The whole thing felt…normal? I think that’s the word, normal. Enterprise Connect 2022 kicked off a series of good ol’ fashion in-person events for the Opus Research team and marked the return to “conference normal” for so many of you, dear readers.

It was a delight to return to the familiar sight of giant booths framed with extruded aluminum, the sometimes tacky marketing swag, badge-scanning fails, the terrible wifi connections, the five dollar small coffee! I loved it. It felt normal, business as usual.

First and foremost, #EC22 was an opportunity to meet the best and brightest, visit old friends, and make new friends and discoveries. But there was something hanging over heads here at Opus, a notion we like to call (since 2013, in fact) the Conversational Cloud. See what I did there?

Opus Research is committed to analyzing and measuring the depth and breadth of the modern Conversational Cloud. We will clarify, qualify and quantify the players and participants, their platforms and solutions. The end result will be a Conversational Cloud decision maker’s guide to evaluating and composing great customer experiences to meet clearly defined and measurable business outcomes.

Figure 1. Opus Research’s Conversational Cloud

What do we mean by the Conversation Cloud?

Think of the Conversational Cloud as a framework, a holistic approach to customer experience with measurable business outcomes. It is within this cloud framework where the enterprise can harmonize contact center infrastructure with rich data, AI-infused self-service and automation, and conversational intelligence – with intelligent authentication taking the occasional and critical solo.

With our heads firmly in the Conversational Cloud, we met vendor after vendor at Enterprise Connect. The reception to our vision was overwhelmingly positive. The Conversational Cloud and its supporting categories and tenants reflects how vendors see themselves. It contextualizes and positions their platform and solution’s value proposition within the broader customer journey paradigm.

The Conversational Cloud is the sum of four, distinct but interrelated parts:

Several announcements at Enterprise Connect highlighted the momentum the Conversational Cloud is gaining:

• Google, for instance, made headlines by announcing an extension of its CCAI (Contact Center AI). It caused confusion by claiming a full-blown “platform” in an announcement with Ujet and Salesforce. On the same day, in a keynote delivered on the main stage, Andrew Moore, Google Cloud’s VP and General Manager of AI and Industry Solutions, continued to highlight long-standing partnerships with Ujet’s primary competition, like Avaya, Genesys, NICE/CXOne, Cisco and others. In addition, Google Cloud already displayed functionality to integrate directly into CRM applications from companies including Zendesk, Salesforce, Microsoft and Oracle to provide real-time data, insights, and analytics. Its goal is to accelerate and scale AI-powered contact center innovation, combining NLP and automated intelligent assistants with Conversational Intelligence capabilities, making it easier to access secure cloud contact center services.
• Vonage, another major presence in the Conversational Cloud, enhanced its contact center and UCaaS solution, Vonage Business Communications (VBC), by enabling video capabilities through its acquisition of Jumper.ai. This new capability elevates collaboration between customers and prospects, simplifying the transition between messaging and video for a three-dimensional experience and true Conversational Commerce.
• Amazon’s AWS Connect used Enterprise Connect as the venue to announce AI-infused resources for contact center workforce optimization. As described in this post on the AWS Web site, the service follows the cloud giant’s tried-and-true formula of providing one-button access to packages of advanced features directly through their AWS console. Users can then navigate to a screen displaying the results of Amazon Connect Analytics and share the findings with” forecasters, capacity planners, schedulers, agents, and their supervisors”. As AWS did with Contact Lens a few years ago, it makes cloud-based Machine Learning resources more accessible to agents and their supervisors to provide measurably better customer experience.

The steady state of hybrid work experiences is a greenfield opportunity for Conversational Cloud providers to roll out new capabilities designed to solve the challenges of communications in remote environments.

• RingCentral released a set of new features and functionality including AI-based advanced meeting insights and summaries, and live transcription. The company also launched a Hubspot integration to streamline communication and reporting workflows, similar to previous integrations with Salesforce, Zendesk, Google, and Microsoft Teams.
• Speaking of Microsoft, they appeared to be everywhere at Enterprise Connect (sparking some interesting theories). Microsoft Teams announced several enhancements including flexible mobile communication and collaboration, and enabling richer calling experiences.
• Cisco: New innovations help organizations personalize the hybrid work experience for employees and customers.
• Talkdesk: Improvements to Talkdesk mobile strategy facilitate hybrid business models and provide flexibility for contact center agents and other employees to manage day-to-day activities.

These large and familiar companies that dominate Enterprise Connect headlines have spawned an ecosystem where new startups can specialize and thrive. We are excited to discover and follow a new wave of cloud-native automation solutions that empower key functions of the Conversational Cloud.

• For example, Enterprise Connect 2022 was our introduction to CX automation company, Airkit. Based in Redwood City, CA, Airkit specializes in automated scheduling and enrollment, and measurably deflecting Tier 1 support queries.

Most importantly, Airkit and similar startups (e.g. RedRoute, which we recently covered) are laser focused on CX automations that are tightly coupled with well-known customer backend systems. They will coexist in the Conversational Cloud, often leveraging the investments that large, long-standing cloud denizens have made in core technologies and resources. Their emphasis is on innovation that, in the long run, will make the Conversational Cloud stronger and more vibrant.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: talkdesk, conversational commerce, airkit, redroute, Customer service, CX, Salesforce, customer care, Conversational Intelligence, Microsoft, automation, Cisco, conversational cloud, Vonage, ringcentral, Amazon