In a world overwhelmed by software and cloud-based solutions, it’s easy to forget about the last component of the communication experience: the endpoints.
A fantastic CCaaS solution can help your teams to work from home when they can’t come into the office, but it won’t mean much if they don’t have the headsets and phones to deliver clear conversations with customers.
Leading collaboration tools can bring your team members face-to-face when they’re situated thousands of miles apart, but only if they have the webcams and microphones to allow for video conferencing. The endpoints of the communication landscape are an often overlooked and underappreciated part of the industry, but they’re an essential component, helping to hold your technology stack together.
In today’s landscape, where communication strategies are constantly evolving and improving, endpoints are becoming increasingly more advanced. Today, we don’t just have desk phones and computers to think about. Communication endpoints run the gamut from webcams to smart speakers, and mobile devices too.
What Are Communication Endpoints?
An endpoint in the communication industry is any device that a business can use to facilitate the use of a unified communication, collaboration, or contact centre service. Usually hardware tools, like phones, conference phones, and room systems, these solutions have become increasingly advanced over the years. Today, there are even communication companies that offer full packages for huddle rooms and meeting rooms, complete with everything you need for video, content sharing, and audio.
Communication endpoints still include the traditional desk phone. However, the phones that we use to communicate today are often a lot more advanced to the options that we used to rely on. For instance, research company MZA say that the desk phone is just as “in-demand” as ever. However, these tools are now more likely to come with extra features built-in.
For instance, you can get desk phones with dedicated buttons that link your calls directly to your favourite collaboration tools, like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. There are desk phones with video conferencing technology built-in and multi-media phones that can share content in seconds. You can even get desk phones with their own smart assistants built-in, which can take notes, transcribe calls, or set up calendar meetings for the employee using them.
Some common examples of endpoints in the current landscape include:
- Headsets: Ideal for remote and mobile workers
- Desk phones: Often with advanced functionality or multimedia support
- Conference phones: For meetings with multiple people
- Room kits: Packages that include everything needed for a meeting
- Video cameras: With everything from intelligent computer vision to wide-camera angles
- Smart speakers: Like Amazon Alexa or Google Home, which deliver support to office employees
Communication Endpoint Trends
Clearly, communication endpoints still form an essential part of the conversational stack that we use today. Without them, video talks, calls, and other forms of connectivity would be impossible. However, the endpoints that we use today are far more evolved than the ones that we relied on a couple of decades ago. We’re seeing new trends changing the scope of the endpoint environment all of the time, such as:
- Virtual and augmented reality: Intelligent camera tools and advanced technology are opening the door for new types of mixed reality. In the meeting rooms and offices of the future, our endpoints could allow us to cast holograms of ourselves into physical spaces or feel as though we’re sitting in the office when we’re working from home
- Smart speakers and assistants: Smart speakers with voice-activated assistants are one of the biggest trends in the endpoint environment now. These tools allow us to strengthen the connection between human employees and artificial intelligence. With smart speakers, team members can schedule calls, launch meetings, and share data in seconds, all just by using their voice. Smart assistants can also automatically transcribe notes in a meeting or translate voices in a conversation
- Video: As the demand for remote and distributed work continues to grow, our reliance on video endpoints has grown with it. Many companies are now embracing the video-first company culture, which means that more meetings are conducted from a distance, yet still face-to-face. Video endpoints can include everything from huddle room cameras with a wide-angle field of view, to a standard webcam
- Enhanced end-user experience: Endpoints are now evolving to give business users the same convenience and simplicity that they would expect from their devices at home, in the office. With one-touch buttons for launching meetings from a conference phone to touchscreens that make it easier to interact with content-sharing tools, endpoints are becoming more intuitive
- Agnostic performance: To deliver some of the simplicity that businesses are looking for today, some endpoints are also delivering more flexibility to users too. Rather than having to buy an endpoint from the same people you buy your software from, you can build the perfect stack with best-of-class tools from different companies
Communication Endpoint Vendors
There are tons of endpoint vendors on the market today, including companies that focus exclusively on business tools like desk phones and conference phones. However, there’s also more freedom for endpoints from other companies to appear in the office too. For instance, tools like Amazon Alexa and Google Home speakers can easily make the workplace more efficient, even though they weren’t originally designed for the enterprise.
When shopping for Endpoint vendors, today’s companies need to think carefully about what they want to accomplish with their communication stack. For instance, choosing an endpoint that’s software agnostic means that you can allow your employees to use any software that they choose for communication and collaboration purposes.
On the other hand, if you already have certain pieces of software in place, then choosing endpoints that are designed to work seamlessly with that software could boost performance. For instance, phones and headsets with dedicated Microsoft Teams buttons make collaborating easier and more natural than ever.
Check out some of our favourite vendors in the communication endpoint space by looking at our endpoint market guide for a complete directory of some of the top-performing companies. Or, if you’re looking for a behind-the-scenes evaluation of the most innovative companies on the market right now, check out our recent winner of the UC Awards for Endpoints!
Communication Endpoint Events
Events in the communication, collaboration, and customer experience landscape are one of the best ways to stay ahead of the trends and make sure that you’re on the cutting edge of your industry. Events in the A/V space, as well as UCaaS, CCaaS, and collaboration, can all introduce new types of communication devices to explore.
