It started with Dialpad, but now every UCaaS company – Net2Phone, IPFone, RingCentral, 8×8, yadda, yadda – has added AI to their platform. Why?

One reason is that the sales growth of UCaaS slowed to negative or single digits year over year. These providers needed something to bring interest again.

Another reason is that AI seems to naturally add on to the cloud comms platform for functionality in call center, customer service, and scheduling.

As AI explained, “UCaaS is becoming tied to AI because it offers a powerful story for demonstrating return on investment through increased efficiency, productivity, and better customer/employee experiences. AI provides actionable data from communications, automates repetitive tasks via chatbots and virtual agents, enhances security with features like voice biometrics, and creates more intelligent collaboration tools for hybrid and remote teams. These AI-driven capabilities are becoming key differentiators for UCaaS vendors, making them crucial for companies to remain competitive.”

I don’t know about Differentiation, when everyone has similar functionality.

The real differentiation for UCaaS & AI going forward will be verticalization. Domain and market knowledge will be the difference between a generic bot and one that provides an ROI.

Two providers do a decent job of spelling out the AI+UC+CC puzzle.

(1) AI in UCaaS brings automation and insight to everyday communication. Instead of routing every call through the same IVR tree, systems can now recognize caller intent, past history, or account data to send calls directly to the right person.

• Virtual agents (by voice or chat), can take care of repetitive tasks like checking balances, scheduling appointments, or answering FAQs, so staff don’t have to.
• Conversations can be transcribed in real time, with key points pulled out automatically for follow-up or documentation. This saves time on note-taking and helps teams stay aligned.
• Sentiment analysis flags when a customer sounds frustrated or upset, which can help with service recovery or coaching.
• And real-time dashboards track things like call volume, average wait time, abandonment rates, and agent performance—so managers can spot issues and respond faster.

Together, these AI features replace manual busywork with tools that improve accuracy, speed, and visibility.  [Sangoma]

I don’t know if this will all occur in real-time, but certainly in near real time, since in real life there is a lag in AI response.

Another function that they don’t talk about is real time translation and real time accent improvement.

“By automating routine tasks and making collaboration more intuitive, AI is helping teams communicate in ways that are smarter, more productive, and more human-centered than ever before. AI’s rapid evolution boosts productivity and accessibility. It turns UCaaS into tools that actively support and elevate the way teams work together. By automating routine tasks, offering intelligent insights, and personalizing user experiences, AI is driving a big shift in how businesses communicate and collaborate. From smarter meetings to more connected teams, AI’s integration into UCaaS is redefining what’s possible for today’s organizations.

For years, UCaaS platforms have focused on connecting people through voice, video, and chat. While effective, the human element of managing these interactions including scheduling, note taking, translation, and information retrieval has always presented challenges.

This is where AI steps in, helping to automate mundane tasks, provide intelligent insights, and personalize user experiences. AI liberates users to focus on higher value work, fostering more meaningful and productive collaboration. The integration of AI into UCaaS platforms is not merely an incremental improvement. It’s a change in thinking towards truly intelligent collaboration.”   [Burwood Gp]

That sounds good, but many businesses have undocumented processes. They don’t even know what the workflow is. Many businesses lack accessible data. If you do not have a Zapier connection to the software you use or an open API, then you will have a data project long before you have an AI project working. And that is where the problems lie. This all sounds good, but Implementation  and execution is all.

I was invited to speak to a group of Broadband Operators yesterday on #AI yesterday.  I am not an expert. I have spent most of 2025 taking classes, watching demos, selling AI food, and was involved in a few really cool AI projects (thanks to Strolid, Inc. & Thomas McCarthy-Howe, a certified genius!).

Here are 3 lessons:

1. You better have an AI Plan that starts now.
2. Most people are measuring the wrong things in AI POC’s. That’s why the dissatisfaction.
3. Every AI project is really a Data Project. Without good data, useless AI.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agentic AI has over 2000 providers. It is a mess for 2 reasons: (1) it is too easy to be an Agentic AI provider and (2) 2000 of these providers lack Data, an integral part of the Agent being effective.

On the customer side, these projects misfire because most businesses are SMB (small business) and small businesses do not have data that is easily accessible. It is usually stored in some proprietary silo, like ConnectWise or Stripe or Quickbooks or customer software. Without data the AI Agent is a generic robot that might as well be the paperclip from Microsoft.

These businesses normally do not have written procedures and documented workflows. How can you add AI to a process if you do not know what that process or workflow is?

Here are six pieces for your AI Plan:

1. Let some of your employees play with AI and meet with them regularly to see what they like and don’t like.
2. Plan to upskill your workforce.
3. Map your workflows. Have everyone start documenting their processes.
4. Collect data – PDFs, FAQs, documents, workbooks, manuals, knowledge bases, everything.
5. Learn to Prompt!
6. Measure and then realize you are probably using the wrong yardstick.

Need help? Be happy to spend 20 minutes chatting with you.  Make an appointment to speak with me: HERE

If you want a copy of the slides, please email me at peter (at) rad-info dot net.

Big thanks to Gapingvoid for always producing great cartoons, drawings, books and insights.

Many partners came out of MCI and C&W. The largest CLECs would recruit on college campuses. College students could be exposed to telecom.

Today, no CLECs. No college recruiting. Most students have never interfaced with a telco. How would they even consider telecom or the Channel?

Heck, most finance people don’t understand the channel. How would a college student or a recent grad know that they could start their own business in the Channel?

At CVX Expo, people were telling me that Enterprise sales reps at the carriers have entered the channel. And that might be the last people in.

