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A short note for navigating this section - scroll below for the most recent posts, and then for more, click on the Blog Archive box, where you can view all of my posts, going back to the beginning in March 2005.
My series of guest posts for Aizan continues, with the latest topic being the role for messaging apps to improve customer experience. Customer service has historically been voice-based, but the use of messaging has increased greatly, especially with mobility, and there are many scenarios where this is the best way to engage with customers. For more on this, I hope you check out my post, and more topics are coming soon.
From London to Lima to Dubai - not my normal routine, but this will be my third straight week of international travel - yeow. If I sound confused about what time it is or where the hell I am, now you’ll know why.
This is my first trip to Dubai, and yes, I’m a little anxious about going to the Middle East right now. Nothing is certain these days, but Dubai is pretty far-removed from the realities of everyday life just about everywhere, and am hoping that extends to the next few days.
Many thanks to Avaya for hosting me, and this is the first time the stars have lined up for me to attend GITEX. There’s a lot of buildup for GITEX, and given how large this event is, I know I’ll only see bits and pieces, and am sure all of it will be great, if not over-the-top.
I’ll do my best to share on LinkedIn and here as time allows, and will definitely follow on with a review article soon after. More details here about Avaya’s presence at the show, and if you’re there, please drop me a note and maybe we can meet!
Finally got closer to my normal public writing output last month, and here’s the digest. Hope you get to check some of these out, and as always, comments and sharing are welcome
Assess Unified Communications Pros and Cons for Hybrid Work, TechTarget, Sept. 26
CCTC Event in Toronto - Quick Post and Pix, my blog, Sept. 11
Climbing Over the CCaaS Obstacles, Contact Center Pipeline, Sept. issue
How AI is Transforming Voice Communications for Business, Aizan blog, Sept. 1
I haven’t done a “next stop” post in ages - kinda went away with the pandemic. In-person events are definitely back, and I need to get back into the habit of doing these shout-outs for upcoming events.
Next up for me will be for Five9, and this will be my first time visiting Porto, Portugal. Am sure will be a great experience, and I’ll share along the way, as well as after, of course.
Until recently, these were called “analyst events”, but as social media becomes more pervasive, and as demographics trend younger, they’re now called “analyst and influencer” events. I’d be swimming upstream trying to parse this out - maybe a topic for a future podcast - and for now, let’s just say I’m happy to be part of this group.
To stay totally connected, follow the event using the hash in the visual below, and if you want track what I’m sharing, my Twitter handle is #arnoldjon.
UK-based UC Today has been running their UC Awards for a few years now, and I’ve been invited back again to be part of the cohort of judges. It’s a fun process, and as an analyst, I talk to a lot of vendors, which helps provide the industry-based perspective needed here.
The awards program itself is underway, and applications can be submitted until June 9. If getting industry recognition is on your to-do list, more detail can be found here, including the 12 different awards categories.
I’ve got a new podcast to share, this time with NICE. Am back for another episode of CX Pulse, hosted by Amelia Earhart, and this time we’re talking about the bigger picture for how AI is - and can be - deployed in the contact center.
There’s no direct link to specific episodes, so you have to scroll through their web page, but since mine is recent, it’s near the top - “AI in the Contact Center”. Also, there is a direct link for Apple Podcast subscribers, or here on Spotify, so those are other ways to access it.
Got another webinar to share here. This one is with NICE, and it draws on a recent white paper I did for them. As the title in the visual below shows, we’ll be exploring the bigger picture for AI in the contact center, and why it’s much more than chatbots.
I’ll be joined by Lauren Maschio from their Product Marketing Team, and the early response has been really great, so it should be well-attended. It’s happening next Thursday, January 26 at 11 ET, and here’s the link to register.
This week was my turn to contribute an article to No Jitter from the BC Strategies team, and it’s a big topic - telemarketing fraud. As consumers, we all know what that looks like, but since we’d rather not think about it, the rest of the story tends to live in dark corners where there’s a constant struggle to stamp out or mitigate the damage done by bad actors.
There are a lot of moving parts here, and many have a direct impact on the telecom ecosystem. I’ve been researching this space recently, and the challenges are more daunting than you might think. This is my first analysis of telemarketing fraud, and there’s lot more to explore, and I hope you give this a read here on No Jitter.
Got another guest post to share - this one is with NICE, where I’ve written about how their new “make experiences flow” branding reflects the thinking behind their CXi approach to today’s contact center challenges. It’s a two-part series on their blog site, and you can read the first one here now; and I’ll post again when the second writeup runs.
