Ten Communications Trends for 2010
In the past decade, a sea-change has taken place in the way voice and data communications are structured, delivered and used by businesses around the world. As we kick off the second decade of the New Millennium, what’s in store for the brave new world of communications? Here are the top 10 areas we expect to see action in 2010:
#1 The next-generation user experience. The communications industry will provide much more consistency across multimodal interfaces, whether through iPhones, standard telephones or the Web. Businesses, while still respecting privacy standards, will track phone calls, instant messages and emails of their employees in a way that allows prediction of work needs and behaviors.
#2 Analytics and contact center process reengineering. Contact centers will have the ability to track customer interactions across a range of media, both to analyze what has happened and then make real-time decisions about adapting solutions to those trends. They’ll even be able to react to customer and call center interactions in real-time with both dialogue in the self-service applications and instantaneous coaching of call center agents.
#3 CEBP – no longer a four-letter word. Until now delivering communications-enabled business processes sounded good, but execution lacked. In 2010 CEBP will come into its own as a workflow tool that’s simple and easy to deploy. Imagine an insurance company responding to hundreds of agents in the field who are working with insured victims of a hurricane. The latest communications workflow tools will help coordinate the efforts between the field and claims agents in the home office, automating key processes associated with collecting data, filing the claims and confirming acceptance of the settlement. Similar examples of CEBP will emerge in financial services, health care and retail.
#4 Social media and contact centers. Customers will initiate more interactions with companies via social media tools like Facebook. Basically any consumer with a laptop, desktop or Web-phone will have richer multimedia experiences with contact center representatives. Conversely, more businesses will embrace mining of the social network, capturing new opportunities to provide service, address issues and promote sales.
#5 Unified Communications and the 3-click experience. UC has labored under a variety of models, which has made led to slower than expected adoption. In the coming year, with SIP and session management, companies will build, deploy and support applications much more easily. Workers will be enabled under a three click paradigm – in three seconds or less and three clicks, they’ll have access to many more resources and applications regardless of the device they’re using.
#6 Regulatory compliance though proactive communications. In an era of increasing regulatory mandates -- for example, the Homeowner Modification Program in 2009, through which Congress mandated that mortgage companies have to proactively communicate with borrowers –proactive communications applications will automatically initiate contact with customers and guide interactions with them in compliance with regulatory requirements.
#7 The rise of true multivendor networks. With increased consolidation of key industries, more and more businesses will have increasingly complex communications infrastructures and applications from a wide variety of vendors. SIP-enabled environments will help companies blend these disparate products so they work together and truly become brand-agnostic.
#8 Overcoming communications overload. At a time when many businesses are struggling with the volume and breadth of communications systems that need to be managed, new technologies will help reign-in the complexities to bring greater levels of operational and cost control.
#9 Taming mobile phone spend. SIP-enabled environments will enjoy major advances in the control of mobile phone expenses by consolidating trunk lines and using the corporate IP network to route long-distance and international calls from mobile phones at the cost of local calls.
#10 Making every on-hold second count. Businesses will aggressively find ways to make every aspect of their clients’ interaction more productive in the call center environment. Richer on-hold experiences will become the norm, where customers have multiple options for how they use on-hold time, including ways to move forward with a transaction even before the call center rep arrives on the call. The result will be greater call center productivity and improved customer satisfaction.
What a difference a year can make. We believe 2010 will see the advent of – or at least significant advancements in – a number of game-changing communications capabilities. Let’s see how how the year unfolds!
Posted by Ajay Kapoor at 20:39 on January 06, 2010
Eduard Panteleyev said..
Posted at 09:49 on January 18, 2010
One of possible solutions is a "cell" phone with WiMax (for example) instead of GSM/CDMA. Just connect to WiMax provider and call thru Ethernet instead of GSM/CDMA. I do think we'll go to "wimax" phones and the next generation communications because of lower costs.