TalkingPointz Insider Report EC23

The Most Important Enterprise Communications News

The main news since the last Insider Report comes from Enterprise Connect. It was a very successful conference, and there’s much to say and process. 

This Insider Report covers a lot of the announcements at EC23. A separate, more detailed analysis in the form of a TalkingPointz Research Note on EC23 will be coming later this month. Unfortunately, getting access to the recorded content, including keynotes, is taking longer than expected. As a result, this Insider Report is light on EC23 analysis, but that’s coming soon.  

This Insider Report has two authors: Dave Michels and Heidi Elmore. See Heidi’s recent contributions to TalkingPointz.  

General

It’s as if the Metaverse isn’t real: Last month, Meta shifted its focus to AI. The metaverse in general didn’t get much attention at EC23. During the conference, we learned that Disney has decided to eliminate its metaverse team. This is going to be a recurring theme as many organizations were too quick to embrace the nonsense. The metaverse is coming, but not anytime soon. The tech is too kludgy, and the goggles are too expensive. At least Disney didn’t rename its parks to MetaWorld (it would be silly to replace a household brand with a reference to some newfangled, unproven tech). 

Zoho’s Collaborative Suite Goes Async: Earlier this year, Zoho expanded into UCaaS. The cloud provider is easy to ignore, as it’s been expanding its CRM suite for decades. Progress continues, and this month, Zoho released WorkDrive 4.0. It leans heavily into asynchronous meetings with WorkDrive Snap — that offers asynchronous recordings of screens, people, and audio with access to shared content. The Zoho suite offers office productivity apps, UCaaS, meetings, messaging, email, calendar, shared notetaking, shared storage, and async video PLUS accounting and CRM apps. The browser-based suite is available globally and costs less than competitive suites from Microsoft and Google.

Zoom Mail and Calendar improvements. Previously announced Zoom email and calendar are now GA. Zoom Mail is both a client and service. The client is available to all users, and the service is included on some plans. Dave really wants to see Zoom nail this. So far, he is unimpressed. Its main value is reduced app-switching, but switching tabs is about as disruptive as switching apps. The opportunity is getting customers off MS or Google. 

Mail and Calendar are ripe for disruption. They remain critical services yet are deprived of any meaningful innovation. A few (such as IBM and Basecamp) have tried to re-invent email but don’t have the brand power to pull it off. Does Zoom? It’s unclear and will remain so until they have an innovative product. 

Amazon Project Kuiper: Amazon also intends to create a low-orbit communications network. It’s known as Project Kuiper, and the first two prototype satellites are expected to launch in the next few months. If all goes well, Amazon expects to put production models into space in 1H24.

Meetings and Messaging

Microsoft used most of its keynote to share its (compelling) vision around AI and hybrid work with Copilot. Among its more significant announcements: a completely rebuilt Teams client that’s faster (up to 2x) and more efficient (50% less resources). Microsoft also says the new client offers a more streamlined experience and supports multiple accounts (multiple accounts in one client). This is a new client, not an upgrade. Microsoft positions New Teams as an improvement of the same product but also stated that Classic Teams development has ceased. Unlike pure cloud apps, IT administrators will determine if/when to upgrade.

Heidi thinks client performance was one of Microsoft’s main weaknesses, and this new experience will help with retention of existing customers. Since Microsoft has over 280M existing users monthly, the focus on performance improvement is worthwhile.  Dave can’t figure out why Microsoft, Cisco, and Zoom are still using clients when everyone else does fine with browsers. Surprisingly, Teams competitors have not been able to successfully exploit the performance issues with Teams. Dave moderated a CIO group last Fall. Performance was a big theme, and hardware upgrades were a common second act to “free” Microsoft Teams implementations. This new client is an admission of the issue that is  now resolved. 

Microsoft’s Surface Hub, the star of Enterprise Connect 2018, later this year will get an upgrade to MTR. If you can’t wait, the Cisco Board Pro 55” and 75” are certified now, and more certifications are coming. Cisco customers can choose Microsoft or Cisco’s operating systems. 

