Creating Seamless, Personalized Digital ExperiencesCreating Seamless, Personalized Digital Experiences

In this week's No Jitter post, contact center guru Sheila McGee-Smith recounts two Amazon Connect customer stories from a recent conference put on by AWS. Each is a case study in how innovative technology was poised to transform the enterprise over the long term, and then was turbocharged by the pandemic.

Sheila tells the stories better than I could, so I’ll encourage you to read her whole post. I’ll just quote the sentence from Sheila that sums it all up: “The pandemic has accelerated the need for seamless, personalized, digital experiences.” That’s true in the customer-facing world that Amazon Connect serves, and of course it’s just as true in the world of knowledge work that enterprises are just starting to transition to hybrid models post-pandemic.

So it was fortuitous that Sheila wrote about AWS when she did, because this week Enterprise Connect made its two final keynote announcements: Pasquale DeMaio, General Manager, Amazon Connect, and Jeetu Patel, EVP and General Manager, Security and Collaboration, at Cisco. Just as AWS is staking out its position in the digital transformation of the customer experience, Cisco is aiming its rebranded Webex squarely at the hybrid work transformation on which enterprise organizations are embarking.

Cisco’s Patel and AWS’s DeMaio join a stellar keynote lineup that also features:

“Seamless, personalized digital experiences” is a great way to sum up what these five vendors are ultimately trying to build, whether for customers or employees (or both). And of course it’s not just these companies — the Enterprise Connect show floor will be filled from end to end with large players as well as smaller, innovative young companies all seeking to seize this moment of transformation.

Some of the Webex features, as discussed in this No Jitter post, are great examples of seamless, personalized digital experiences — and again, Cisco is not alone in offering technology like simultaneous translation, background noise suppression, and various ergonomic improvements to the way people interact with meeting interfaces. These technologies were in development well before the pandemic hit, but they seemed more like nice-to-haves; in the new ways of working, they’re poised to be potential difference-makers.

One of the lessons I took away from Sheila’s post on the Amazon Connect customers was that, however transformative the experiences of these enterprises, the whole process was very much grounded in the same budget imperatives and migration principles that have underlain enterprise communications transformations forever. One of the things we try to do at Enterprise Connect is give you the big picture through keynotes and other general sessions, complemented by an in-depth program that helps you understand how to make it all work for your enterprise.

Away from the keynote stage, we’ll have the usual abundance of in-depth, vendor neutral information and insights in our Conference sessions, including a refresh of our Cisco vs. Microsoft strategic deep-dive session led by consultants Brent Kelly of KelCor and Phil Edholm of PK Consulting. Brent and Phil have added Zoom to the mix this year to reflect the critical position that this vendor has seized in the strategic picture for many enterprises post-pandemic.

So I hope you can join us in Orlando to hear from the five thought leaders who will be delivering our keynotes, as well as immersing yourself in the details of exactly how the new transformative technologies might work for your enterprise. As a No Jitter reader, use the code NJAL200 when you register to save $200.