will only bill for the Google Cloud Platform usage described in the parts above. Core Google Cloud Platform costs not related to CCAI are billed direct from Google to the customer and will vary per customer based on any non-Mitel components being used:
For example, Google Cloud project costs like storage and any additional cloud functions the customer may be using
See here for more details
In addition, Google’s CCAI solution may incur some charges for Cloud Storage services in the customer’s Google Cloud Platform project. Knowledge base documents will be stored in Google Cloud Storage before they are added to the Dialogflow knowledge base. The pricing for storage is based on the amount used in GB and is defined in Google’s documentation here. In addition to the cost for storage, there will be a charge for network egress when data is read from the customer’s project after being delivered as an Agent Assist suggestion.
What is the billing flow and process?
Google CCAI – Virtual Agent and Agent Assist is a subscription-only offering available in a default 12-month long commitment. Core committed virtual agent bundles are billed 1-month in advance of them being used and any applicable overages are billed in arrears. Google CCAI – Agent Assist functionality is billed monthly in arrears based on the customer’s actual consumption. Seats will be metered by maximum number of concurrent seats in the hour and charged accordingly. Within the hour, Mitel will measure the customer’s concurrent seats in 1-minute intervals. Mitel will rank the concurrent seats by ascending order, and charge for the 95th percentile of seats.
Can a customer change their committed subscription mid-contract?
Yes, if a customer is being charged heavily in arrears and wants to increase their committed subscription, they can do so at any time. This requires a Mitel Statement of Work for the service update.
What is the process for technical support on Google Contact Center AI (CCAI)?
Support follows a standard Mitel process globally, where partners call/email into Mitel for Tier 2 support escalations. If these cannot be resolved by Mitel technical support technicians, cases will be triaged to Tier 3 for additional support, where Mitel Tier 3 continues to monitor cases and update notes accordingly until the case is closed, and resolution notes are added.
Do I get paid on selling this service?
Absolutely! Mitel UC partners receive standard partner discounts off the Google CCAI parts, which can then be marked up according to market sale price. Google CCAI sales also contribute to your overall Mitel commitment and partner tiering discounts.
Are dealer demo kits and proof-of-concept systems available?
At this time, dealer demo kits and proof-of-concept systems are not available for Google CCAI. Partners will need to sign a subscription contract to enable this in their demonstration environment or work with Mitel’s contact center sales specialist to demonstrate this capability out of Mitel’s corporate demonstration environment.
For POCs, we recommend customers sign up for the lowest tier bundle for a minimum contract term of 1 year while they work on testing and validating the system.
What is the role of Mitel Professional Services in this offer?
All Google CCAI orders require a mandatory engagement with Mitel’s Professional Services team. This will ensure that the appropriate onboarding/activation and services have been scoped for delivery by Mitel Professional Services, the Mitel partner, or in some cases a Google Cloud System Integrator, before Mitel whitelists the CCAI APIs for the customer based on the customer’s Google Cloud project ID.
During the mandatory MiContact Center Business, Google CCAI and GCP Discovery Session and Consultation engagement, the Mitel Technical Consultant will work with the Customer and all related partners through the initial Virtual Agent and Agent Assist Project Concept Assessment Phase to determine site AI readiness. The Technical Consultant will produce a high-level draft Project Concept document including:
Scope Statement
Draft High-Level Work Breakdown structure
Identification of resource requirements
High level draft Project Timeline
Interviews and site assessment sessions will be conducted to:
Understand current Contact Center configuration and present workflow for all channels (voice/multimedia)
Establish work estimate for upgrade to MiContact Center Business Release 9.2 and Contact Center Messenger enablement (if not already configured)
Feature review and AI readiness assessment / education session
Review GCP requirements and AI Project roles
Review current end-Customer Journey map and Assess Site's AI Goals/fit
Preliminary high-level review of up to three (3) Agent Assist topics.
Assess availability of historic call, incident or chat logs
Data readiness to provide pairing of Q&A per topic
The following requirements will also be covered during AI Discovery Session:
MiContact Center Business will need to be upgraded to 9.2 and have Contact Center Messenger enabled(separate Upgrade, Design and Implementation costs will be applied if not otherwise itemized andincluded in this SOW)
GCP Project to be created by customer/partner
Webhooks and APIs for fulfillment actions will be provided by customer
Web service will be provided by customer to authenticate users and fulfill actions on behalf of the enduser (Account Lookup, modification, etc)
Where can I find more information on Google Cloud security and compliance certification?
For information on Google Cloud security and compliance, please visit here.
Where can I find more information about Google Contact Center AI requirements, installation, and configuration?
All onboarding processes and requirements are fully documented in the Multimedia Contact Center Installation and Deployment Guide and the MiContact Center Business & MiVoice Analytics System Engineering Guide. These documents are available from Mitel’s Document Center.
Where can I find more information about Google Contact Center AI?
Collateral, presentations and sales assets are available on Mitel InfoChannel using the following path: InfoChannel > Mitel – Worldwide > Products and Solutions > MiContact Center > MiContact Center Business.
