By: Tony Martino

The power and accessibility of AI have never been greater, but arguably, adoption has been more prevalent across larger enterprises. Many Communications Service Providers (CSPs) have struggled to drive tangible return on investment for customers in the smaller and mid-market segments, owing to limited resources, lack of in-house expertise, and the perception that such technologies are complex, costly, and better suited to larger organisations.  

However, market-ready, out-of-the-box AI-powered solutions are now available for businesses of all sizes, and the SMB sector represents a massive opportunity. Just like the large-scale enterprises, these smaller and medium-sized organisations sit on a goldmine of untapped data. Their everyday conversations with customers hold valuable insights that, when analysed, can enhance business decisions and drive success.   

This article will look at the opportunity for CSPs and how they can integrate AI-enhanced analytics and automation into their core offerings, delivering differentiation, increased average revenue per user, and improved customer retention – without the need for complex technical provisioning, disruptive changes to their commercial model, or extensive upskilling of sales and technical teams.

The Opportunity

The shift and widespread adoption of Unified Communications (UC) platforms, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and Zoom, for both internal and external communication, accelerated by hybrid working being commonplace, have created new opportunities for analytics-driven insights, particularly within the small and medium business SMB sector.   

While many medium and smaller organisations are already using call analytics to understand communications metrics like busy hours and missed calls, or are using call recording for regulatory compliance, businesses may be unaware that they are sitting on a mine of untapped intelligence hidden away in conversations, meetings, and chats.   

As the incumbent provider of the UC platform, every CSP has a unique opportunity to add AI-enhanced call analytics and recording capabilities that unlock this intelligence. Importantly, these solutions can be made accessible to mid-market customers without the need for them to invest in additional resources or skilled analysts.   

The benefit of AI-enhanced analytics and recording is that businesses can identify patterns in customer interactions and augment this with the content of those conversations, enabling them to assess customer experience across their entire business, at scale. These new, actionable insights are easy to uncover and can deliver swift ROI.    

According to Berry van Roekel, Head of Voice at Horizon Telecom, a next-generation telecom-as-a-service provider: “Whilst over 80 percent of our clients have Microsoft Teams, many are unaware of the advanced analytics and recording capabilities available through easy-to-access add-on. We are now addressing this gap and giving clients insights into their call performance, user activity and system efficiency.  With an advanced call recording and conversation analytics capability, clients can review interactions at scale, enabling them to both improve service quality and achieve compliance.”  Partners that are embracing the opportunity are seeing excellent gains, taking advantage of the increasing demand for AI-powered solutions generally.

The Power of Conversational Data

Analytics are proven to deliver considerable value. For example, an organization improved first call resolution by over 6 percent by understanding and correcting how agents responded to specific types of denied claims issues.  Another company achieved a 30 percent increase in sales by identifying opportunities in verbatim customer feedback to address specific customer segment needs. Improvements in customer satisfaction are another key benefit. This was achieved by