Amazon Alexa for Business vs. Five9

Virtual assistants at work are still new features and have a lot to improve. 
The more features we have, the more we want new features. 
In small environments we have "noise" between virtual assistants, making use inappropriate. 
But in more distributed environments it is very good.
We still have a lot to learn (both, us and our Alexas). 

Five9 is suited for both large-scale and small-scale companies. If your company deals with marketing more than the technical aspect, Five9 gives a mode of communication and getting in touch with our customer or client in the most reliable way rather than setting physical meetings. In the covid period, Five9 has made it easier to work on calls.

• Communication between people on the team.
• Interactive personal assistant.
• Better workspace management.

• Easy dialing and call logging. The process of starting or answering a call, then logging a call disposition with its notes, is simple and easy.
• Voicemail drops. You can pre-record voicemails to leave for customers without needing to speak the voicemail content each time. This is a huge timesaver for our reps.
• You can customize the call dispositions / call labels to match what's used in your CRM.

Incentivized

• Could have a feature for group chats.
• Alexa has some problems hearing nearby voices.
• Website suggestions are irrelevant sometimes (should have user evaluation functionality for the answer, improving accuracy).

• Java based desktop application is a pain to keep updated.
• The user interface for the agent desktop application is clunky and outdated. It could use a facelift.
• The help center for documentation isn't well organized and the documentation needs substantial editing.

Incentivized

Five9's Customer Support team is also based in Manila Philippines, thus turnaround email response times for our reported issues are great for our requirements. Their CS agents also facilitate mobile calls to followup on outstanding issues and operate on a 24/7 schedule. We've also had experience working with the senior tech agents to investigate recurring issues to completion.

Incentivized

We looked at two other alternatives: Google Nest and Apple. But Alexa already has popular devices that many people on the team already had in their homes. And it would be easier to integrate into the professional environment. The cost of Amazon products is also much lower, which makes the product more competitive.

Initially selected Five9 but have since switched to RingCentral which has given us what we needed. Better CRM integration, simpler and in my opinion more robust reporting capabilities and the same omnichannel solution at a fraction of the cost

Incentivized

• Difficulties with technology integration.
• Identify all possible uses.
• We still lost a lot of time making new settings.

• Cost savings: Five9 replaced a premise-based outbound dialer and a different virtual call center solution for inbound.
• Cost savings: Five9's voice over IP is less expensive than the land lines we were using.
• Cost savings: Five9 requires significantly less management than our previous solutions.

Incentivized