Cisco Webex wanted to make it clear that it’s been at AI for some time (including four acquisitions) and believes it has a clear head start across its portfolio. The company pointed to several features, past, present, and future, to make its point. These include audio intelligence (such as noise removal), video intelligence (such as Smart Lighting), natural language understanding (NLU), and analytics. 

Regarding meetings, Cisco announced a coming multi-camera room solution called cinematic meetings (automated camera and zoom selection based on voice and facial recognition). For open-area rooms or glass walls, Webex also now supports meeting zones to define room boundaries. New gesture cognition can initiate effects such as digital confetti, and a BRB feature activates a visual hold should a speaker leave their chair. Meeting summaries offer an efficiency improvement over transcripts. A key enabler of these intelligent features is Room OS 11, now available across Webex devices. 

Even with all these investments in RoomOS, it was surprising to not see new room hardware solutions from Cisco or others at EC23.  Cisco did launch its Table Microphone Pro earlier this year. It seems even the hardware vendors are banking everything on AI and software.

HP Poly: Poly was the first major peripheral vendor to launch an Android-powered collaboration bar (Zoomtopia 2018). The bar expanded to include multiple Studio X products and the G7500 modular room solution. With its newest release of the Poly Studio X70 (version 4) Poly becomes the first vendor to have its portfolio certified across Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet rooms. 

Jabra announced its PanaCast 50 Video Bar System (again) for Microsoft Teams. This particular device was one of the only new room hardware announcements at both EC22 and ISE Barcelona in Jan. It’s also the first device taking advantage of Microsoft’s new Android for Collaboration Bars, which brings us to…

Microsoft to Control Android OS in MTR: Among the announcements from Microsoft was a new Android OS for its collaboration bars. Few details are known on this, but it’s curious as both Cisco and HP Poly cited their room OS solutions as part of their value. AudioCodes believes it is ahead of most of its competitors by having all of its devices on Android 12. Microsoft’s intent is to standardize the collaboration bar experience, but it runs the risk of stifling innovation and differentiation among its partners. Cisco, for example, highlighted its noise-removal technology in its keynote, claiming the feature is part of its OS11. Watch this space.  

Zoom had a wide range of announcements related to their flagship meetings product and messaging. While Smart Gallery (launched in 2021) supported multi-streams from a single camera, Intelligent Director is a new solution for multi-camera meeting rooms that uses AI to determine the best shot within a Zoom Room meeting. It is expected to be available soon in beta. This is an extension of Zoom Rooms and requires a minimum of three cameras. Refreshingly, Teams and Zoom are taking different approaches here.  Zoom Huddles is a new video-enabled virtual coworking space designed to mimic in-person, ad-hoc interactions that occur in physical environments such as an office. The solution was previewed last fall as Zoom Spots and incorporates parts of the previously released messaging feature called  “huddle view.” Now available globally. Zoom also announced a new integration with Okta Authentication for E2EE. This allows Okta to authenticate a meeting attendee’s identity. Upon authentication, a blue shield will appear next to their name in the participant list. 

Zoom also launched Zoom IQ, their intelligence product dedicated to meetings. Zoom IQ for Sales was previously launched in 2022 as a sales-centric set of intelligence features like deal tracking, call summary, etc. It brings native analytics to the platform instead of relying on add-ons from vendors such as Gong or Chorus.AI. Now, Zoom IQ (in meetings) is a set of general meeting intelligence features, enabling Zoom to also claim capabilities like smart chapters, meeting summary, chat summary, answer emails, and more. Zoom IQ for Sales leverages a new partnership with OpenAI. Zoom also announced a virtual coach to help users improve their presentation skills. 

Crestron announced its AirMedia Connect Adaptor. It’s basically a version of the Barco ClickShare launched in 2012. The hockey-puck-shaped USB dongle allows a laptop to join meetings and share content without software. The AirMedia wireless presentation solution is actually about a year old and is being relaunched as a solution for hybrid work. 

