My Latest for Upstream Works - Pandemic Implications for CX and the Contact Center

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!

My Latest White Paper - Mitel - CX Challenges in Pandemic Times

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.

Next SCTC Fireside Chat - This Wednesday, with Genesys and Inference

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.

My Next Webinar with Lifesize - Contact Center Success Strategies in 2021

I’ll be presenting on another webinar soon, this one sponsored by Lifesize and hosted by Channel Partners. Heading into year-end, the focus will be on planning for 2021, and how contact centers need to be thinking about cloud - and video - and why channels are well-positioned.

It’s a big topic, and am looking forward to providing an overview, and then leading a conversation about with Valur Svansson, Lifesize’s Global Sr. Director, Contact Center EX and CX. I can tell you now, it will be an engaging discussion, so I hope you can join us.

The webinar is happening on Thursday, November 12 at 2pm ET, and all the details for registration are here.

My Next Webinar with IntelePeer - CPaaS to Power the New CX

September is always busy, and it’s holding true for me. Got another webinar to tell you about - this one is hosted by Channel Partners Online and sponsored by IntelePeer.

The CPaaS space is quite versatile, and contact centers are finding lots of ways to use these platforms. IntelePeer has found a niche here, and on this webinar, I’ll be talking about scenarios where CPaaS can help contact centers uplevel their CX capabilities, especially those still tied to premises-based technologies.

Our webinar run on Thursday, October 1 at 2pm ET, and all the details to register are here. Hope you can join us!

The Real Driver of CX in 2020? - My Latest for No Jitter

Increasingly, it seems that most problems and solutions are filtered through the lens of technology, and while that’s just the way the world is going now, this does not explain everything. AI doesn’t rule the world yet, and there’s plenty that technology cannot fix or explain.

This isn’t meant to knock technology, but it’s rarely a silver bullet, and human nature does not easily conform in the ways that makes tech so efficient. I’m not trying to be obtuse here, but in the contact center space, most of the narrative I’m hearing is technology-centric. COVID-19 has brought new stresses to contact centers, as well as to consumers, as we all learn to live in a contact-less world. It’s not fun, but that’s reality, and most companies still struggle to deliver a great CX despite having all this cool technology.

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but it seems to me that larger forces are at work, and I’m concerned that contact centers are focusing on the wrong things in the current environment. To continue this line of thought, you’ll need to read my latest No Jitter post, and it’s running now on their portal. After that, if I’ve stoked your curiosity, I’d love hear your thoughts, as would the folks at No Jitter.

Oracle Startup Idol Event

I’ve been getting invited to judge awards and events a fair bit lately, and this one happened yesterday. The Oracle AR folks rounded up a group of analysts to judge this mini-event, where 6 startups in their partner ecosystem each gave 3 minute rapid-fire pitches for us to evaluate. The companies were all new to me, and each was very different, and that’s a great way to showcase the breadth of Oracle’s world.

As judges, we could see the presenters - hosted on Zoom - but they couldn’t see us, and we couldn’t see each other, so I really don’t who else was on my side of the virtual room. As one might expect, some pitches were really good, and some were painfully hard to watch. After the presos, we cast our votes across three categories - creativity, innovation, and overall pitch. One category ended in a tie, and in no particular order, the winners were Airfluencers (I liked them the best), Rocketmat, Complete Intelligence, and Supermoney. Congrats all, and thanks to the Oracle team for inviting me!

My New Report for Metaswitch - Mobile UX with UCaaS

I’m a market researcher by trade, and have always enjoyed qualitative research, especially focus groups. That was the basis for a project I recently completed with Metaswitch, and fortunately we got the groups done just before COVID-19 shut our lives down.

I’ve always felt focus groups provide the most honest, authentic forum for market research, but I won’t be doing any of those for a while. Too bad, because I have clients who want to do them, but that’s going to have to wait a bit I’m afraid. Online focus groups have been around for ages, but there’s no comparison to being in a room with real, live customers.

For the work with Metaswitch, they wanted to explore the mobile user experience for collaboration, something that has long been a weak point in the UC value proposition. Let’s just say we learned an awful lot about the role mobility plays for both personal and work-related needs. UCaaS can bring a lot of value to managing this mix, and there’s a big opportunity here for service providers. However, unless they can speak to the everyday challenges workers face for mobile collaboration, the potential will not be realized.

Being qualitative research, the report doesn’t have all the answers, but I’ll bet you’ll learn a few things you didn’t know or gave much thought about. Being proprietary research, the report is gated on their website, and there are actually two flavors, and you need to register to get either of them. You can find them in the Knowledge Center of the Metaswitch website, where the full-length report is here, and the express version that they produced is here.

My Latest Podcast - Talking AI and CX with Germany's parlamind

I do a fair bit of regular work with U.K.-based Enterprise Management 360, including podcasts. This time around, I was in conversation with a German AI company called parlamind. The company is new for me, and they’re doing some interesting things with AI in the contact center space, especially around improving CX.

