SCS/CPaaSAA 2022 Winter – Creating Smart Experiences

SmartCom Summit is back this Winter in collaboration with the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance, focusing on Creating Experiences in customer contact.

Post pandemic, customer engagement is moving to the cloud and innovating like never before. Call centers become omni-channel contact centers, front and back offices are increasingly integrated for optimal satisfaction and efficiency, CPaaS accelerates digital transformation and allows all sorts of new customer interactions to be created exactly as needed, and CSPs are finding their role in the development and delivery of all these new services to enterprises of all sizes.

Creating Winter Magic

Together with great minds from smart companies all around the world, we’re exploring ways to turn change into action during 10 weeks of online content, from the live kick-off on Dec 13 up to the closing meetup at Mobile World Congress end of February. Expect no slide shows or scripted keynotes but lively discussions and a combination of technology vendors, service providers, analysts and, most importantly, real users and use cases.

All together, we’ll have 40+ visionaries, industry experts and users speaking in 30+ sessions covering contextual communications, conversational commerce, programmable telecoms, the impact for contact centers and service desks, opportunities for telcos, changes in the ecosystem, how low-code/no-code is going to be a game changer, the role of bots and AI, as well as leadership and organizational challenges and the growing importance and value of technology.

Our top notch media partners (Telecom Reseller, Evan Kirstel, TMC.net) will ensure unparalleled distribution of all content to a large global audience across various channels and platforms.

Program

We have structured the sessions in four tracks, catering to different interests:

1/ Creative Experience – trends & strategy

Analysts and thought leaders reflecting on CX trends and how we’re living through an inflection point for vendors, providers and users alike
Live interviews and panel sessions run by Evan Kirstel with thought leaders from Microsoft, Braidio, Anywhere365, Enreach, Puzzel, 2600Hz, Deutsche Telekom, e&, KPN, Vodafone and many others
Keynote by Adrian Swinscoe on the need to drive CX Innovation with Brand Strategy
Discussions on valuation and M&A strategies in CX and CPaaS

2/ Converged Communications – focus on the customer

Panels and presentations about conversations, brand, dialogues, contact magic and business outcomes – instead of UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS
The case for automation and AI, and how to create the right balance between empathy and efficiency
Healthcare innovations, or why patients are a special kind of customer
Integrating human to human, human to machine and machine to machine communications

3/ Programmable Telecoms – why and how CSPs play a key role

Why and how SMEs need their CSPs to help them – the future of B2B marketplaces and low-code/no-code solutions
CPaaS success stories by and for CSPs – learn from the telcos and MNOs that have already built their CPaaS practice
International challenges and opportunities for vendors and CSPs – and why telco API standardization makes a lot of sense
CPaaS Showcases at various in-person events (Cloud Communications Alliance, ITEXPO)

4/ Hands-On – rolling up the sleeves (workshops and masterclasses)

What new 5G business models and use cases do APIs and CPaaS enable
Marketing and sales skills to master in the new era
What’s next in business messaging, with RCS and social channels
Enabling the channel, co-creation and success management

The SmartCom/CPaaSAA 2022 Winter Summit is a great way to soak up inspiration for 2023!

Jan 26: CCA CPaaS Showcase Challenge

The Cloud Communications Alliance annual event, Cloud Connections 2023, was held Jan 16-18 at the W Hotel in Ft Lauderdale, Florida. Arguably the most popular session of the event was the CPaaS Showcase Challenge hosted by the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance, which showed interesting new applications developed on top of CPaaS that are commercially available today.

The session included demo presentations from four different contestants and was judged American Idol style by five judges with $15,000 worth of prizes on the line for the winner. The judges were made up of top industry leaders: Michael Tessler (North Point Advisory), Clark Peterson (CCA Chairman), Evan Kirstel (Tech Influencer), Jordan Rupar (Managing Director at Q Advisors) and Kevin Nethercott (Managing Partner of the CPaaS Acceleration Alliance).

Jan 19: Why Marketing Matters

Kevin Nethercott moderates a panel discussion about the crucial role of marketing when launching new CPaaS services with Jennifer Singer (Medium Giant), Gwen Lafage (Sinch) and Carlos Aragon (Mavenir).

Both Gwen and Jen have spent years in the marketing and branding world at top firms but also have played key executive marketing roles at CSPs. Carlos has been the product marketing lead for CPaaS at both Kandy and Mavenir and so has seen the good, the bad and the ugly in regards to how CSPs have deployed new services.

Jan 12: Building Hero Cases on Microsoft ACS (Azure Communication Services)

Evan Kirstel talks to Roy Dehing, Principal Partner Program Manager – Operators | MVNOs | ISVs @Azure Communication Services, about Microsoft ACS and how it helps ISVs and Operators develop better services faster, and integrate with the Microsoft applications and ecosystem.

Jan 5: Creating Smart Experiences

Evan Kirstel discusses the changing nature of Customer Experience and how CPaaS allows bespoke CX to be built by enterprises (using low-code/no-code platforms) and CSPs (working with CPaaS enablers).

Hear from Iain Scholnick (Braidio), Enrico Karsten (Anywhere365), Shankar Krishnamurthy (Radisys) and Kevin Nethercott (CPaaS Acceleration Alliance) what the latest trends and opportunities are.

Jan 3: If You Build It, Will They Buy?

Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, collaboration platforms from Microsoft, Zoom, Cisco and others have changed the way companies and people work.

In this interview, Dawn-Marie Elders, COO&GM of SIPPIO, explains how they help CSPs with Direct Routing, Operator Connect, Zoom Phone Exchange and other connections between UCaaS platforms and carriers, but especially with their Marketing and Sales success.

Dec 20: Guiding CSPs on Their Journey Up

Iain Sinnott (Enreach for Service Providers) talks about the challenges CSPs face as the world changes to a new way of working, collaborating and engaging with customers. The days of fax are long gone, but how do CSPs embrace this change?

Listen to Iain explain how they help CSPs on the journey to new heights, leveraging both their wide range of technologies and their knowledge and experience.

Dec 15: Is AI the Future of CX?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic in the world of customer experience (CX) for some time now. Many people believe that it is the future of CX, and that it has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses interact with their customers.

However, as Tom Ngo, Founder/CEO of Lumin.ai and a longtime expert in the field of AI and CX, pointed out during our recent conversation, “AI is a complex and multifaceted field, and there are many different things that are called AI these days. Some people prefer to use the term ‘augmented intelligence’ to describe the way that these technologies enhance and augment human capabilities, rather than replacing them.”