Mio and Slack: Mio now supports licensed accounts on Slack as a user’s secondary platform. No more interacting with Slack bots when sending cross-platform direct messages. Implement it quickly before Slack is gone.

Customer Engagement

Forrester CCaaS Wave: Forrester issued its CCaaS Wave this month. This is the first Forrester CCaaS Wave in three years and the first published by Max Ball after Art Schoeller’s retirement. Consistent with the Gartner MQ, it rated NICE and Genesys as leaders; however, it also included AWS as a Leader. Not far from the boundary are Talkdesk and Five9. The Wave covered 11 CCaaS providers and did not include Google. 

Both Forrester and Gartner publish excellent reports. Though their conclusions are contestable, their processes and access to data are impressive. The Wave report and graphic contain more usable information. This Wave came out six months after the MQ, so it reveals both a difference in process/criteria and timing. 

The most significant timing issue is the shift in the economy, putting new pressure on nonprofitable companies. This will significantly impact Talkdesk and probably impact Genesys, too. Though cutbacks are widespread, overall, it allows the profitable firms to pull ahead in R&D and acquisitions. 

Along these lines, it’s no surprise to see Talkdesk not included among the Leaders. It is surprising to see Genesys holding strong despite significant upheaval in portfolio and leadership. 

Talkdesk and Five9 are next to each other on the edge of Leaders. However, as indicated by the size of the dot, Five9 is considerably larger (and more profitable) than Talkdesk. Additionally, Five9 has momentum in large (largest) CCaaS deals — yet still is not recognized as a leader by either firm. 

It was just a matter of time until Amazon popped into Leaders — Forrester is ahead of Gartner. However, Amazon showed significant improvements (most improved) on Gartner’s Critical Capabilities last Fall, and Gartner just ranked AWS a Leader in its CCaaS Peer Insights report. It may take a few more cycles, but the leaders will eventually be NICE, Five9, Amazon, and Google. Eventually Microsoft, too, should it decide to play. Amazon has a head start on Google. Their portfolios are similar, but Amazon has a CPaaS capability that Google lacks. Leader requirements will include strong AI offerings, CCaaS with WEM, CPaaS, and global reach. 

Though excluded from these reports, don’t count out Avaya (still powering more agents than any of them). Private cloud with cloud overlays is not that different from a dedicated instance of multitenant CCaaS. 

Zoom Updates: Zoom had three major announcements regarding CCaaS. The first is that  Zoom Virtual Agent got several upgrades, including integrations with Salesforce, Zendesk, and ServiceNow. Zoom Scheduler allows external users, such as clients and partners, to book appointments that show up on your Google, Zoom, or Microsoft calendar with a Zoom Meetings link. Zoom also announced that it is starting to test its new WEM solution (WFO+QM). Zoom intends to offer its WEM solution to any contact center, not just users of its Zoom Contact Center. 

Verint announced an expanded partnership with Google Cloud and the integration of its CCAI. Organizations can now use Verint’s solutions to fill what the company calls “the engagement capacity gap” with CX automation. It appears that Verint Workforce Engagement will be the first solution of many in a new CCaaS marketplace, called Google Cloud Marketplace, that will offer streamlined procurement and consolidated billing. 

Cisco doubled down on how the Webex suite extends to its CCaaS offer, including audio intelligence. Cisco announced a self-learning contact center. This is a vision to extend sentiment analysis across chat (words), voice (tone), and video (body language). Cisco also highlighted how Webex Connect allows orchestration and automation of customer journeys with no/low code. AI-generated conversation summaries are coming. 

Five9 announced a number of new innovations, including a new Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics 365, Agent Assist 2.0, and Workflow Automation (WFA) enhancements. The Adapter for Dynamics consolidates voice, email, and chat conversations into Dynamics 365. This will be particularly relevant to Five9’s larger enterprise implementations. These announcements align with Five9’s vision to enable a more fluid experience. 

