The IP Expo Europe event kicks off next week, and we’re expecting to see some exciting discussion about where enterprise IT is going next and how the latest innovations will help drive their businesses forward. As digital transformation strategies start to be rolled out, here’s the hottest topics that voice and UC professionals will be talking about at the show:
Collaboration, Communication and Customer Experience
Enhancing and streamlining business communication is still firmly on the agenda. Despite customers demanding more user friendly ways to talk to businesses, and employees looking for simpler, friction-free interactions, communications seem to be becoming MORE complex by operating in increasingly more fragmented silos - far from the promise of a unified utopia.
As we’ve normalised communication as a separate task or ‘special’ sort of interaction, much of us rely on traditional phone conversations, or setting up a video chat, on a completely separate platform. This means comms are devoid of context i.e. separated from the information pertinent to that communication exchange, frequently frustrating and complicating the interaction.
IP Expo will see a lot of discussions about platform growth, but we’re also interested in how we can break down these silos. One solution we expect will garner much attention this year is WebRTC.
Now supported by all the major browsers, using open WebRTC technology to embed communication into an application or website means communication can happen in the context of a particular task, providing the user with all the necessary information needed to understand the interaction - all without worrying about separate app. installs or plug-ins. This is something I’m passionate about and will expand upon in my talk at the show.
Robotics, AI and Machine Learning
AI, robots and machine learning are shaping the future of data-driven, personalised user experiences and will undoubtedly be a main attraction at IP Expo. Chatbots and early forms of AI are already filtering into contact centres, where they can deal with the most common queries, complaints, requests and make suggestions according to what’s in their database. But what’s really exciting is where AI and robotics converge with contextual communications; this is where we’ll see fundamental transformations in how the real-time enterprise of the future will communicate - via human or machine, or a mixture of the two - with its employees and customers in context: at the right time, with the right information at their fingertips, and in the right application.