This is very mucn in my wheelhouse, so it made for a pretty engaging session. I was joined by Tobias Lehmann and Olav Vier Strawe, and we could have gone on all day. The podcast has now been published on EM360’s site, and I hope you give it a listen - here’s the link.

New Podcast - Remote Working with Monday.com

Regular followers will know I’ve been doing a lot of podcasts lately, and it ‘s just one channel I’ve been busy with sharing my thoughts on the trend of the moment - remote working, aka WFH - work from home.

This time around, I was in conversation with Matt Burns of Monday.com about remote working, and how businesses should be thinking about it. Their approach is a bit different and complementary to what UC and team messaging platforms bring - they call it a Work OS - and you’ll just have to listen to our conversation to get the bigger picture.

The podcast was hosted by UK-based EM360, and it’s been posted now to their portal. Here’s the link, and as always, comments and sharing are welcome.

Getting UX Right for Mobile UC - My Latest for No Jitter

I’ve long advocated the importance of user experience - UX - for any form of collaboration offering, and it especially matters for mobility, since this is where workers spend so much of their time now. Technology will only get more complex - not less - and it’s easy to overlook the fact that most workers only have a basic grasp of the tools and applications they rely on day-to-day. We’re not all engineers, and most workers are on the wrong side of 30, and that reality is not well-reflected in the usability for most collaboration offerings.

I don’t have a magic wand to fix that, but I have just done some qualitative research with mobile users to better understand all this, and there’s a lot to learn. Since the work was done for a client, I can only share high-level findings here, but even these should be of interest to anyone wondering why mobile UC applications aren’t more widely-used. I’ve summarized that in my latest No Jitter post, and you can read it here. I’ll have more to say about this soon, and until then, your comments are welcome.

Watch This Space Podcast - Digital Workplace Drivers and Cool Voice Tech from Chattanooga

Things are never dull around here, so how’s that for a mix of topics for a podcast?

That’s what’s on tap for my current Watch This Space podcast, and it’s now publicly available. Chris Fine and I reflected on recent conferences we attended, and on the voice + AI front, this podcast is just one of several forms of thought leadership I’ve been producing lately.

If you don’t know, I produce a monthly newsletter - JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review - and subscribers get exclusive access to my podcasts for a couple of weeks. Another benefit of subscribing, btw, is the inclusion of real-time transcription; so you have the choice of listening, reading, or doing both at the same time.

The public version of my podcast is audio-only, and if you don’t mind the wait, here’s the link, and I’d love to hear your thoughts after giving it a listen. If you need it sooner, just sign up for the newsletter, which also provides a digest of what I’m seeing over the course of my travels and research.

Finally, I’ve been talking for a while about upgrades to the podcast, and starting next month, you’ll see a new graphic that I think will help give Watch This Space more of an identity. More upgrades are coming, so stay tuned.

Next Stop - Ft. Lauderdale and Future of Work

Time to go from snow to sun. Florida in February - what’s not to like?

I’ll be flying to Ft. Lauderdale today ahead of tomorrow’s Future of Work Expo, which is one of several sub-events for TMCnet’s flagship ITExpo. Last year, I was co-Chair of the event, and now I’m Chair, so I’m moving up in the world. We’re still filling a few speaking slots, but the program is strong, and if you’re attending, I hope you’ll check out our sessions.

As with all the conferences I attend, details can be found in the Event Calendar of my website, and you can also peruse the FoW agenda here on the event website.

Also, in case you missed it, here’s the Q&A that TMCnet’s Rich Tehrani did with me as a preview for what's coming at our event. Hope to see you there!

2019 in Review - our Latest Podcast

Closing out the year - and the decade - there’s a lot to think about for 2019, and everyone seems to be sharing their thoughts around this time. One vehicle for me is our Watch This Space podcast, which my newsletter subscribers get exclusively for a couple of weeks, and then I share it publicly.

I do these with my colleague, Chris Fine, and we started out planning to do both a 2019 look-back and a 2020 look-ahead in the same segment, but we ended up doing them in separate podcasts. The 2020 podcast will run in the January newsletter, so if you’re a subscriber, watch for that on or around January 7.

Subscribers have had the 2019 look-back podcast for some time already, and for everyone else, it’s posted now in the Podcasts section of my website. I hope you give it a listen, and if you like it, the archive includes all of our previous podcasts. Otherwise, my blog will likely go quiet until 2020, so I’ll wish you season’s greetings now!

New Podcast Series with NewVoiceMedia and Vonage for Cloud Contact Center

Cloud is the dominant trend these days in the contact center, so there’s a lot to talk about. As a regular contributor to UK-based Enterprise Management 360, I get involved in various projects, including podcasts. My latest was a 3-part podcast series, where I was in conversation with Vonage CMO Rishi Dave about various trends driving cloud-based contact center, as well as how IT needs to be thinking about embracing all that comes with that.

