Driving AI Innovation in Contact Centres: A Q&A with AnywhereNow CEO William Blench

Today we're meeting William, CEO at AnywhereNow. They specialise in transforming customer experience with AI solutions for contact centres globally.

Over to you William - my questions are in bold:

Who are you and what's your background?

I am the CEO of AnywhereNow, a global pioneer in transforming customer experience with AI solutions, a role I stepped into in March 2024. Prior to this, I held the position of Vice President of Microsoft's Enterprise division in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. I have also held senior leadership positions at several prominent software companies, including Unit4, VMware, and Openwave Systems. I also co-founded SQLstream, a real-time cloud-based streaming analytics platform.

My key areas of interest are Artificial Intelligence (alumni HP Labs, Machine Learning); Fintech (Dip. Oxford University), Private Equity, Cultural Transformation, and Doing our Best Work. In terms of my academic background, I studied at the University of Bristol, the University of Oxford and Cambridge University.

What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?

My job title is CEO. This role involves defining the long-term goals and vision of AnywhereNow, while driving innovation and delivering value to our customers and key stakeholders. Most recently, I have concentrated on expanding AnywhereNow's AI capabilities through strategic acquisitions, such as Deepdesk and Tendfor, to strengthen our position as a pioneer in AI-powered customer engagement solutions.

Can you give us an overview of your company's AI solutions?

AnywhereNow is a global pioneer in transforming customer experience with AI solutions to help contact centres deliver exceptional value through enhanced engagement, efficient workforce collaboration, AI-driven insights, and a full omni-channel service.

Core to our AI capabilities is Deepdesk, an AI-powered platform designed to enhance the customer experience (CX). The Deepdesk platform enables us to create, deploy, and manage fully customised AI Assistants that integrate with multiple business and communication systems. By leveraging orchestration technology, we can connect multiple Agentic AI tools into a multi-agent system capable of handling complex scenarios. Deepdesk utilises Microsoft Azure OpenAI for its GenAI LLM model and can also seamlessly incorporate Microsoft Copilot AI applications.

Deepdesk CX Assistants empower human agents to be more capable and efficient in managing customer interactions. We have already developed many Agentic AI Assistants to automate manual tasks, provide knowledge support, and suggest next-best actions. These CX Assistants help free agents from repetitive tasks, improve the accuracy and quality of interactions, enhance productivity and efficiencies, and help to offer additional services.

The latest addition to our Deepdesk capabilities is the integration of real-time audio streaming into our CX Assistant applications, enabling fully autonomous virtual voice agents. A key advantage of the Deepdesk platform is its unique combination of human-assisted and autonomous call-handling capabilities. This allows for a smooth migration path that reduces risk and enables our customers to fine-tune the assistants with humans in the loop. Once confidence in the system's performance is established, they can choose to transition to full autonomous operation.

Tell us about the investment in AI technologies at your company?

In 2024, we acquired Deepdesk, a leading AI specialist for CX Assistants to optimise the customer interaction processes. This established AnywhereNow with specialist AI expertise and skills in professional services for AI deployments based on many real-life customer deployments with customers like Rabobank, DHL and BOL.

Since then, we have embedded the Deepdesk platform within the Dialogue Cloud Contact Centre for Microsoft Teams. Dialogue AI Assist is powered by Deepdesk AI assistant technology to support contact centre agents with over 30 ready-made AI assistants. These tools provide real-time support through features like intelligent routing, transcription, sentiment analysis, summarisation, knowledge assistance, and next-best action recommendations across various channels, including voice, chat, email, and social media, thereby aiming to enhance agent productivity, improve customer satisfaction, and drive operational efficiency.

Going forward, we keep investing in our AI technology and have already expanded the development team in Deepdesk, extended the sales operations and professional services group. The Deepdesk AI technology is the cornerstone of moving AnywhereNow forward on our growth trajectory.

What prompted you to explore AI solutions? What specific problems were you trying to solve?

Contact centre managers are constantly seeking cutting-edge solutions to enhance their services, balancing operational costs with customer satisfaction. The beauty of AI lies in its ability to deliver both cost savings and improvements in customer experience simultaneously, while also supporting human agents in their often difficult and stressful roles.

For AnywhereNow, as a leading contact centre vendor, it was an easy decision to focus on maximising the use of AI across our solutions, providing our customers with all the benefits this transformative technology has to offer. There are three key areas where we position AI to help our customers:

• Enhancing Customer Experience: AI significantly improves customer experience by enabling faster service through self-service tools and intelligent routing, ensuring consistent interactions, and empowering agents with real-time support. These enhancements lead to higher first call resolution (FCR), improved customer satisfaction (CSAT), and stronger Net Promoter Scores (NPS), ultimately boosting customer loyalty and brand perception.
• Driving Operational Efficiency: AI tools streamline operations by automating call handling, reducing average handling time (AHT), and improving first call resolution. These efficiencies lower the cost per call and reduce recruitment and training expenses, making AI a powerful driver of cost-effective customer service delivery.
• Supporting Agent Wellbeing: AI also benefits agents by reducing stress through real-time assistance, automating repetitive tasks, and enabling them to focus on more engaging work. This results in higher job satisfaction and lower turnover—an important advantage for many contact centres looking to reduce agent churn and attract high-quality talent in a competitive labour market.

Who are the primary users of your AI systems, and what's your measurement of success?

No industry is untouched by our contact centre solutions which automate manual work and improve customer service. We work with more than 2000 leading organisations globally, such as Rabobank, Mazda, NHS, Emirates, KPMG, Deloitte, DHL, Credit Suisse, Aldi and Vodafone.