Got another guest post writeup to share. This one is running on tekVizion’s blog site, and examines the value of continuous testing for UCaaS. Managing all these applications is harder to do than appears, especially since many of them are real-time.
IT cannot possibly keep up with all the updates and performance testing, and when things don’t go to plan, the user experience suffers, and that can really impact UCaaS adoption. The post is running now, and I hope you give it a read. No doubt, tekVizion would love to hear from you as well - they’ve been doing this for a very long time.
Personal events have put work on the back burner the past couple of weeks, but am slowly getting back to things. I’ve had a few new things in the works that I’ll start sharing over the next few days, with the first one being an exec Q&A I recently did with Rob McDougall, CEO of Upstream Works.
I’ve been doing work with them for a few years now, and Rob was certainly early with AI. A lot of that is finding its way into Upstream’s offerings now, but more importantly, Rob has a pretty good perspective on how contact center leaders need to be thinking about AI. We’re certainly of like mind about these things, and I hope you enjoy our conversation.
If you don’t know, I present an annual update on the state of enterprise speech tech at Enterprise Connect, and I’ll be staying on that track for this upcoming webinar. This time around, I’ll be presenting and in conversation with LumenVox CEO/founder, Edward Miller on a webinar moderated by No Jitter’s Eric Krapf.
In particular, we’ll be examining the pros/cons of going with a purpose-built speech recognition platform as opposed to using the native capabilities that all the major cloud providers have. It’s a timeless topic in tech, and with speech tech coming into its own now with AI, there’s a lot to talk about. We go live at 2pm ET on May 25, and to join us, all the registration details are here.
If you don’t know Jeff Pulver, then, well, that’s your homework. Nobody explores what’s next like Jeff, and all of a sudden, it’s VON3 next week. Apologies for not getting the word out sooner, but it’s a packed lineup, and all the details to register and attend are here on the event website. Hope to see you there!
I was part of the last VON3, which ran in January, and several of those speakers are back, along with many new faces. This time around, I’ll be speaking on three sessions, one for each day:
Monday - 3:30 PM - 3:45 PM - Workstream Collaboration: A New Approach to Serve the Modern Workforce, in conversation with JR Guerrieri, CEO of Nynja
Tuesday - 3:40 PM - 4:10 PM - Future of Work, back again with long-time podcast partner Chris Fine, Founder & CEO, Integrative Technologies
Wednesday - 3:40 PM - 4:05 PM - Voice in the Metaverse Roundtable, with Bret Kinsella, Founder & CEO of Voicebot.ai & Roger Kibbe & David Colleen, CEO SapientX
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.
Judging for various industry and vendor awards events is one of the hats analysts get to wear, and I’ve been doing a few of these lately. This is the most recent one, which I got to do last year with Talkdesk as well.
I’m just doing a heads-up here in advance of the winners, who will be announced on June 15 at their upcoming Opentalk event. I’ve completed my round of judging, which closes on June 1, and the winners will be notified on June 4. Stay tuned!
Virtual events with analysts are tricky to plan, especially for pacing out the program. Over the last year, vendors have tried all kinds of formats, but it seems clear that the best approach is to do it in manageable chunks of time. Nobody is going to sit through a day-long marathon of video streaming - it’s just too intense, and too easy for folks to wander off.
Over the past threee days, I’ve been tracking the Five9 Analyst Summit, and they seem to have the right formula - three days and three hours each day - and starting at 10:30 ET, which works pretty well going across multiple global time zones. It’s still a lot of content to digest, and I managed to take in just about all of it - only had to drop out a couple of times.
I’m not going to write up a full research note now, but will share a few takeaways and screenshots here while it’s still fresh. Following a solid Q1 earnings report, the updates we got this week provided detail as to why the company is doing so well.
Much like Zoom has been the right technology at the right time to enable work from home, Five9 provides a pretty complete CCaaS solution as contact centers rush to the cloud. As we heard, 85% of this market is still premises-based, and it’s hard to see why so many players are jumping in with all types of cloud offerings. Being a fully cloud-native contact center pure play, Five 9 is in a great spot right now.
The CCaaS market sure is messy right now - as is the broader customer service/CX space - and for that tangent, I’ll steer you to my latest No Jitter post which came out earlier this week. Coming back to Five9, here are some notable takeaways around the many things they’re doing right.
