1. Each year at Avaya we ask some of our leading thinkers to share their
predictions for the important communications trends and developments
in the coming months. Looking ahead to 2012, five of our top minds have
offered insights into topics including social media, managed services and
customer care. Here is a preview of the 12 Communications Trends for 2012,
followed by some brief background on the prognosticators:
The trends:
1. Mobility raises the expectation of availability — the pervasiveness of
mobile apps and devices, along with access to the breadth of business
applications, will change consumer expectations of businesses and
employers’ expectations of employees.
2. Contact centers test the value of voice — more companies will calculate
where voice communications fit into their value stream, from pure cost
to revenue generation.
3. Contextual data spans the last mile of personal productivity —
“meta-information” will accompany voice, video, chat or text
communications to provide context for the interaction.
4. Businesses advance from social media to social business — more
businesses will question and demand quantification of the value of
their social media activities.
5. Social media and customer care enter into an arranged marriage —
promotions and customer service are the top two drivers of consumer
engagement through social media, so businesses will need to build new
linkages between their marketing, sales and customer care functions.
6. The SIP is raised again — early adopters have completed implementation
of, and captured initial ROI from, SIP-enabled infrastructure; now they’ll
begin deploying SIP-enabled applications to gain the next level of value.
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12 Communications Trends
for 2012 Preview
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7. Social interactions expose customer care’s flaws — businesses can’t fake
who they are in a “social” setting, because social interactions ultimately
expose “the real you.” Some businesses will discover they aren’t portraying
an image they prefer, so they’ll be compelled to reinvent what customer
centricity is all about.
8. IT support staffs converge, part two — in many companies, voice and
data support teams converged with the advent of Internet Protocol (IP)
telephony; with the deployment of unified communications applications,
more companies will blend their applications teams as well.
9. Continuous connectivity drives communications support services —
communications support services increasingly will involve proactive
problem resolution via secure access links and live interaction when
necessary via innovative Web environments.
10. “True” UC apps proliferate — IT departments will be compelled by
business units and enterprise users to adopt more user-centric
applications and devices.
11. UC managed services/outsourcing facilitates alignment between IT and
business units — as business unit demands increase at an even faster clip,
more IT departments will adopt managed services/outsourcing business
models to keep pace. IT groups that resist will continue to struggle.
12. Clients take control of managed services — as IT departments better
understand industry best practices around infrastructure management,
they will become more discriminating about the services they purchase,
their expectations for transparency into those services, and how they
hold service providers accountable.
The trend spotters:
Christian Goffi is a practice leader with Avaya Professional Services. He is
responsible for our Caribbean and Latin American consulting team, is a social
media strategist, and serves as the global program leader for social media
consulting within Avaya Professional Services.
George Humphrey is a director and line of business owner at Avaya.
He is responsible for the Global Strategy and Product Line Management
organization of Avaya Managed Services.