Agent Assist 2.0 with AI Summary is powered by OpenAI to summarize customer call transcripts. There were a lot of companies offering previews of what Five9 offered as generally available. The technology removes AI training and manual categorization, as LLM technology leverages call transcripts to produce results. 

Also, the company announced enhancements to its Five9 Workflow Automation (WFA), including new tools to integrate data and automate processes between the contact center and other enterprise business systems. With this release, Five9 WFA becomes a standard offering on the core Five9 platform, enabling all new and existing Five9 customers to create and orchestrate personalized experiences for their customers. Five9 WFA helps contact centers unlock previously siloed information, accelerate decision-making and automate CX. A new update to the Automation Studio provides no-code/low-code workflows.

NICE announced Enlighten Actions, which allows organizations to create humanized interactions powered by Enlighten AI and Generative AI. The solution enhances its purpose-built Enlighten AI with generative models from Open AI. Enlighten Actions is the UI to generate actionable, brand specific outputs. Enlighten Actions is integrated across the NICE portfolio. 

Cognigy: Last month, 8x8 announced a partnership with Cognigy. This month, Cognigy announced an expanded partnership with Avaya and new partnerships with Genesys and Foundever (Sitel Group and SYKES BPO). The Avaya partnership aligns with its plans to provide cloud-delivered services to its premises-based customers. Cognigy is clearly leaning in on CX. This makes sense as I expect the CCaaS sector and platform plays to converge. Currently, Gartner is favoring platform vendors, and the report seems to target IT decision-makers looking for a conversational AI army knife. But the contact center is the primary onramp for enterprise conversational AI. 

Edify Labs announced Special Agent Bundles. These are “ready-to-work,” device-as-a-service bundles that include a Chromebook and headset, priced per day, per agent. The devices can be drop-shipped. This is obvious in hindsight, as zero-touch provisioning and simpler maintenance are among the Chrome Recommended for CCaaS program features. The devices arrive asset-tagged, with Google ChromeOS and Edify CX preloaded. Two bundles are available and start around $15/day. 

Edify was also showing its new ChatGPT-powered bot Hammond — named after John Hammond, the investor in “Jurassic Park” who thought it was a good idea to embrace cutting-edge technology that we don’t fully understand. In the book, Hammond dies after his creation paralyzes him with venom and then attacks. Ironic? Time will tell. 

Upstream announced the expansion of Upstream Works and Upstream Works Desktop for Webex Contact Center. The solution offers AI and bot management capabilities, performance dashboards, and enhanced digital and video engagements with Webex by Cisco. 

UJET/Google WFM: UJET, in partnership with Google Cloud, announced native WFO for forecasting, scheduling, and real-time adherence monitoring. See Dave’s NoJitter coverage here. The portfolio expansion makes sense as CCaaS and WFO are converging. The surprise was that this robust WFO solution is not a first-attempt solution. UJET quietly acquired Authority Software last year. 

The key message is that UJET/Google are creating a comprehensive CX solution. In addition to expanding its portfolio, it’s building out a network of sales engineers. Google continues to improve its complementary suite of services and appears to be filling the sales pipeline. 

The UJET WFO is tightly integrated with UJET CCaaS (and Google CCAIP), but Authority Software has been sold as a standalone solution for years. We don’t know yet if UJET/Google will target Authority customers for CCaaS or, more likely, continue to offer WFO as a standalone product (bigger TAM). 

Features of UJET WFO include forecasting and scheduling of multimodal workloads, adherence monitoring, and rapid scalability. The UJET and Authority teams have updated the software to take advantage of Google Cloud capabilities, including a redesign with a noSQL architecture. No QM at launch, but it’s in the Authority wheelhouse, so it’s likely coming. 

Enghouse CX Suite: At Enterprise Connect, Enghouse Interactive launched a new CCaaS solution called CX Suite. The solution has an omnichannel contact engine and two pre-integrated modules for UC and IoT. More modules are expected, given that Enghouse has a deep catalog of CX-related acquisitions. Interesting timing: The economy is putting a lot of pressure on nonprofitable companies — but Enghouse has 36 years of profitability (and dividends). The company also has global reach and extensive experience in contact centers.  

