Channel Futures’ 2023 UCaaS Outlook: The Year of Democratization

FluentStream’s Cass Gilmore

As UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS evolve, companies, partners and customers find that they are in greater control of data and technology and will be so in 2023, experts told Channel Futures. This allows for a certain kind of democratization within these industries and the market. For example, artificial intelligence now gives companies more tools, according to Cass Gilmore, CEO at FluentStream, to “personalize and enrich the customer experience.”

Solving Complex Problems

When it comes to the world of hybrid work, sustainability initiatives allow organizations to engage every employee around the reduction of the carbon footprint as they work from home. This ultimately reduces costs across the board. And engaging employees for the greater good is a form of democratization. Expect to see more sustainability goals among UCaaS vendors in 2023 as they promote these values not only among their employees but among partners and customers as well.

Regarding new products, some analysts have suggested that UCaaS has possibly reached a developmental saturation point. To paraphrase one expert, “how many more language choices can a UCaaS company add?” That said, vendors providing both UCaaS and CCaaS options have an opportunity to solve complex problems within the contact center market. Some of the technology is serving to fill the void due to agent churn or attrition, which for some contact centers reaches more than 50%. Other tools help the agents that remain on staff have more control to make better decisions on behalf of customers.

For the year ahead, the following are the predictions we gathered for the UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS space. In addition to FluentStream’s Gilmore, the following individuals offered their perspectives:

Cresta’s Zayd Enam

No Jitter’s Eric Krapf

1E’s Ian van Reenen

SCTC’s Elizabeth English

GoTo’s Paddy Srinivasan

Rapid’s Gino Iddo

Mitel’s Daren Finney

Mitel’s Lana King

See what they had to say in the slideshow above.