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I’ve been tracking several contact center events lately, and last week was Genesys Xperience. The company always has big updates to share, and the launch of Genesys DX was a highlight. I finally managed to get my takeaways organized, and have put together a post that’s running now on BCStrategies, where I’ve long been a contributor as a BC Expert.
You may not know NovelVox, but they’re a good under the radar vendor, and I’m doing an educataional webinar with them on July 22. The focus will be the growing role of digital channels to improve CX - customer experience - and the importance of having a strategy to use them effectively. More details are here, along with how to register. Hope you can join us!
Been busy on the awards judging front lately, and UC Awards 2021 is the latest. I was part of the judging cohort last year, and for 2021 we applied some lessons learned to make it better. This is a fun one, and you’ll be hearing more about it soon.
More details are in this article from UC Today about the event, including the various categories, and how to submit an entry. If you’re still considering this, entries must be in my June 14, fyi.
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!
Time for another webinar, covering the white-hot contact center as a service - CCaaS - space. This one is with TelcoBridges, a vendor I’ve known for ages, and it’s good to see them doing well.
The main focus of my talk will be on what’s driving CCaaS adoption, and what service providers need to do to be successful. As always, it’s harder to do than it looks, but things should get a bit easier after joining us, right? The webinar is on Tuesday, May 25 at 11am ET, and all the details to register are here.
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.
If you’re a fan of Buffalo Springfield, you’ll like my latest article on No Jitter.
If you want know why and how the contact center space has become so messy - but really interesting - you’ll like it even better. There are many flavors of CCaaS now, and new visions are emerging for what constitutes “customer service”, and what CX really means.
That’s my pitch, and to read the article, here’s the link. I hope you like it, and as always, comments and sharing are welcome.
The April edition of JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review went out yesterday, along with our latest Watch This Space podcast. I always shoot for first week of the month for these launches, so if you ever wanted to know about what I’m up to, this is the best time to find out. The thumb below will give you a sense for what our latest podcast is about, and I hope you give it a listen.
If you want to become a regular, you can subscribe here for the newsletter - just takes a moment - it’s email-based, so it comes to you directly.
The podcast can be picked up across most of the major platforms - iTunes, Amazon Music/Audible, Google Podcasts, Stitcher - and others are coming soon. You can also track our recent episodes here, which is my dedicated website for the podcast.
I recently wrote a white paper for Mitel on the importance of digital CX - customer experience - for contact centers, and the impact of COVID-19 on what constitutes a good CX. The white paper has been well-received, and we recently did a Twitter chat on the topic, which was also well-received.
We’re topping all this out now with a webinar, which will be on Thursday, March 4. I’ll be presenting highlights from the white paper, and along with Mitel’s Matt Clare, we’ll be talking about the current state of digital CX, and how contact centers should be thinking about their roadmap. You can register here to join us in real time, and if you can’t make it, the webinar will be available on demand from Mitel shortly after.
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.
Last week was another busy week in the collaboration space, as the stream of large-scale developments continues. The big players keep making big moves, as dominance in this space seems to be coming down to a handful of majors. We’re still digesting Saleforce taking out Slack, and just before that RingCentral announced yet another Tier 1 strategic partnership - Vodafone - to further spread their global footprint. Not long before that, Zoom raised the bar at Zoomtopia to emerge as a full-fledged collaboration platform.
Not to be outdone, Cisco has made its latest move with the “all new” WebexOne. The collaboration business unit has undergone a major transformation since sharing their vision and new team at the last analyst gathering back in February. The stakes are just too high now, and Cisco simply has to keep pace with Zoom, Microsoft and RingCentral, not to mention other key players like Avaya, Google, and yes, Amazon - all of whom are doing well, and are all-in with cloud.
At last week’s much-hyped WebOne launch event, Cisco did not disappoint. If you’re a fan of bigger=better, they had your number, announcing 50 new features, and claming a 10X improvement for the collaboration experience. I have no idea how you measure that, but rest assured, it’s at least as good - and in many ways - better than Zoom. Cisco has long been accustomed to being a market leader, but things have slipped recently, and that’s not in their DNA.
So, here we are, and the result is WebOne, and it’s hard not to be impressed - not just for collaboration, but contact center as well. Lots to talk about, and that’s what we did on our latest BCStrategies podcast, this one hosted by Blair Pleasant. The podcast has been posted now on our portal, and if you give us 36 minutes, we’ll tell you pretty much all you need to know about WebexOne. And if we missed anything, drop us a line, and we’ll find a way to cover that.
Sure has been busy lately. This is the 6th piece of original, new content I’ve shared this week - writeups, webinars and video - plus I contributed to a podcast yesterday that will air next week; and my December newsletter and podcast went out last Friday. Yes, I’m glad it’s Friday!
