The communications landscape is one of constant transformation, and innovation. This has been particularly evident in the last couple of years, with the challenges of the pandemic pushing companies to rethink every aspect of the way they work.
Experts say the events of 2020 accelerated digital transformation by around 7 years, hurtling us into a new future of communication and collaboration. As companies in the UC sector work to maintain the momentum of this fast-paced, creative marketplace, what can we expect from the years ahead? We spoke to innovators Aircall, BlueJeans, Content Guru, Talkdesk, and Thetalake to find out.
What are the most significant customer trends from 2021?
Innovation is often empowered and enhanced by the changing demands of companies, and the challenges they need to overcome. In the last year, we’ve seen a number of new innovations emerging throughout the communication landscape, from increasing demand from differentiated customer experiences to a new focus on remote and hybrid work. Here’s what our experts had to say about the trends of 2021.
Heidi Elmore, Head of UCaaS for Zoom:
Zoom’s Heidi Elmore told us that a recent study they commissioned highlights the rapidly increasing demand for remote work. Most businesses expect over a third of their employees to work remotely after the pandemic, thanks to the flexibility and versatility offered by the work style.
The shift to remote work is prompting an increased need for technology catered towards hybrid work. According to Heidi, “Zoom unveiled dozens of new innovations that empower the hybrid workforce and meet this growing demand. This includes Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery, which we’re enhancing to enable remote workers to be represented equally on the screen with other in-office participants, creating a more inclusive meeting experience for everyone.”
Heidi also noted the hybrid workforce has prompted a demand for a more inclusive workforce. “With employees remote, hybrid and in-office, customers need to accommodate all settings and ensure a level playing field.”
David Gardner, VP of Research, and Insights for Talkdesk:
Talkdesk VP of Research and Insights, David Gardner says the modern, digital age means customers have more control in how they choose to interact with brands. There’s a growing demand for fast, frictionless, and more personalised service, no matter the context of the interaction.”
“The CX stakes have never been higher. As businesses strive to deliver better, differentiated CX, the modernization movement of 2020 and 2021 will further expand. Financial services, healthcare, public sector organizations, and more will increasingly offer the type of CX traditionally associated with retail and hospitality companies”
Notably, Gardner says the technology powering these solutions won’t be a one-size-fits-all investment. Every industry will need their own tailored technology.
Jeff Reekers, Chief Marketing Officer for Aircall:
Aircall’s Chief Marketing Officer, Jeff Reekers said the pandemic has shifted customer expectations and behaviour son a massive scale. Most companies are seeing an increase in inbound conversations from customers. Indeed, a recent study from Aircall found customers believe quick resolutions during the first interaction with a brand is the key to good customer service.
“This highlights the benefit of integrated communication systems, which allow businesses to streamline their functions to provide a consistent and smooth experience across all platforms to meet the needs of customers effectively.”
Aircall believes providing businesses with a dedicated solution for voice that integrates with their Help Desk, CRM, and other channels will be essential going forward.”
Lydia Runnels, VP of Product Management for Bandwidth:
Bandwidth’s Lydia Runnels says working from home has been a major trend over the last year, and it’s something we’re likely to continue seeing going forward. The new style of hybrid working is increasing demand for tools like Microsoft Teams, and interoperability of those solutions with existing technology. The popularity of “BYOC”, Bring your own carrier tech is on the rise too.
“Consolidation and Centralization. Providers, platforms, and major players were either consolidating with M&A and scooping up complementary functionality like Bandwidth’s own acquisition of Voxbone (and the more recent Zoom Five9 attempt) or they were creating strategic integrations and alliances (8×8 Voice and Teams etc) to facilitate interoperability and enable enterprise choice and flexibility. In tandem, enterprise customers were attempting to consolidate vendors as they migrate and centralize on more nimble platforms that are investing in the characteristics they desire and compete on. All indicators point to this trend continuing to accelerate in 2022.”
Eric Spadafora, VP and General Manager for BlueJeans:
VP and General Manager of BlueJeans, Eric Spadafora, says the first trend BlueJeans is seeing is a new category of video devices being provided to the remote work community, to help deliver better video experiences. These tools are providing a new digital canvas for annotation, whiteboarding, and other collaborative features.
“The second trend is the need for a seamless and comprehensive events platform. Hybrid events aren’t going anywhere. BlueJeans Events leads the virtual event industry with the ability to host up to 150,000 worldwide interactive event participants multi-language support for over 70 languages”
BlueJeans have also noticed a rising need for innovative technology embedded in video conferencing platforms, such as BlueJeans’ most recent integration with Google Glass for hands-free meetings which “delivers stunningly clear streaming video and enables all participants to have pristine line-of-sight into vantage points that matter most for a ‘see what I see’ experience.”
Martin Taylor, Deputy CEO and Co-Founder for Content Guru:
Martin Taylor, the Deputy CEO and Co-founder of Content Guru told us hybrid working became a permanent fixture in all industries during 2021. The demand for hybrid working to continue is crucial for both employees in search of more workplace flexibility, and businesses who can see employee and customer experience are intrinsically linked.