Lots of strong growth metrics, but their upmarket success with large enterprise customers catches my eye the most, with 45% YoY revenue growth. and 83% of Q1 business revenue. All cloud vendors will book their share of smaller customers, but I think it’s the ability to sell into this end of the market that will create the most sustainable value and growth for Five9.
We heard lots about their culture, and it’s a strong selling point for them as an organization. They’ve built out a solid managment team along with proven industry leaders on the sales side, and as CEO Rowan Trollope noted, it’s a place now “where nobody leaves” - in a good way, of course!
Plenty of updates around innovation - I’m not that technical, but their Inference acquisition is a good example with IVA - intelligent virtual agent - to help automate customer service - as is Whendu, which helps contact centers with complex legacy integrations migrate to the cloud. Aside from acquistions, they’ve added over 150 developers, and are maintaining R&D spend at a solid 12% of revenues. This is just a taste of what they’re doing, and the main idea here is that they’re holding their own, and then some, in a very competitive space that is evolving quickly.
So much more to talk about, and before I close off with some screenshots that can be shared, the intangibles of leadership have a lot to do with their success. You might be surprised to know that Five9 started in 2001, so this isn’t exactly a startup with wheels or a unicorn with hardly any revenues. They’ve been at this a long time, and both President Dan Burkland and CEO Rowan Trollope shared a clear vision for where they’re going and why they’ve been so successful, especially in this big moment of CCaaS adoption. Rowan kicked this event off talking about re-imagining CX and taking a clean slate approach with cloud and AI, and to build around the emerging “multi-modal” workforce, where both human agents and chatbots play key roles in transforming customer service into a highly personalized experience. Easier said than done, but they’re definitely on the right track - leading and not following.
January turned into a good month to do some re -setting for 2021, and that has been time well-spent. Writing was on the light side, but that won’t last long. Whether you’re new here, or not sure if you missed something of mine from last January, here’s my monthly digest of writing highlights.
Voice-Enabling Microsoft Teams - the UCaaS Opportunity, guest post for SIPPIO, Jan. 22
Harnessing Diversity and Inclusion in Technology Key in 2021, TechTarget, Jan. 22
The Hybrid Workplace: New Opportunities for Collaboration, No Jitter, Jan. 19
How is Remote Work Affecting Enterprise Telephony?, TechTarget, Jan. 15
Embracing Contact Center AI in 2021, Insight Report for Upstream Works, Jan. 14
Unified Presence - the Real Challenge for Cross-Platform Collaboration, guest post for NextPlane, Jan. 13
We’re on a roll lately at BCStrategies, this being our third podcast over the past few weeks. I hope you caught the last two - 2020 highlights, and our look-ahead for 2021. They’re easy to find on our portal, as is our current podcast - best practices for video meetings.
Every vendor has a video story now, but that doesn’t mean it has to be all video, all the time. In my view, video has its place, and should only be used if it’s additive to the meeting. Of course, video helps home-based workers feel more connected to their teams, so it’s not just about having another communications channel at our disposal.
Best practices can mean many things, and if you’re looking for ways to make your video meetings more productive, I think you’ll get a lot from our collective take on the topic. Here’s the link to the replay, and kudos to Blair Pleasant for moderating. As always, comments and sharing are welcome.
I recently finished a 3-part series for Upstream Works on CX drivers for 2021, and the last piece focused on AI. Contact center has long been a prime use case for AI, both for improving CX and supporting agent engagement.
Lots of ground to cover, and this Insight Report has been posted now on their site. As with the other writeups in this series, the content is gated, so you need to register to get the download. Once there, you can download my earlier writeups in this series, as well as other content they have there.
This one kinda crept up on me, as the event is at noon ET today, and am back serving to judge another round of startup pitches from the Oracle for Startups program. This time around, we’ll be hearing from ATLAS, Cognicor, HEARTio, Reengen, SmartHint and Tracifier.
These are all new companies to me, and there’s a lot of AI, healthcare and sustainability in the mix, along with a bit of blockchain. All very in-the-moment, and looking forward to be a part of this again.
J Arnold & Associates is an Independent Technology Research and Analyst, helping businesses understand the strategic value of communications technology as they adapt to the digital transformation of work
Who’s Who in Telecoms?, March 2021
Top 100 Unified Comms Influencers Revealed, September 2020
Unified Comms Influencers - Top 50 for 2019 Revealed, August 2019
TOP VoIP Bloggers to Follow VoIP Review, 2018
Top 10 Telecom Experts to Follow on Social Media - June 2017