Our discussion was mainly through the lens of NewVoiceMedia, which forms the basis of Vonage’s contact center offering, but also the broader value proposition that comes from integrating this with the other two big cloud pillars, UCaaS and CPaaS.

Am catching up from being away last week, and all three episodes can be accessed from EM 360’s website now. Here’s the link to Episode 1, and you can follow the links from there for Episodes 2 and 3. We cover a lot of ground, but I think you’ll find it informative. As always, comments and sharing are welcome.

VOICE Summit 19 - Quick Pix

I attended the middle two days of this event in Newark, and there was plenty to see. Plenty new, plenty interesting, and plenty to talk about. Definitely an adjacency in this emerging ecosystem to collaboration - you wouldn’t normally associate these two worlds at face value - and that’s why I was there, to help bring the enterprise perspective.

Before the week is out, I only have time to share some photos, but more is coming. I’ll have a post next week for BCStrategies, and today I’m recording a podcast about it for my August newsletter. I’ve got some other posts in mind as well, so stay tuned.

I can’t validate their claim to be the “world’s largest voice event”, but it gets your attention. Pete Erickson welcoming the audience, and it was pretty big. They said 5,000 would be there, but I think it was more like 2-3k. So, Pete runs Modev (mobile developers), and that’s the organization behind the event. Last photo - the Amazon Alexa “quiet space”. The phone booth has always been a great concept, so here’s what it looks like in the digital age.

Adam Cheyer, VP R&D at Samsung - he’s one of the creators of Siri, and he’s in a great spot to make Samsung a major player in this space - just you watch. Next photo - one of an endless number of breakouts - this is Interactions - talking about using bots and conversational AI to make CX better - familiar to me, but I think very new to this crowd. Next, a slide from Voices.com - more on this later, but very interesting use case for hiring voice actors to tell your branding story. Last in this panel - one of my favorite moments - an ASL interpreter helping deaf attendees follow the sessions - loved seeing that.

Pindrop CEO Vijay B (very long last name!) talking about authentication challenges with AI-driven voice. Example here showing how Barack Obama evolved while in office - not just his looks, but also his voice - this was my favorite talk of the summit. Next photo - Tom Webster sharing highlights from the Smart Audio Report and how consumers are using digital assistants in the home. I’ll be writing about this study soon. Finally, some live jazz on tap during the Day 1 reception - this trio could really swing - loved it.

Wednesday night was the Voice Summit Awards, for which I was a judge. Pete Erickson hosting the awards event - was very fun. Highlight for me was meeting Thomas Chappell - wearing tie - he’s a deaf developer with Prudential Financial in Newark, who received an award, and addressed the audience the next day. Both in photo are deaf developers, and they were all smiles when we found out that they went to the same school as my deaf brother, NTID in Rochester. Cool! Finally, a pleasant surprise - Newark has a terrific LRT that runs through their subway tunnels. When built in the 1930s, these stations had beautiful tile work, and here's a great example from the Broad St. station.

My Latest Podcast, with Talkdesk on EM360

I get involved in various projects with UK-based EM360, and this time around it was a podcast with Talkdesk. Our topic was how the cloud brings new value to the contact center, and my accomplice was Talkdesk’s Director of Product Marketing, Stephen Bell.

The podcast was just just posted on EM360 today, so here’s the link if you’d like to give it a listen. As always, sharing and comments are welcome, and if you’d like to do something similar for your company, am sure the EM360 folks will be happy to hear from you.

Next Stop - London and Mavenir

My busy June continues with a short trip to London, for Mavenir’s analyst event. I’ve been to two events this week - one day for each, and Mavenir will be a day and a half. It’s a long way to go, but am sure it will be time well-spent, just like it was for the last Mavenir event I attended last fall.

Guest Post for Talkdesk - WFM: the Customer is Always Right

Those who follow my blog and/or newsletter will know that I get approached to write guest posts for vendor sites, When the stars line up, I’m happy to oblige, and Talkdesk is the latest example. We’ve been exploring various ways of working together, so this is hopefully the first of many posts you’ll see from me with them.

My first guest post is about their recently-announced workforce management offering, and what their cloud-native approach brings to this core building block for contact centers. The title will make sense once you read the post, and it first ran here on Talkdesk’s website. To give it broader exposure, I’m posting about it here, so if you missed it the first time around, here’s your second chance. As always, comments and sharing are welcome.

Moving to a Cloud Contact Center - Are You Really Ready? - My Latest Report

Just doing a shout-out for my latest thought leadership effort - it’s an Insight Report, published by No Jitter and sponsored by Voxbone. There’s more to the cloud than meets the eye when using it for contact center, and that’s what this paper explores.

Being hosted on No Jitter, this is gated content, so you need to register to get a copy, but that won’t take long at all, and am sure Voxbone will be happy you did that. I’m just the author, and if you want to discuss this topic further, feel free to drop me a line.