In 2021, cloud communication and collaboration tools became part of everyday workflows for just about everyone — but for some users, those tools just didn’t cut it.
In 2021, with the pandemic dragging on, workforces everywhere relied on digital tools to communicate and collaborate — voice, chat, and video apps were a part of everyday workflows. For certain users, however, those tools didn’t really fit their needs. In 2022, they can expect a better experience, predicts Hunter Middleton, chief product officer for 8×8. «The next big innovation for unified communications users will not be a technical innovation,» he said to reporters this week. «It will be a focus on the user experience.» There are whole segments of users, Middleton said, «that have more needs than the traditional back-office worker, but not so many needs that they require a fancy omnichannel contact center app.» That could include sales teams collaborating around opportunities, event staff organized and reorganized each day into project teams, retail floor staff that are tag-teaming curbside pickup SMS notifications, or caseworker teams serving constituents. Those users have been poorly served by the market so far, Middleton argued, even with several companies competing for their business — 8×8, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Avaya, Webex, RingCentral, and LogMeIn, to name a few. «This is the year you will start to see use-case focused, composed user experiences take the forefront in the evolution of collaboration and communications applications, not the next technology innovation,» Middleton said.
