The RingCentral-Avaya announcement from last week had a lot of industry watchers scratching their heads. The benefits to RingCentral were clear: They just bought an exclusive position for their UC offering with the world’s largest reseller ecosystem. But what is Avaya’s main benefit? Obviously, the cash component was a key to it. (Although I don’t fully understand the inner-workings of that cash-crunch.) But was hobbling their UC business too high a price to pay?
I think the real benefit here is that the deal frees Avaya to focus fully on its crown jewel, the contact center business. A Mitel merger, or any merger for that matter, was going to add confusion in that area. All the moves in the last few years make sense if you think of it in terms of clearing away distractions from a focus on contact center.
Text or talk? Voice conversations are still critical, but data shows that the former is becoming a bigger part of customer service interactions. This trend is driven partly by consumer preferences and partly by companies striving to lower costs. Companies are also leaning towards text because of the promise of increased automation, which is easier to do once a conversation has shifted to text.
Big question: How should text-based communication work alongside voice for customer service? In the dark ages, the only answer to this was email, in its own silo, and a call center, in its own silo. Then real-time chat came along. And then messaging, powered by massive platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, made an appearance. Meanwhile, driving in its own lane, is good ‘ol SMS.