“While flexible working is hugely appealing in many ways, businesses have had concerns around how workforce management (WFM) might work away from the closely supervised physical contact center. As such, contact center leaders in 2021 have sought out distributed working solutions that offer effective Quality Management (QM) capabilities. Screen recording, auditing and performance management can provide exactly the same insights to supervisors as when agents are in the contact center itself.”
To keep companies running as normal during these difficult times, band and front-office teams need better alignment. Integrated access to tools like MS Teams can help with this.
Marc Gilman, General Counsel and VP of Compliance for Thetalake:
According to Thetalake’s Marc Gilman, innovation from UC platform providers, and an increased focus on providing comprehensive collaboration suites across video, voice, are common trends in the last year. Companies have been investing more in interoperability between different tools, particularly when it comes to using services from Microsoft Teams, RingCentral, Zoom, and Webex.
We’re also seeing an expanded set of use cases and more external usage of UC platforms according to Marc, they’re “no longer just a tool for internal communications, but powerful and effective way to engage and communicate with customers and other key stakeholders.”
What will be the top challenges facing end customers in 2022?
Transitioning into a new year of innovation for 2022 means companies should have a lot of exciting new opportunities to look forward too. However, risks and challenges will be present too. We asked our experts what they believe will be the biggest challenges for 2022 customers.
Heidi Elmore, Head of UCaaS for Zoom:
Head of UCaaS at Zoom, Heidi Elmore noted that keeping employees engaged in a hybrid workforce is particularly challenging for many companies. Zoom is attempting to address this problem with the introduction of new functionality, like Zoom Apps:
“Zoom Apps makes meetings more engaging, productive, and fun. There are apps for brainstorming and collaboration, which allow teams to get things done together. Or you can boost efficiency and streamline your workflows with apps for note-taking and task management. Additionally, you can create unique, fun moments with apps for games, icebreakers, virtual backgrounds, or wellness”
Heidi also acknowledged the importance of making hybrid work more engaging and collaborative, without compromising on security. “While this hybrid workforce creates flexibility and scalability, it presents a complex IT challenge that will require a more thoughtful approach to security.”
David Gardner, VP of Research, and Insights for Talkdesk:
David Gardner believes challenges will definitely be on the rise around security issues, fraud, and other common privacy concerns in a rapidly changing communication environment. To survive in this new landscape, companies will need to invest in the right tools.
“This includes leveraging a technology solution that provides AI-enhanced monitoring, detection, and notifications to help protect sensitive customer data and the integrity of their contact center operations. By proactively taking control of their contact centre’s security management, organizations can mitigate risks from data leakage, fraud, identity theft, and privacy-related breaches.”
Jeff Reekers, Chief Marketing Officer for Aircall:
According to Aircall and Jeff Reekers, end customers have a negative opinion of service when they’re forced to wait long times or interact with multiple representatives. Consumers want solutions to their problems fast.
“Increasingly, businesses are adopting bots and other forms of AI to help answer simple questions and solve trivial problems. On the other hand, when faced with a complex problem, nothing can replace the voice and live discussion with a customer support team member.” Addressing this challenge means adapting the business structure for an omnichannel experience”
Lydia Runnels, VP of Product Management for Bandwidth:
Bandwidth’s Lydia Runnels says her company believes the move to the cloud will be among the top challenges and the top opportunities for customers in 2022. The shift in how and where people work over the last year has accelerated the plans of large organizations to move to the cloud. However, it’s a daunting migration to approach, due to different service providers, integrations, and legacy infrastructure.
“Bandwidth gives companies the opportunity to address migration challenges by enabling the unbundling of telephony from their UC platform and choosing Bandwidth for the carrier. This helps enterprises reduce complexity, maintain greater control, and better prepare for future scale as they move business communications to the cloud.”
Eric Spadafora, VP and General Manager for BlueJeans:
BlueJeans VP and General Manager Eric Spadafora said the first challenge BlueJeans is seeing is companies not having a full video strategy. Brands need a video strategy which cconsiders all kinds of employees, from remote to in-house staff, across numerous locations and time zones. This also needs to include a consideration of security for devices in use in these new landscapes.
“BlueJeans customers are asking for an overall seamless experience across their entire company, and we are seeing more and more businesses look to us to help them develop these types of video strategies. As this is new to many of them combined with the fact that video conference calls and virtual events are here to stay, we have dedicated support to help them build a strategy that is best suited for their business.”
Martin Taylor, Deputy CEO and Co-Founder for Content Guru:
Martin Taylor from Content Guru says the number of tools an agent uses is increasing at an incredible rate. Employees need to use a host of different systems to answer questions and take actions. Contact centres need to integrate these separate environments to avoid silos.”
“Organizations can save time and cost by implementing a customer experience solution that overlays existing systems, rather replacing them. We’ve ensured that our CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) platform offers hundreds of bespoke integrations. We have also added cutting-edge Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for accessing systems that are otherwise resistant to integration. RPA replicates and automates human activities, such as entering information or executing searches, across multiple third-party systems. This saves time, increases reliability and cuts down on costly agent training requirements.”