New and Proven: Both UJET/Google and Zoom announced at EC23 new, native WFO solutions. They also announced supported integrations with established WFO pros. Google announced a GTM partnership with Verint. This is a cloud-to-cloud proposition. Zoom announced that its contact center solution will be integrated with Calabrio Workforce Management (WFM). Are these moves about customer choice or simply to facilitate CCaaS migrations?  

Twilio Unify: Twilio introduced Segment Unify, a new utility to collect/manage customer data. Segment Unify has two new key features: identity resolution and profiles and synchronization. The former is about building “golden customer records” across all of the digital signals, and the latter is about moving that data into a data warehouse like Snowflake, BigQuery, or Redshift for analytics and BI. You can also use Twilio’s reverse ETL to sync this golden data back to the data warehouse. 

Sangoma CX, formerly Sangoma Contact Center, now supports webchat. This new functionality enhances customer experience (CX) by enabling an agent to chat with a customer within the Sangoma CX interface. The functionality includes reporting improvements that can track and measure webchat usage.

Telephony

RingCentral RingSense: A new conversational intelligence suite, RingSense for Sales is the first offering in the new RingSense AI suite. It analyzes interactions among sales staff and prospects, proactively extracts insights from company communications, then offers analysis, coaching, and next-step recommendations for sales reps. It also provides sales leaders with insights to improve team performance. It can analyze non-RC communications, such as a recording of a Teams meeting. 

The key AI technology in RingSense is NOT ChatGPT, but rather AI technology from its 2020 acquisition of DeepAffects. This could give the provider a leg up over competitive OpenAI-powered solutions in terms of privacy and price. Key capabilities include automated follow-ups, AI-generated summary scoring, integrations with third-party apps, and the ability to track keywords and phrases. 

RingCentral PTT: RingCentral announced a new push-to-talk capability aimed at frontline workers. The service can be acquired independently or as part of a RingCentral MVP solution. The feature also comes with transcription, helpful in noisy environments. PTT never dies. It is shocking that it’s not more widely supported.  

Peripheral Equipment: Quite possibly the most innovative new hardware device at EC23 was the HP Poly Voyager Free 60 UC earbuds These are USB/BT earbuds with a charging case. The problem with earbuds is the tiny, esoteric buttons to control them. HP Poly added intuitive touch controls to the face of the charger case, which also serves as a USB/BT gateway for airline entertainment. The controls can be used for play/pause and volume, and the case also shows charge status for each earbud and case battery. On-bud controls also exist. HP Poly also showed its new Rove 20 DECT wireless phones.

EPOS announced the IMPACT 1000 — an on-ear, BT headset designed for open offices (are those back?). They are for “talk-centric professionals” who need ANC. Jabra gets the set0to-11 award with yet another USB/BT Speak saucer. The Jabra Speak2 75 innovation is a talking indicator that provides visual confirmation the saucer hears the speaker. Jabra also updated its Evolve2 65 headset for hybrid work with a new folding mechanism. 

Cisco announced that its Audio Intelligence features are being extended from calling, meetings, and webinars to include PSTN calls. 

Microsoft announced that Teams devices now support hotline functionality. This feature auto-dials a preconfigured number when used and supports video. GA Q223. Most UC/UCaaS systems have supported this forever. Microsoft has also created a click-to-call widget (which developers can add/customize in apps) that auto-dials a Teams extension. Preview Q223. To simplify hotdesking, Microsoft phones will soon display a QR code to sign in seamlessly. GA Q323.

Networking and APIs:  

Cisco Webex Connect: Cisco released new capabilities for Apple Messages for Business to enable 1) richer formatting and 2) form support. Other messaging enhancements include the launch of Google Business Messaging and WhatsApp Business Messaging API. Lastly, Cisco enhanced its voice offering so that developers can build custom voice applications via APIs. Webex Connect now offers NLP, NLU, and AI and can integrate with third-party engines. It will also offer LLM and other generative AI, including ChatGPT. 

