Key Findings From The Cavell Cloud Communications Summit

The way the world communicates has changed considerably over the last few years. Service Providers have had to evolve with the market and adapt to the the way businesses seek to enable their workforces to communicate with customers and colleagues.

With the rapid change and increase in competition that is expected over the next few years, Service Providers will be faced with the question of whether or not they will be able to find ways of generating new streams of revenue to combat the drop in product margins they’ve seen due to an influx of competitors in the form of CPaaS and CCaaS providers such as Microsoft Teams.

The Show

Members of the MiaRec team and I were able to attend the Cavell Group’s Cloud Communications Summit in Chicago, IL. We regularly attend this event. However, this year was inspiring as it was the first time it returned as a physical event since the pandemic. 

The show started with a Welcome Address featuring Clark Peterson, Chairman of the Cloud Communications Alliance, and Matt Townend, Executive Director of Cavell Group. The keynote address and following sessions focused on a few main points and findings from their most recent research:

1. Microsoft Teams and other cloud collaboration platforms have disrupted the Service Provider market.
2. Service Providers will need to add new revenue streams and generate new ways to retain customers as a way to combat the emergence of these new competitors.
3. Enterprises focus on improving customer engagement within their contact centers as part of a more significant emphasis on customer experience and retention.

Cavell Findings

Service Providers have seen a significant shift in their businesses brought on by a large swath of new competitors that have disrupted the Service Providers' traditional revenue model, which typically focused on the margins from the products they offer. Some Service Providers have seen significant drops in the per-seat margin in 2022.

Service Providers who have traditionally focused on the business communications space are now competing against a trend that is leading organizations to utilize CCaaS and CPaaS platforms such as Microsoft Teams. 

Service Providers may especially be forced to change the way they sell their services to align with and complement the emergence of the Microsoft Teams product. The increase in businesses interested in suites such as Microsoft Teams over your traditional SP-provided products spans business segments from SMBs up to large enterprises.

With Microsoft Teams projected to become one of the leading telephony platforms, Service Providers have begun to reassess their market strategies and plan new ways to generate additional revenue.

Cavell Senior Analyst Patrick Wilson added:

“We’re seeing a lot of focus around improving customer engagement. We talk a lot about contact centers in this world, but for small businesses, they have exactly the same issues that large businesses have.”

The post-pandemic business environment has produced a willingness within organizations to make significant investments in technology and support aimed at improving customer experience. Brands currently find themselves needing to meet the rising expectations of their customers amidst a simultaneous trend of customers willing to end their relationship with a business after a single poor customer service experience.

One way Service Providers may attempt to increase retention amongst their customer base is to offer a broader array of products and services to make their relationships with customers more critical.

The Call & Contact Center Opportunity

Service Providers who look to offer their customers additional products and services as a way to deepen their relationships and combat the additional competition from the cloud collaboration space will find themselves in luck. Service Providers are well-positioned to offer consolidated services to meet the demand of the call and contact center market. 

A 2019 call center benchmark statistics study by MarketsandMarkets predicts that the software market for global contact centers will be worth $35.3 billion by the year 2023. Many vendors across multiple industry segments are working to secure a share of that $35.3 billion.

Contact center applications, including conversational intelligence, automated quality management, and more, represent the most in-demand technology that businesses currently demand amidst a concentration in the marketplace on customer experience. To stay competitive, Service Providers are bundling an increasing number of add-ons and subscription-based services with their customer offerings.

If you’re a Service Provider interested in learning more about offering a unified platform that can help brands work through the difficulties of improving customer experience and contact center efficiency, reach out to us today to talk about how MiaRec can help you evolve with the changing Service Provider market.