No matter what field you work in, the way teams communicate is upgrading fast. With more work happening through calls, video conferencing, and other messaging tools employees often struggle with keeping up. Everyone knows the struggle of not writing fast enough when manually taking notes or searching for scattered information after an important meeting.
Cloud communications platforms are addressing these challenges by adding built‑in AI tools as features of their programs. These AI tools automate routine tasks, transcribe meetings, take calls, answer frequently asked questions, identify trends, and more. Keep reading to learn about how to utilize AI features in cloud communications platforms to your benefit.
If your organization has not yet transitioned to a cloud communications platform, you may be missing essential tools that make work simpler. To see more reasons why cloud communications can future proof your business check out this blog: 6 Reasons Businesses Are Upgrading to Cloud Communications
AI Call and Meeting Recap
AI call and meeting recaps allow you to stay present in meetings by automatically recording clear, accurate documentation of entire meetings. Instead of relying on handwritten notes or memory, this tool acts as an AI note taker and creates structured insights that help employees review important information they could have missed in a meeting.
What the Recap Tools can do:
- Full transcriptions of recorded calls for immediate access into what was said during meetings
- AI‑generated summaries that condense long conversations into clear takeaways
- Key topics and tone analysis that highlight themes and emotional tone across calls
- Meeting summaries can note decisions, action items, and follow-up tasks, helping teams stay aligned and make easy searches when needing to reference something.
- Full transcripts for both calls and meetings, ensuring important details are always accessible
How this Benefits Teams
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Eliminates the need for in depth note-taking, allowing employees to stay fully present and engaged during calls and meetings. It creates AI meeting notes and also allows employees to revisit any piece of the conversation if they need clarification.
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Improving confusion with clear summaries and action items that remove any confusion about decisions and support smoother follow‑ups
- Giving managers accurate insight into conversations, which helps with coaching, performance evaluations, and resolving disputes without replaying recordings.
AI Topics & Trends Feature
The AI Topics & Trends feature gives leaders a view of what’s happening across customer conversations.
What this Feature does
- Common customer issues
The system highlights repeated topics like billing questions, product concerns, or service issues so teams can see what customers are talking about most then come up with a solution.
- Sentiment trends/patterns
The tool tracks how customers feel across conversations, helping teams spot rising frustration, satisfaction, or confusion. Leaders can spot changes in customer questions or pain points by week, team, season, or campaign.
Impact on Leadership
- Spotting blind spots early
Managers can quickly find issues they may not have realized were happening, such as a sudden spike in complaints or repeated confusion over a specific policy or item.
- Improving coaching and performance development
By seeing which topics consistently challenge teams, supervisors can tailor training, address knowledge gaps, and guide employees more effectively.
- Supporting data‑driven decisions
These insights help leaders prioritize what to fix, where to invest resources, and how to improve overall customer experience based on real data.
AI Coworkers
AI coworkers inside cloud communication apps come in two forms AI Assistants and AI Agents. While they help automate tasks, they are not designed to replace human employees. They should be seen as tools to take on repetitive, time‑consuming work so people can focus on meaningful conversations, problem‑solving, and higher‑value activities.
AI Assistants
AI Assistants are there to help with the little stuff such as:
- Drafting and rewriting content, making it easier to create emails, messages, or customer responses
- Summarizing long emails, so employees can quickly understand the key points without digging through paragraphs
- Translating text for cross‑language collaboration and customer communication
- Generating code or helping with technical tasks when needed
- Clarifying complex information without needing to jump between applications or browsers
Benefits for Teams
- Reduces context switching
- Improves speed and quality of daily tasks
- Supports secure, responsible use (no data used for training external models)
AI Agents
AI Agents are there to support business needs like:
- Handling FAQs and providing instant answers to common questions
- Answering calls 24/7, giving businesses always‑on coverage
- Scheduling appointments, reducing back‑and‑forth time with customers
- Qualifying leads by asking key questions and gathering needed info
- Providing fast, consistent responses that improve customer satisfaction
Real‑World Roles
- AI Agent Receptionist
Greets callers, answers questions, routes calls, schedules appointments
- AI Agent Assist in Contact Centers
Retrieves knowledge, summarizes calls, surfaces answers instantly, can answer common questions
Business Benefits
By offloading routine tasks, AI Agents help organizations:
- Reduce labor costs by automating predictable, repetitive work
- Eliminate wait times, improving customer satisfaction
- Boost consistency and accuracy across interactions
To learn more about cloud contact centers check out this blog: How Cloud Communications Transform Customer Service and Experience
AI Intent Routing
AI Intent Routing is designed to simplify how customers reach the right person inside an organization. Instead of phone menus saying press this number for Sales or press this number for Support this feature uses natural language understanding to let callers speak in their own words what they need help with.
The system analyzes what clients say, identifies their needs, and sends the call to the appropriate team or individual automatically. This not only improves customer experience but also reduces the burden on staff who previously handled misrouted calls.
How It Works
Key capabilities include:
- Language navigation
Customers can say phrases like “I need tech support,” “Appointment reschedule,” “Check billing,” and the system can identify the intent and route it to the right people.
- Language support
English (US/UK), French, Spanish, Dutch, German, and Italian are all supported, making it easier for global or multilingual businesses to serve diverse callers.
- Fallback logic
If the system is uncertain, it automatically sends the caller to a general queue or a live agent. This prevents misroutes and ensures callers always land somewhere helpful.
- Context passed to agents
When the call arrives, agents can see the caller’s request and the top five intents the system identified, allowing them to start the conversation with full context.
Benefits of AI Routing
For Callers
- No menu navigation, people can speak naturally instead of guessing which number to press.
- Gets them to the right team on the first try which reduces frustration and shortens the path to resolution.
For Employees
- See caller intent before picking up
- Faster resolutions
- Fewer call transfers
AI Compliance
As organizations adopt AI tools inside cloud communication platforms, security and data protection become critical. Every transcript, recap, and automated response contains sensitive information, so the way that data is handled matters.
How Data Is Protected
- Secure data centers
All call data, transcripts, and AI‑generated summaries are processed and stored in secure data centers designed to protect against unauthorized access and data loss.
- Encryption at all stages
Data is encrypted both in transit and at rest, meaning it’s protected while being sent and while being stored.
- Access controls and retention policies
Only authorized users can view transcripts, recordings, or recaps.
- Azure OpenAI processing
AI features use Azure OpenAI, which provides enterprise‑grade security. Importantly, customer data processed through Azure is not used to train public AI models.
How AI Transforms the way Businesses Communicate
AI inside cloud communication platforms have begun to significantly upgrade how businesses can communicate. By automating routine tasks, improving accuracy, and capturing important details from calls and meetings, AI helps teams stay focused and work more efficiently.
If you haven’t switched over to cloud communications yet, adopting it now gives your business the foundation it needs to stay competitive as AI becomes central to how teams communicate.
If you're exploring how unified cloud communications could strengthen your operations, with AI tools, improve staff coordination, and enhance the patient experience, Usherwood is here to help. Start by filling out a tech evaluation below and our team will walk you through your options and recommend the right path forward.