By incorporating AI into our solutions, businesses can set smart objectives to measure success, build trust and optimise processes. Some of the measures of success of our AI systems include a combination of operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and agent performance metrics. Some of the key measurement metrics include:

• Reduction in call handling time for customer support queries
• Improved resolution rates on customer issues
• Automation rates where tasks are completed without human intervention
• Improved Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) improvement
• Sentiment analysis results from interactions managed with the support of AI tools
• Customer retention and loyalty rates are attributed to AI-enhanced service

Some of the key examples of business success we have seen are: Rabobank: 60 seconds reduction per call, saving 5 million Euro per year; DHL: Automate 45% of interactions, saving over 1 million Euro per year; Dutch online retailer: AHT lowered by 30+ seconds, savings of 2.5 million Euro per year.

If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change when it comes to AI?

What I would change is the over-caution and tyre-kicking mentality surrounding AI adoption. Leading-edge companies are already at the forefront of adopting AI, driving innovation with urgency and decisiveness. Lengthy IT evaluations and protracted proof-of-concepts waste valuable time and delay the opportunities that are now within our reach. It's time to embrace AI with confidence and capitalise on the transformative potential it offers.

What is your message for other companies considering implementing AI technologies?

Adopting AI technologies in the contact centre is a strategic imperative. Solutions like AnywhereNow Dialogue Cloud demonstrate that AI can fundamentally transform customer and employee experiences while delivering measurable business outcomes.

From a customer perspective, AI enables faster, more consistent and personalised interactions through intelligent routing, real-time virtual agents and sentiment analysis. This leads to improved customer satisfaction, stronger loyalty and enhanced brand perception, all key drivers of long-term revenue growth.

Equally important, AI empowers the workforce. Reducing manual workload, providing live support and streamlining complex tasks enhances agent productivity and job satisfaction, reducing attrition and associated hiring and training costs.

Operationally, AI delivers clear efficiency gains. It lowers average call handling times, boosts first-call resolution rates and drives down cost per interaction, thereby improving the overall service delivery economics.

For C-level leaders, the message is clear: when implemented with intention and sensitivity, AI becomes a force multiplier. It enables sustainable growth, operational efficiency and creates competitive differentiation in customer experience, which are essential for any growth-focused enterprise.

Can you list 3 people from your sector (or beyond) who are doing some interesting things with AI that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?

• Satya Nadella: Satya Nadella is a compelling figure to follow on LinkedIn because of his transformative leadership at Microsoft and his commitment to making advanced technologies accessible to all enterprises. Under his guidance, Microsoft has democratised AI, enabling businesses of all sizes to leverage AI to drive innovation and efficiency.
• Sam Altman: Of course, Sam Altman is a key figure in the AI sector, leading OpenAI in developing innovative technologies. His insights into the ethical and practical implications of AI and his vision for its integration into society make him an invaluable thought leader in the field.
• Fei-Fei Li: Fei-Fei Li is a Co-Director of Stanford's Human-Centred AI Institute. She is a global leader in ethical AI and computer vision, shaping the future of responsible AI development.

What AI tools or platforms do you personally use beyond your professional implementation?

One of the AI tools I frequently use is Replit, for making cool apps. It is an excellent platform for developing innovative applications and engaging in coding with a creative flair. Another AI tool I love is Microsoft Copilot. It's a game-changer for quickly handling emails and doing quick research and help to stay on top of the daily workload.

What's the most impressive new AI product or service you've seen recently?

This would have to be the Deepdesk AI virtual agent. Fully automated AI driven virtual assistant powered by Azure OpenAI LLM and built on the Deepdesk AI platform for CX. Fully natural voice interaction occurs between the customer and virtual agent, answering any questions posed to the agent with human-like responses.

The system uses OpenAI's real-time audio streaming technologies, ensuring no latency in the interaction and making it feel very natural. The Deepdesk platform allows precise definition of input source materials for the agentic AI to utilise, with the built in RAG configuration tools, ensuring that the risks of hallucination effects are minimised and the correctness of the responses is optimised. There is also a seamless option for the virtual agent to escalate to a human agent when required.

Finally, let's talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the AI technology sector, particularly for your industry?

The future of AI technology in customer experience (CX) is incredibly exciting. From transforming customer interactions to optimising entire business ecosystems, the potential of AI is vast. These technologies promise to redefine efficiency and innovation in ways that go beyond our current imagination.

As a result, the contact centre industry is poised for significant transformation, with several key trends shaping the path forward:

• Platform vendors will define the market: Working with Microsoft will be key for Enterprise
• Increased Enterprise Adoption: As AI technologies mature, more enterprises will integrate these technologies to enhance operations and support smarter decision-making
• Enhanced Human-AI Collaboration: Seamless collaboration between human and AI agents will unlock new levels of productivity and creativity
• Expansion into New Sectors: AI will increasingly be applied in complex domains like healthcare, finance, and logistics, where adaptability and intelligent decision-making are essential
• Improved Interoperability: Standardisation of AI protocols will enable better integration across diverse models and platforms
• Specialised AI Models: Beyond large general-purpose models like GPT-4, more specialised models are emerging, offering organisations cost-effective, task-specific solutions
• Rise of Autonomous Agents: As confidence in AI performance grows through training and monitoring, fully autonomous agents will increasingly operate independently—both in customer-facing roles and backend processes.

Thank you William. Connect with William on LinkedIn and read more about AnywhereNow at their website.