Vonage communicated with analysts a bold vision about how it intends to disrupt enterprise communications and announced three major APIs. Regarding the vision, it sees 5G (and Ericsson’s dominance with wireless providers) as an opportunity to create a next-gen CPaaS that enables applications and network boundaries to blur. It will allow applications to make real-time queries and changes to network services such as QoS, location, and authentication information. Key to the vision is that these APIs will allow CSPs to participate in OTT application revenues. 

Along these lines, Vonage has begun building its next generation of APIs. The Vonage AI Acceleration Suite combines Vonage Communications APIs for voice, video, SMS, and messaging with its low-code/no-code AI Studio with NLU and ML capabilities; its Proactive Connect suite that offers a scalable way to initiate large-scale, external conversations across voice, SMS, and messaging channels (MMS, WhatsApp, Viber, and Facebook Messenger); and its Meetings API with embeddable video conferencing capabilities. 

Bandwidth announced Maestro, which also earned it the Best of Enterprise Connect award. Maestro simplifies the integration of real-time voice apps across UC and CC with a layer of AI-powered services. Enterprise customers can customize global communications workflows and add state-of-the-art CX and AI capabilities such as conversational AI, ML-based fraud detection, and TTS/STT services. Maestro, which is expected to be fully available in the third quarter of this year, significantly expands Bandwidth’s strategy to be the universal platform for Global 2000 enterprise cloud communications.

AWS Chime SDK: AWS’s Chime SDK team launched Call Analytics. The new offer is intended to unlock insights such as sentiment, speaker identification, and transcripts from recorded calls. The feature was built in collaboration with several customers. Customers often record conversations, but over different platforms. Chime call analytics enables customers to centrally record, transcribe, and analyze communication sessions across different platforms. The recordings are stored in an AWS data lake. Centralizing the data brings conversations across platforms into one place, where it can be analyzed and merged with other systems. 

Also, AWS ML insights for your Zoom Meetings can use the same data lake, queries, and dashboards. AWS keeps discovering new ways to generate transcription and insights. For example, Contact Lens is for Amazon Connect; Transcribe Call Analytics processes audio via batch and streaming APIs; and Chime SDK provides call analytics for telephone calls. 

Lumen Launched Td: Lumen continues to expand its cloud-based, “XaaS” solutions and expanded its Genesys CCaaS offer with the addition of Talkdesk. Lumen added Talkdesk CX Cloud and Talkdesk’s Industry Experience Clouds to its portfolio.  

Sinch announced a new private label offering for partners and SPs to provide MS Teams voice calling. Operator Connect for Partners offers SPs a turnkey approach to Teams revenue with a partner management portal, branded customer administration portal, and low-touch order management. 

Business Section

AI non-English: Startups are racing to bring more AI to non-English-speaking markets. Helsinki-based Silo AI launched an initiative to contribute to building new LLMs in European languages, including Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Danish. 

A Unified T-Mobile? Deutsche Telekom now holds a majority in T-Mobile US. “We have the majority and are the largest shareholder of the world’s most valuable telecommunications company — T-Mobile US,” said CEO Tim Höttges at the company's annual general meeting. Deutsche Telekom estimates that the benefits of the transaction — between $7.2 billion and $7.5 billion — will outweigh the costs, which will amount to less than $1 billion in 2023.

BCM One and Pure IP: BCM One continued its buying spree with UK-based voice specialist Pure IP. This expands BCM One’s reach to 47 countries. BCM One is focused on what the company calls its NextGen Communications portfolio, which contains UCaaS, hosted voice, SIP trunking, managed SIP, and voice-enabled Microsoft Teams. The company also offers Cisco Webex and Zoom, and this acquisition expands its MS Teams capabilities to include Operator Connect.

Toshiba, a Japanese consumer electronics company, continues to dwindle away. The brand, once a household name, recently sold for $15B. The brand has lost its stature with consumers, but its components businesses remain strong. Toshiba was once a powerful player in small business and retail telephony. The business phone business was sold to Mitel in 2017 (after it was shut down). 

