Firm Publishes Best Cloud Communication List

Last week, cloud communication advisor GetVoIP published a list of what it considers the most innovative cloud solutions of 2017.

Nextiva’s NextOS came out on top.

Other winners included Avaya’s Zang Spaces, Vonage’s VonageReach, and Talkdesk’s Context Mobile.

Genesys PureCloud, NICE inContact’s CXOne, 8x8’s Virtual Office Editions, Cisco’s Sparkboard, Amazon Connect, and Microsoft Teams finished out the list.

GetVoIP says NextOS advances business communications and the customer experience by providing a single platform through which businesses can manage of users, features, billing, and internal communications. And it notes that this solution includes natural language processing and machine learning to automate tasks and organize information.

Zang Spaces is Avaya’s team collaboration solution. Microsoft Teams is another team collaboration solution – and the company has announced that it will ultimately replace Skype for Business.

Team collaboration is among the hottest trends in business communications today. And the popularity of Slack was a key driver in making that happen.

Synergy Research wrote this in March of 2016: “Collaboration continues to be a market that is characterized by a long list of disruptive and high-growth companies, with no less than 12 companies achieving year-on-year growth rates in excess of 25 percent. We have seen lots of new cloud-based applications which have gained traction in the small office environment, and I now expect to see many of these start to penetrate mid- to high-end enterprises.”

As for VonageReach, that’s an omnichannel marketing automation platform.

Vonage says it enables businesses “to develop automated and customized drip campaigns to send personalized messages at every stage of the sales cycle via text, email, voice, or social media.” And in doing so, it says, organizations develop better leads, shorten sales cycles, and can deliver more relevant offers.

Marketing in recent years has become less art and more science. Indeed, the area of marketing automation has taken off in a big way. That has enabled businesses far and wide to automate marketing campaigns and to become more sophisticated in how and when they promote their products and services.

This has given rise to a whole new industry, which is now referred to as MarTech. And it’s enabled businesses to use context to customize marketing deliverables.

Talkdesk introduced Context for Mobile just this fall. It is a contact center solution that provides real-time information about a caller’s mobile in-app activity to customer service agents. That way, those agents can provide more personalized support.

“One of the most exciting features of Context Mobile is that customers can avoid the waiting process altogether by using Talkdesk’s callback form,” Talkdesk says. “The new feature allows customers to request a call back from the next available agent instead of waiting on the line for that agent to free up for their call. It’s a natural next step in saving the customer time and effort during support interactions.”

To learn the other five solutions on GetVoIP’s top 10 list, and the company’s individual take on all of the above solutions, check out Matt Grech’s article.

Edited by Mandi Nowitz