I was asked in a panel discussion recently what the next big technical innovation will be for unified communications users. My answer was that the next big innovation for users will not be another technology. It will be a focus on the user experience.

In 2021, employee experience tools combining voice, chat, and video became ubiquitous, enabling continued collaboration and customer engagement as everyone moved to remote work. But a large number of users are finding that what they got last year from providers is a lot of features, a lot of technology, but not a lot of understanding of what they have to do in their teams each day to use these tools.

They have enough tech. What they need now is for that existing tech to be more aware of their role and use case, and to be thoughtfully combined into experiences that support the specific activities and workflow going on in their function day to day: sales teams collaborating around opportunities, event staff that is organized and reorganized into project teams each day, retail floor staff tag-teaming their curbside pickup SMS notifications, and caseworker teams serving their constituents. One size does not fit all for your communications app.

8x8 is putting the user first with our focus on building composed experiences for those poorly served populations that have more needs than the traditional back-office worker, but not so many needs that they require a fancy omnichannel contact center app. An example is here with 8x8 Frontdesk.

In the past year, the level of collaboration tech-savviness has moved forward leaps and bounds. And as a result, users are very aware that the generic communication and collaboration tools they have been given could work so much better for them if only someone would take the current tech and target their use cases better.

This is the year you will start to see use-case-focused composed user experiences take the forefront in the evolution of collaboration and communications applications, not another technical innovation.