Summary Bullets:
• RingCentral AIR Pro is the latest member of RingCentral’s agentic AI ecosystem.
• The offer keeps RingCentral neck-and-neck with rivals, but the omission of launch details dilutes its appeal to the market.
Today, organizations are under more pressure than ever from customers to forge deeper connections. To meet that demand, contact centers have been undergoing a profound transformation, with the concept of a ‘contact center’ yielding to the broader concept of ‘customer experience’ (CX). Contact centers are converting from featuring live agents to also including AI agents; from reactive to proactive; from transaction-oriented to relationship-oriented; and from generic to deeply personalized.
Given the importance of customer experience in the market and to help organizations make the transition to it, RingCentral and rivals such as Cisco, Zoom, and 8×8 have been rolling out a steady stream of CX capabilities. RingCentral’s latest addition is RingCentral AIR Pro.
RingCentral AIR Pro is an AI agent platform consisting of pre-built and custom-built agents. The custom-built agents are created with a module called ‘AIR Pro Studio,’ a no-code environment where users can quickly design, build, and deploy AI agents using natural language. The pre-built agents are tailored to industry-specific use cases relevant to healthcare with more industries to come. Regardless of their origin, the agents are omni-channel spanning both voice and digital channels. Agents can connect to 100+ enterprise systems and APIs to authenticate users, update records, and autonomously execute workflows across platforms to resolve issues and complete transactions.
RingCentral AIR Pro is notable for the ease with which it allows users to craft AI agents, the ability of users to tailor those agents to their specific goals, and the richness of transactions the agents can undertake ranging from answering simple queries to carrying out complex tasks that require corralling information from multiple, often far-flung sources. In providing these capabilities, RingCentral AIR Pro also keeps RingCentral neck-and-neck with rivals such as Cisco and Zoom, which offer similar functionality.
RingCentral AIR Pro is one member of RingCentral’s agentic AI ecosystem. Also included are RingCentral AIR (AI Receptionist), which answers calls, handles tasks, conducts follow ups, and routes inquiries; RingCentral AVA (AI Virtual Assistant), which scoops up inquiries that RingCentral AIR is not equipped to handle and channels those inquiries to employees along with full context, customer insights, and a choice of next-best actions; and RingCentral ACE (AI Conversation Expert), which analyzes interactions and provide coaching to improve quality and performance. With this quartet of components along with other capabilities, RingCentral is enabling customers to pick and choose functionality and build light, medium, or heavy contact centers reflecting the level of investment they need and want.
The introduction of RingCentral AIR Pro is not without missteps. The offer is currently in a controlled-availability phase, limited to a small number of US businesses, with a broader rollout expected later in 2026. Given that it is only March, ‘later this year’ could be merely weeks from now or months and months away. The scope of what constitutes a ‘broader rollout’ is also murky. Will a lengthier roster of US businesses be included or will availability be nationwide? Will overseas businesses be included? Hiding in the clouds too is the pool of verticals beyond healthcare that the pre-built agents will support and when they will launch. No details regarding pricing have been supplied either. By omitting these kinds of details, RingCentral is missing an easy opportunity to whet the market’s appetite.