VoIP Trends For The Future

Here’s what to look for in the VoIP industry’s future:

People getting into 5G-enabled smartphones usually assume that their new phones are faster copies of their old phones.  This isn’t entirely true. 5G phones offer extensive optimizations for VoIP calls, including higher network availability, better reliability, and much more discerning packet prioritization.  That last one means that the phone is good at telling the difference between a voice call and Internet data.  Videos can buffer, phone calls can’t.

5G systems also utilize network slicing, which is a fancy software driven way of virtualizing a network to isolate tasks from each other combined with more intelligent allocation of computer resources to accomplish tasks faster.  In essence, it makes the computer focus on important tasks instead of letting lower priority ones, like background email checks, intrude. These new network options alone work to vastly improve voice call quality. However, 5G also uses a system called EVS for voice calls that can read and adapt in real time to current network conditions.  All together, 5G is as optimized as possible for using VoIP phone services.

The remote-work trend of 2020 sent unified communications as a service (UCaaS) to new heights, as distributed teams replaced business travel and in-person meetings with digital conversations—especially videoconferencing, but also VoIP calls.

Since the pandemic and related moves to remote and hybrid work, unified communications as a service has evolved from industry jargon to the product one everyone’s mind.  Geographically distributed teams replaced business travel and conference room meetings with remote conversations over tools like Zoom and Slack. Then businesses discovered that VoIP systems work equally well remotely as with everyone in the same location.  It’s no wonder that AVANT Analytics published that interest in UCaaS shot up by 86% after the first pandemic-related lockdowns.

Business analysts expect both remote work and the attendant UCaaS trend to continue. Industry demands will shape UCaaS tools to better handle office/remote hybrid employee models on an ongoing basis.

Information “silos” within a company mean sinkholes for data.  Data goes in, but never comes back out.  These silos aren’t deliberate on anyone’s part, but rather stem from issues with the company’s overall communications processes and capabilities.  Information silos hinder workflow and effective communication with clients.

Today’s VoIP flexibility can help break down those silos, and future VoIP systems look to continue that trend.  VoIP systems can easily provide customer files to any employee, a customer service team member isn’t lost when a customer calls dissatisfied about something that happened over in technical support.  VoIP systems make it much easier to use a customer-centric communications strategy.

VoIP calls are data, the same kind of data that flows over Internet lines every day.  Because they’re data, new emerging technologies seek to turn that data into one piece of an omnichannel approach to consistent customer experience from sales to followup.  Regardless of who the customers interact with in the organization, whether it’s sales or billing or appointment setting, the next generation of VoIP will promote consistence because it can turn the data gleaned from phone calls into searchable, actionable text and extend queries through SMS texting, websites, social media, or any other channel available to the appropriate employees.  All previous interactions with a particular client will be visible to today’s contact person, allowing easy consistent interaction with the customer.

One of the biggest areas that techies keep jumping up and down about is integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into VoIP services.  Data volume has gotten so high that AI-powered analytic services became necessities.  The latest development trends include using natural language processing to figure out what callers are feeling, called sentiment analysis. These analytic programs process the words used on the call to detect meaning, emotions, opinions, and subtext to classify and organize data that went previously unstructured and therefore unaccessible.

This constant flow of large scale statistical data gives valuable insights into the quality of customer service, the overall impacts of marketing, and how strongly customers are drawn to offered products and services.

As the Internet grows, so too does the need for data security.  VoIP systems act like any other application on a business’s network with sensitive customer data.  Therefore, VoIP security needs to become central to IT planning.  Risks include unauthorized use of the system, use of the VoIP system to illegally access other parts of the company to steal data or identities, and intercepted calls.

Today, VoIP systems often use passwords, multi-factor authentication, encryption, and even biometrics.  The future of VoIP security will probably use blockchain technology to decentralize control over the system.  If the system is decentralized denies cyber attackers any single point of attack, making it more difficult to breach the system.