I’ve just finished up a 3-part Strategic Insights series for Upstream Works, and Part 2 has been posted now on their website. It’s gated content, so it just takes a minute to fill out the registration form. However, if you want an analyst’s perspective on why digital CX is so important for contact centers, I’ll think you’ll find this a good read.
Part 1 can also be downloaded from their site, and I just finished writing Part 3, and it should be posted in the next week or so. As always, comments are welcome, and I’m sure the folks at Upstream Works would love to hear from you!
How’s that for a catchy title?
It’s exactly what it sounds like, and it’s all about analytics. Baseball fans know about Moneyball, and based on research I’ve been doing on contact center reporting, my view is that there’s too much focus on reporting and not enough on analytics. The latter approach seems to be working pretty well for teams like the Rays, who were certainly competitive in this year’s World Series, against a far more talented and expensive LA Dodger juggernaut.
If you’re just meh about the topic, then don’t bother reading my latest article, but if I’ve piqued your interest - and maybe hit on a pain point (no pun intended) - then I hope you check it out. There’s a lot more to talk about, but the article is running now in Customer Magazine, and if you give it a read, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
What started as a basic exploration of a hot topic - AI for consultants - has turned into a 5-part series that I’ve been presenting on for SCTC. It’s been a great series, and we close out the topic this Wednesday. Joining me will be Gordon Sexton of Genesys, who will add his take to mine.
As always, our Fireside Chats are from 12-1 EST on Wednesdays, and for members who miss the date, replays are available. For everyone else, you can always become a member if you’re a consultant - otherwise, just follow me here, or drop me a line if you need help developing an AI strategy. To join us this Wednesday, details and signup are here.
My December newsletter went out on Friday, and it recaps another busy month. It really hasn’t not been busy for all of 2020, and even for the past few days, I’m way behind on providing updates on new things I‘ve been up to. I’ll get caught up sharing all that shortly, and until then, for my subscribers, I hope you’re getting something good from the newsletter. For everyone else, it just takes a moment to subscribe to JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review, and soon I’ll be adding an archive of earlier issues on my website.
Along with the newsletter, the latest edition of my Watch This Space podcast is now out, and the thumb below will give you a good idea of what we talked about. You can give it a listen here, and any day now, recent episodes - including transcripts - will be updated on the Podcasts section of my website.
Tomorrow, our ongoing series about the AI opportunity for consultants continues with Part 4. I’ll be providing a recap of the key themes covered from the earlier sessions, as well as my outlook for 2021.
Joining me will be Tracy Fleming from Avaya, who will address specific AI use cases in the contact center, and as always, the sessions will be led by Steve Leaden. Registration details have now been posted to the SCTC website, and I hope you can join us - tomorrow from 12-1 EST.
Another fairly light month on the writing front, but was plenty busy on other fronts. That said, here’s what I was writing about during November.
Pandemic Implications for CX and the Contact Center, Upstream Works, Nov. 18
UC Analytics Mature to Verify Business Value, TechTarget, Nov. 17
A Change Is Gonna Come: Reflections on Slack, Twitter, Zoom, No Jitter, Nov. 10
I’ve been doing work for Canadian contact center provider Upstream Works for a few years now, and we’ve got a new Insight Series going. Main focus is about the impact of COVID-19 on the contact center as well as how CX is changing as a result.
The first report in this series has been posted now to their website, and the others will be coming over the next few weeks. Registration is required, but it just takes a moment, and I think they’ve done a great job putting the finished product together!
This white paper has been in the works for some time with Mitel, and has launched today. To support it, they’ve issued a press release, and you can read about the details there. Being long-form content, the white paper is gated on their website, and here’s the registration page to download it.
I’m involved with two other efforts to support the white paper, with the first being a Twitter Chat, today at 11am ET. I’ll be joined by Shameem Smillie and Matthew Clare from Mitel, and to tune in, the hashtag is #MitelChats.
I’ll also be presenting highlights from the white paper on a webinar that will likely be in early January - details to follow.
I’m running a 3-part series on AI for SCTC, and last week’s kickoff session was really well attended. We continue next with a particular focus on the contact center, and there sure is a lot to talk about. I’ll be giving an overview of the trends, and then I’ll be joined by Gordon Sexton of Genesys, and Richard Dumas of Inference Solutions.
Our Fireside Chat sessions have found a nice groove, and even if you’re not an SCTC member, this should be time well-spent - and for consultants who aren’t members, you might think about joining to be part of this community. Details to register are here on the SCTC site, and we start at noon ET.
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
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