Marc Gilman, General Counsel and VP of Compliance for Theta lake:
Marc Gilman from Theta Lake believes a major challenge will be the continued focus of regulators on ensuring customers feel safe and secure in various industry environments. Companies will need to ensure the technology they invest in is properly equipped to handle new compliance demands.
Additionally, there’s a risk that companies won’t be able to “leverage the full capabilities of the platforms because key features/functionality is turned off.” Overcoming these challenges will require a careful balance of providing access to the right tech, while maintaining high security standards.
Which technology will deliver the greatest value to your customers in 2022?
As the communication space continues to evolve faster than ever before, vendors are introducing new innovations to tackle the challenges companies now have to face. Some technologies seem to have more potential than others for the current business landscape. Here’s what our experts believe will deliver the best results in 2022.
Heidi Elmore, Head of UCaaS for Zoom:
Zoom’s Heidi Elmore told us businesses expect around half of employees to use video conferencing tools after the pandemic, and more than 70% of businesses agree that video tools will continue to be essential for business operations post-pandemic.
“Innovations that increase access and equity will only grow in importance. In addition to our Zoom Whiteboard, Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery and other hybrid workforce innovations, we have expanded our translation and transcription services, and will be extending the automated transcription service from Zoom to include 30 languages. There will also be live translation available for 12 languages within the next year. Zoom connects users across the world, and this expansion of our transcription and translation features will help to overcome the language barrier that can prevent dynamic communication and collaboration.”
David Gardner, VP of Research, and Insights for Talkdesk:
Talkdesk’s David Gardner believes AI technology is already fundamentally shaping the operation of the contact centre, and this will increase in the years ahead.
“AI technology is already fundamentally shaping how contact centers operate. In the year ahead, it will take on even greater importance. CX professionals overwhelmingly view AI as a necessity, but many acknowledge that their own organizations have yet to leverage it in a truly transformative way. That is starting to change with new advances like human-in-the-loop (HITL) technology, which makes it easy to train AI models and removes the barrier for smaller companies to adopt AI”
Talkdesk notes that AI is well-positioned to improve both customer experience and employee experience when used correctly.
Jeff Reekers, Chief Marketing Officer for Aircall:
Jeff Reekers says hybrid work is here for the long-haul, and companies to be able to analyse the performance of their contact centre well in this new environment.
“This will be key to both improve customer service and enhance workplace flexibility, and companies need advanced analytics capabilities to measure both team and individual level performance, identify improvement opportunities, coach support agents, and optimize staffing. Analytics and insights help to improve customer service which is important to customer retention“
Lydia Runnels, VP of Product Management for Bandwidth:
Bandwidth’s Lydia Runnels says actionable insights and analytics will be the most important consideration for companies looking to improve operational efficiencies. AI and machine learning solutions can also help with anomaly detection, according to Lydia.
“Our coverage already includes 60+ countries reaching over 90% of the global GDP. Additional value comes from removing friction from points of connection to improve the experience for everyone at each point of the communications journey”
Eric Spadafora, VP and General Manager for BlueJeans:
VP for BlueJeans, Eric Spadafora says BlueJeans’ Telehealth application has the power to deliver the most benefits to customers going forward. The solution offers a smart and simple way for patients and providers to connect over video, and it’s based on the existing BlueJeans platform for Meetings. There’s also access to the BlueJeans Command Center, for essential controls, and Apple Health, for sharing essential data with physicians.
“In the events segment, event coordinators are being tasked with finding ways to create more interactivity and inclusivity with large-scale events, so that every event attendee can get the most out of the show. BlueJeans is the first virtual event provider to meet this requirement head on. Our technology includes Q&A, chat, polling, the option to raise your hand and we just added closed caption translation with real-time closed captioning in over 70 new languages as well as simultaneous interpretation which supports up to 5 concurrent audio channels. Lastly, we now have background blur and embeddable event recordings and can host up to 150,000 participants.”
Martin Taylor, Deputy CEO and Co-Founder for Content Guru:
For Content Guru and Martin Taylor, the homeworking revolution will drive the rise of the most important technology in the years ahead. Companies need a way to manage employees more effectively, to empower excellent customer service at the lowest possible cost.
“An effective Workforce Optimization (WFO) suite with scheduling, recording, and reporting capabilities will ensure compliance and support agents, wherever they work. A good WFO solution will include quality monitoring and intelligent analytics, with integrated knowledge management and training opportunities. A cutting-edge WFM solution helps manage a hybrid workforce through automatic scheduling based on cost-effectiveness, service level adherence and agent skills.”
Taylor also noted that mobile apps are useful for ad-hoc communication and shift changes.
Marc Gilman, General Counsel and VP of Compliance for Theta Lake:
According to Theta Lake’s Marc Gilman, a number of technologies present valuable opportunities for business growth in 2022. While the cloud enables scalability and access to new technology, companies will have more scope to embrace things like AI, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing to analyse large volumes of data and find insightful trends.
Companies will use AI to understand the meaning behind all manner of conversations, while leveraging new, secure “API-based collaboration supervision tools that facilitate meaningful capture, retention, and review capabilities” to k eep collaborating teams safe in the hybrid world of work.
