• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, August 24, 2023

Customer engagement platform Twilio has debuted a suite of capabilities to help businesses leverage artificial intelligence, but the email component is not ready yet. 

The new toolset, CustomerAI, includes new predictive and generative AI tools, and a customer data platform (CDP). 

As part of this, Twilio plans to launch generative email design and generative journeys in public beta in 2024.

Generative email, part of Twilio Engage, will allow users to put in simple prompts and turn their ideas into HTML.

This ties in with AI capabilities now available in Twilio Engage such as Smart “Headlines, the Smart Image Generator and Smart Buttons. 

The new slate of tools is designed to “make AI more accessible, powering dynamic customer engagement that adapts to every individual customer,” says Kathryn Murphy, senior vice president of product at Twilio.

Murphy continues that “every interaction creates new data and signals, and every new signal then cycles back around to inform the next AI-powered communication.”

Another new capability, CustomerAI Predictions, will help marketers create hyper-targeted audiences without assistance from technical teams, the firm says. 

Also being offered is Voice Intelligence, which uses a transcription and language operator tool that Twilio claims will allow users to extract insights, using conversational speech recognition.

This uses Natural Language Understanding to garner input on common feedback, competitive insights and compliance risks, the company continues. 

Twilio notes that firms have struggled to learn from call content, voice data being unstructured. 

Another new tool is Zero Copy Architecture, a function that will help businesses make sure their data infrastructure is ready for AI. This is being done in partnership with DataBricks and Snowflake.

Murphy comments that “This flywheel creates precise 1:1 personalization.”

In another product amouncement, Twilio has unveiled its Segment B2B Edition with Linked Profiles that will help businesses establish relationships via all their customer data in an expanded data graph.

Altogether, the “new customer data platform capabilities and strategic partnerships will enable organizations to deliver improved customer experiences using the power of AI insights from unified customer data,” comments David Wallace, research director, customer data and analytics at IDC.