For Phone.com, 2020 brings AI and Advanced Technologies to Simplify Customer Experience
This year, as part of our end-of-year coverage, NJTechWeekly.com asked some New Jersey startups and established companies to look into their crystal balls and tell us what’s ahead for them in 2020.
For Phone.com (Newark), using artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies will simplify its customers’ experiences. The company will also extend its already ample library of APIs to easily integrate customers’ phone systems with a wide variety of tools.
On the
whole, the business communications market continues to evolve as the result of
consolidation and advances in technology. Phone.com operates in a segment of
the market defined as “Unified Communications as a Service” (UCaaS). Are we
still a VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol] provider? Yes. Does Phone.com still
provide business phone services across the U.S. and Canada? Absolutely.
We try to not get tangled up in the web of acronyms that can confuse even the
most grizzled telecom execs. But, as in life, names are just names and they
will continue to change. In this case, however, the change is warranted and
accurately reflects our model.
I believe that 2020 will be a landmark year for our industry, as current business communications platforms represent so much more than just the ability to make phone calls over the internet. Forgive the cliché, but cloud adoption is changing everything. That reality is one of the few things that all industry pundits and prognosticators agree on: Businesses of all sizes are moving — or have already moved — from on-premise legacy hardware to cloud services. The only hardware left in the office will be the desk phone, but even that’s changing, as a growing number of businesses prefer to use their smartphones (Android or iPhone) as their second phone line, with their laptops or tablets with soft client applications serving as their main phone line.
New technology is as scary as it is sexy.Ari Rabban, Phone.com
Now that “the cloud” is accepted as mainstream, migration from premise-based legacy platforms will continue, if not accelerate, as the deployment model has earned the public’s trust. Serverless applications make it even easier to take advantage of all the cloud has to offer.
Phone.com’s UCaaS is much more than a simple replacement for outdated phone systems; it offers agility, features and functionality that go well beyond the simple phone call. In 2020, business applications and tools — both internal and external — will be connected into a single ecosystem like never before.
Innovation is in our DNA, and we will continue to provide our customers with cutting-edge tools that can be tailored to their companies’ specific workflows.
New technology is as scary as it is sexy. And, more often than not, the former applies to small business owners, a large contingent of our 32,000 customers. With no in-house IT support, they need solutions that scale, are cost-effective and just plain work. Our goal is to not only deploy solutions leveraging AI and other advanced technologies that foster efficiency, but to also demystify them to non-tech-savvy professionals.
While every service provider touts APIs, Phone.com’s ability to integrate with third-party business services is truly unparalleled. Phone.com succeeds where others fail because everything we do focuses on simplifying the user experience. By virtue of our low-code library of open APIs, we can easily connect with CRM [customer relationship management], online accounting and finance tools, HR solutions, marketing automation and other cloud services, extending communications services via custom integrations.
On the development front in 2020, Phone.com will unveil more API integrations, more AI-based products and services, more voice recognition, video and collaboration services.
It’s also important to note that these trends are ever-present in the fastest-growing segment of our economy: small businesses. SMBS [small and mid-sizedbusinesses], entrepreneurs and even sole proprietors are no longer priced out these solutions; they can now afford tools that were once available only to large enterprises. To reach our growth targets in 2020, we must continue educating customers on the limitless possibilities that are at their fingertips.
This will be the year of connected ecosystems. I predict that, in 2020, we’ll see Phone.com offering more and more hooks and integrations for business applications and services, such as the ones mentioned above. They’ll make it easier for organizations to collaborate and use technology to reach their desired levels of agility.
[This year, Phone.com’s Alon Cohen won the Legend of Technology Award at the New Jersey Tech Council’s 23rd Awards Celebration]
