Latest Cloud Communication Trends For 2020

“If you are not taking care of your customers, your competitor will.” 

– Bob Hooey

In this digital era, good customer experience is a critical factor for business growth. As now, customers are smart enough to make decisions about product or service purchases. They don’t stick to those businesses that are serving from several years.

Now customers look for such brands or businesses who make them feel valued and understand their queries & concerns. A single bad experience is enough for the customers to switch their choices.

“Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.”

– Donald Porter

There is no doubt good customer experience relies on communication. You can achieve good customer experience by implementing the latest communication technologies in your businesses. Advanced cloud communication technologies ensure personalized customer experience that helps to boost customers’ trust and sales.

According to Gartner study, through 2022, “the market size and growth of the cloud services industry at nearly three time the growth of overall IT services.”

Where,

BPaaS = Business Process as a Service

IaaS = Infrastructure as a Service

PaaS = Platform as a Service

SaaS = Software as a Service

The above figures clearly explain the adoption rate of cloud services in business communication.

Here we have four latest cloud communication trends of 2020 that are becoming more popular and ensuring great business benefits along with personalizing the customer’s journey. 

1. Unified Communication

You may already know about unified communication as it has grown over the past years. Still, this technology is trending among businesses because of its multiple advantages. Every year we see upgrades and advancement in unified communication solutions that make it a more reliable cloud communication solution. 

Basically, unified communication or UCaaS services are a versatile option for businesses that want to streamline their communication process. UC system integrates all communication mediums into a single dashboard so that all agents can access the required information without jumping between different apps.

Also, unified communication ensures strong collaboration among team members through that business operations run smoothly. 

2. AI and ML 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) has brought a drastic change in cloud communication. Now it becomes easy for businesses to interact with their customers in every possible way. Artificial intelligence captures every touchpoint of customer behavior and provides great insights to businesses. Traditionally, businesses use small data set to analyze customer behavior as it is challenging to analyze all user patterns manually.

In today’s environment, data volumes and data complexity are continuing to grow. The only way to tackle this problem is the use of advanced technologies, i.e., AI & ML. 

The adoption of these technologies in businesses is on the rise. Here are some reports that show the importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning in businesses.

• A study conducted by Gartner stated that, by 2023, cloud-based AI will increase 5X from 2019, making AI one of the top cloud services.
• According to Economist Intelligence Report, 75% of the business executives surveyed said that AI would be actively implemented in their companies within three years. By 2025, it is estimated the AI market will cross US$ 100 billion.
• According to Gartner, by 2023, 40% of I&O teams will use AI-augmented automation in large enterprises, resulting in higher IT productivity with greater agility and scalability.

Apart from advanced analytics, time management is another key factor in artificial intelligence. It ensures technologies like chatbot, virtual assistance that saves agents time and deliver better customer experience. 

Through chatbots, you can automate the communication process so that customer service representatives’ time can’t get wasted in resolving basic queries. Also, chatbots ensure instant response to customer queries that boost customer satisfaction and their trust in the business.

3. The Era of Hybrid Cloud

When it comes to data security, businesses have many doubts whether they should opt for a public cloud or private cloud. Basically, a private cloud assures a dedicated computing server for the use of a single organization that is handled by the organization’s internal IT staff.

Whereas, public cloud is a cloud computing model that provides computational and storage services to public users and managed by the third party service provider.

As in private cloud, data resides in dedicated hosted data centers, so the entire management and maintenance become too costly. On the other hand, the public cloud considerably reduces the lead times and are less secure. 

A good cloud computing model should facilitate a bridge between the private and public cloud infrastructures. To fulfill this gap, hybrid cloud comes in and has become the popular computing model of 2020. 

Find out the reasons why businesses are adopting hybrid cloud:

· Reduced Complexity:

Taking cloud services from different vendors can create complexity. Hence, it is important to take services from a single managed service provider who can offer hybrid cloud services.

· Increased Security:

An effective hybrid cloud platform ensures a high level of security where no risk of compliance and data breaches.

4. Increased Social Media Engagement

Customer engagement is crucial for any business growth. Gone are the days when people wait for getting connected with customer service representatives for their query resolution. Now customers are tech-savvy and want the instant resolution to their queries. Thank cloud based services, which made it possible by providing so many social media platforms. 

Now social media platforms have become an integral part of business communication. Customers look for businesses’ social presence whenever they are searching for anything or have any issue with the business services.

As social media platforms are on the rise, also, in 2020, we will see higher customer satisfaction and increased engagement rate due to this technological advancement.

Wrapping Up

Each passing year, more and more businesses are adopting cloud based technologies due to its endless benefits. If you haven’t adopted cloud communication services in your business yet, then you should definitely give a try. Implement cloud communication services and reap the business benefits.