Start Saying Goodbye to the Contact Center - My Latest on No Jitter

It’s time for my next No Jitter post - wearing my BCStrategies hat - and I based it on takeaways from three recent industry events - NICE, Genesys and Twilio. Each is doing different things around the space we currently call the contact center, but just like we don’t make a lot of phone calls on our smart phone, customers now engage with businesses in many ways - not just via the contact center.

This space is ripe for reinvention, and my post talks about a few ways that this is happening now. You can read it here, and would love to hear your thoughts.

My 2018 Outlook for No Jitter - The Shape of Collaboration

Got to see a bunch of really good films during the break, and I'll bet you can tell which one inspired this post. My latest No Jitter column is running now, and it explains why I see some telling parallels between the shape of water and the shape of collaboration, and how this should provide points of caution for IT decision-makers going into 2018. I hope you enjoy it, and your comments are welcome. 

Looking a bit further ahead, Enterprise Connect is coming, and I'll be giving a talk there about trends in speech technologies. That will likely be the focus of my next No Jitter post, so watch for that.

New JAA Blog Award - Broadview Networks

Broadview Networks has been running a "top tech blog" award for a few years, and my blog has made their list now for the third year running. My blog is one of several that made the grade for 2016, so I'm not the top blog, but am in good company. As the update here explains, over 300 blogs were considered, so a fair bit of work went into the process.  As a winner, I get to post a shiny badge, and that's on my blog page now.

Tower of Babel and Texting, plus a few updates

Gee, time flies when you're heads-down writing.

Just realized I haven't blogged all week, and there is stuff to talk about. My ShoreTel webinar on Tuesday was really well attended, and with UCStrategies, we did a timely podcast this week about the Microsoft/Linkedin deal - I think we'll be pondering that one for a while. Have also been finishing up two new white papers and an e-book, and just got the proofs back on an upcoming magazine feature I wrote about the future of work.

I'm also quite excited about my long-in-the-works refresh of my blog and website. I've got a great team working on this, and we're merging these sites, so finally there will be one place for all of my content, along with an updated overview of my services and how I work with clients. New projects are about to start with new clients, so it's never dull around here. Oh, on the fun front, it looks like I'll be doing another gig with the SIPTones at the annual SCTC conference this fall in Kansas City - yee haw!

So, Tower of Babel? Almost forgot. This is about our most recent UCStrategies podcast, where we focused on how various text and messaging applications are complicating the UCC landscape. This keeps folks like us gainfully employed, but it's getting even harder now for decision-makers to know where to place their bets. I think our collective thoughts on this might help, so if you missed it, here's the link.