When many partners started in the Channel, the pay was all upfront. Easy to start when you can sell something in the first month, get it installed in a month and get paid within 90 days. Today, a UCaaS deal averages 12 seats at $15 is $180. 5X SPIFF is $900 but it could take a while to get that. And that $36 commission is going to come monthly after billing.

Bridgepointe told me that they have a program to help eager potential partners start off.

As many partners age out/retire or take advantage of the M&A taking place in both Agency and MSPs, there is a need to replenish the IT/Telecom Channel with fresh blood.

The Street and other business media is writing about the cellular industry having an issue with churn.  Chrun is up at AT&T. AT&T blames it on seasonal as well as hardware upgrades, but also discounts ended for auto-pay subscribers and paperless.

I think that AT&T, VZW and T-Mo, respectively, thought that an MVNO – Cricket, Visible, Mint – would help them lower CAC (customer acquisition cost), churn and device subsidiary. They have seen Comcast and Spectrum kill it in wireless as an MVNO.

Comcast has 8.9M; Spectrum has almost 11M.  T-Mo has 140M. VZW has 146M. AT&T has 119M.

When all things become equivalent, it is a commodity – and consumers want the lowest price OR at least not to have fees added.

I personally don’t understand the “discount expired” bullshit. If you call and spend 20 minutes on the phone, you get the discount for another year. And we will do that dance every year ad nauseum.

This shows how little these telcos think about the consumers. Play with the levers to make the payers dance.

Wait until I can have my voice AI assist call all the places I have subscriptions: SiriusXM, Netflix, Hulu, Google Fi, YouTubeTV and more. And just have them call every month regularly to ask for a discount. Switch the automation on them.

What happens when every consumer has a shopping assistant to continually lower subscription fees and get better offers?

On the flip side, with the macro-economics and politics making a mess of the economy, what happens when millions are unemployed?  Do CEOs consider that the economy largely spins on consumer spending, so what happens there are too many unemployed?

So far this year, U.S. employers have announced 946,000 job cuts, the most since 2020. The number of managers at public companies dropped 6.1% from May 2022 to May 2025.  This graduating college class faces stark employment choices.

 

Are your sales not where they should be?  Do you even know where they should be?

Do you have a sales system in place?

Have you invested in your team with product knowledge and sales skills?

What are your sales meetings like?

It begins with Strategy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is your ICP? Who is your target customer? If you say Everyone, that is problem number 1. With a target, marketing can do a better job at Lead Gen. The story becomes clearer. The outcomes speak to the specific target, which attracts more leads.

Most prospects have too many choices. There are over 2000 providers of UCaaS in North America. There are 62K MSPs. There are hundreds of CyberSec/MSSPs. There are already thousands of Agentic AI companies. Your sales people have to be Trusted Advisors or at least experts at something.

Use cases are proof. They provide reassurance to the Prospect that you have helped their kind of business before with a good outcome.

Selling into Verticals means the sales team knows the lingo. They can talk Inside baseball.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What CRM are you using and why? Is the CRM there for your sales team or your management? If you are using Salesforce or worse some customer CRM project, it might be too complicated for your team to use. CRM is for the sales team to collect data. The next evolution of CRM with Conversational, where AI will insert every customer interaction – SMS, chat, email, voice, video – will be saved as a vCon and transcribed into the customer record. There are BPOs right now doing that and using that data to improve the sales interactions, teach the sales team and increase sales.

Doing this provides for the full Voice of the Customer. It gives AI data that is searchable and easy to use.

Most companies have a CRM that is for management. It doesn’t serve the sales team, so the data never gets in there. The whole point is to get the data in the CRM.

That is just one part of the system.

The sales system consists of an ICP, the Value Proposition, use cases, sales training and product training coupled with a helpful CRM – and in 2025 a dash of AI.

The Value Prop: What is your super power? What outcomes do your customer achieve? Every employee should have a similar answer.

Are you using AI?  You are likely using Otter, Read, or some other note-taker. What are you doing with those notes? Is anyone learning from them? Are they dumped into the CRM or a database for AI to access them to learn from?

The notes will tell you if your sales rep is talking more or less than the prospect. Hint: they should be talking LESS. Asking good open ended questions and Listening for pain points and business objectives.

The notes will tell you what questions are being asked. Better Questions, Better Answers, Better Sales.

Like AI, the better the prompt the more useful the output from AI. The lazy prompt gets garbage.

What about your team members? Do you have hunters or farmers? Are they motivated for big wins or transactions? Most sales people are more farmer than hunter and transactional. Being task oriented means chasing small business and getting small wins often. The guy that sells airplanes cannot sell key system replacement.

Telecom sales has traditional been pushing products – usually replacement products for less money – to small businesses. Very transactional.

Now the Save You Money pitch falls on deaf ears. Save You Time. Solve Pain. This is what Buyers want to hear about.

The market has an average size of 12 employees per SMB in the US. SMB is 99.9% of the business.

85% of the 62K MSPs in the US and Canada have less than 10 employees and have revenues below $5M. They also generally do not have a dedicated sales person. The owner is the sales rep. They sell to other small businesses.

60% of sales reps in the US do not meet Quota.

Who set Quota? How did they set Quota?

What is your average sales cycle?

What is your average sales size?

Ask your CRM or your AI.

If your sales cycle is 6 months or more and your sales reps get a 3 month ramp, everyone is set up for failure. It takes 60-90 days just to learn the products, the system, the use cases, the Value Prop, the ICP. In my experience, sales reps rarely learn any of this in training or on-boarding. Dare I say that most on-boarding is with HR and setting up your email, phone, laptop and CRM. Then off to the races with you.

Are you Coaching your sales team?

Are you doing sales forensics?

Maybe you should give me a call so I can help.  (813) 963-5884