Cyara and Spearline: Cyara announced the acquisition of Spearline. The deal extends Cyara’s contact center and chatbot assurance with Spearline’s global dialing and WebRTC capabilities. Terms of the transaction were undisclosed. 

Leadership Changes

Greg Tomb is no longer the President of Zoom. Tomb brought his sales experience to Zoom last June. Zoom is not seeking a replacement and appears to be flattening its organization with an active Eric Yuan on top. Tomb didn’t seem particularly visible at Zoom, though he did participate in some financial briefings. Graeme Geddes was promoted to Chief Sales Officer, effectively replacing Ryan Azus, CRO, who is departing. 

Sinch AB appointed Laurinda Pang as its new CEO. She will replace Johan Hedberg, who serves as interim CEO, on April 17, 2023. Pang was previously President, Global Customer Success, at Lumen Technologies. There have been significant changes to Lumen’s leadership team since Kate Johnson arrived as CEO last fall. 

Sangoma announced that it appointed Norman Worthington, Chair of the Board, as its interim Executive Chairman (CEO) while the board seeks a CEO. Mr. Worthington previously held the position of Founder, Executive Chairman & Chief Executive Officer for Star2Star Communications. Worthington succeeds Bill Wignall, who was the CEO since 2010. Wignall executed numerous acquisitions, including Star2Star and Digium. Has any CEO survived Asterisk? David Moore also departed Sangoma as EVP, Corporate Development.

Karl Hantho, previously associated with Pexip, appeared at EC23 in his new role as VP Americas for EPOS.  

Goodreads 

1. 1. Generating a Human Response to Artificial Intelligence on The Future of Work. Automation has changed how we work. But rest assured — we human beings still have something to contribute.
   2. How the Pandemic Stole Your Focus. The constant ding of work chat messages created an environment of perpetual distraction, testing many people’s ability to focus.
   3. Why all your friends are sending you voice notes. 62% of Americans say they’ve sent a voice message, and around 30% communicate this way weekly, daily, or multiple times a day. 
   4. Brace Yourself for a Tidal Wave of ChatGPT Email Scams. Thanks to large-language models, a single scammer can run thousands of cons in parallel, night and day, in every language under the sun.
   5. Walmart Sues Capital One to End Its Credit-Card Partnership. Walmart made Capital One the sole issuer of its private label and co-branded credit cards, but Capital One isn’t meeting Walmart’s CX terms.
   6. Defamed by ChatGPT: My Own Bizarre Experience with Artificiality of “Artificial Intelligence” ChatGPT makes up all of its responses — fact or fiction is a matter of probability.

Upcoming Research

• Themes, what was missing, and takeaways from EC23 
• Analysis of the Conversational AI Magic Quadrant

Other Recent Stuff

• Celebrating Innovation in Collaboration at #EC23 (NoJitter)
• UCaaS Licensing Models Add Complexity to UCaaS (NoJitter)
• Microsoft Copilot – Smooth AI Operator? 
• Microsoft Copilot – Teams Edition 
• Dave and Heidi Discuss Selected EC23 Stories (video)
• TalkingHeadz interview with Crestron (video version, audio version) 
• UJET Launches Native Workforce Management Solution (NoJitter)
• @EC23: Barry Cooper / NICE (video)
• @EC23: Genefa Murphy / Five9 (video)
• @EC23: RingCentral Amir and Praveen (video)

Interesting Note: Engagement on videos above is thousands of views on LinkedIn and single digits on Twitter.

TalkingHeadz Podcasts are available on most podcast apps. No commercials or sponsors. TalkingPointz Insider Reports are available through a subscription service at TalkingPointz.com.

Check out my new interview series called Influence Me! A series of interviews with industry influencers. Five episodes so far (Art, Blair, Zeus, Alaa, and Jon). 

2023 Insider Reports

1. Jan 2023
2. Jan Insider Lite
3. Feb 2023
4. Feb Insider Lite 
5. March 2023