Key take-aways from Cloud Comms Summit

Last week it was time to visit London for the annual event hosted by our friends at Cavell – the Cloud Comms Summit 2023. As always it was a great pleasure meeting business colleagues and getting some new insights into how the world of Cloud Communications is moving forward.

The day started with a Welcome Address by Matthew Townend from Cavell, who is always a pleasure to listen to. He once again pointed out the importance of addressing the right products to the right market segments.

In the next three years, the main communication priority for IT managers in SMBs is to provide better customer service. While asking the same question to midsize businesses it’s more important to enable remote working and better collaboration between colleagues, while IT managers in large enterprises tend to only focus on better collaboration.

The day continued with everything from live demos to keynotes, where our own Mark Herbert showed how Dstny is enabling true Mobile First for Service Providers. There were also panel debates where both Patrik Sörqvist and Neil Greenwood attended, discussing opportunities and hurdles with industry colleagues. Some insights from these discussions are:

• Service Providers need to add more value to customers.
• SMBs want someone to take care of it all, not just a working telephony solution, but a full modern workplace.
• Voice is not dead!
• Out of 300M Teams users – the vast majority do not use any type of Teams Telephony.
• You need a strategy where you decide what to build, what to buy, and where to partner up.

Then after a tasty lunch with the opportunity to talk with some people I’ve only before seen over Teams, there was a keynote that caught my attention. It was called “OK, Boomer” – How Different Generations Communicate and was held by Catie De Marcillac and Caitlin Quinn who both work at Cavell Group. It’s not very common in those kinds of events that the stage is entered by two Gen Z women talking about Boomers – in a crowd very much filled with Gen X and Boomers. Kudos!

The numbers below are straight from “Cavell Group Generation Research Q2 2022”. If you want to read the whole report, please contact:

Catie de Marcillac – catie.marcillac@cavellgroup.com – Linkedin
Caitlin Quinn – caitlin.quinn@cavellgroup.com – Linkedin

From a Service Provider’s perspective – it would be a huge mistake not to listen to Gen Z since they in fact are the future decision-makers. It was actually a bit harsh hearing that only 1%(!) of Baby Boomers prefer to work with Gen Z and that they are the least popular generation to work with. Service Providers need to be better at leveraging the skills that the younger generation has to offer! For example – 90% of Gen Z are using social media in their work life. How high do you think that number is with Boomers?

Another fact I found very interesting is that 23% of Gen Z’s preferred means of business communications is e-mail, only 6% preferred to use video call. Still, 14% prefer a classic phone call, and 64% of Gen Z workers do have a work phone number. We come back to it again – classic Voice is not dead. However – it’s also worth bearing in mind that 23% of Gen Z workers use their business phone every day, compared to 54% of the Boomers.

So – what conclusions do I draw from this? The future is Omnichannel. The future is Mobile First. The future is a combination of delightful and easy-to-use tools that play well with others. This is also why the future with Dstny feels so exciting!

We have an integrated Omnichannel offering just around the corner, where you can use one modern web-based interface for both phone, chat, and social media. Along with that, we are about to offer true Mobile First as a Service. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Service Provider, an MNO, or an MVNO, we can provide you with all the needed technology – natively mobile, through the PBX of your choice.