We obviously had a great time being a gold sponsor of the Cavell US Summit last week and we loved getting to see some of you in person. But this one is for those that couldn’t make it, didn’t get to see everything or simply just need a reminder of what went on.
At a high level, just under half of the conversations, panels and discussions that were spread across the event focused on three key areas:
But by no means did the talks stop there. So if you missed out on attending or are looking for the most in-depth summary available, then keep reading. We’re going to cover some of the most important topics that are affecting each and every one of us, topics that will continue to shape the way we approach communications going into 2026 and beyond.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a modern communications event without the focus being on AI, and as it took up nearly 20% of all sentiment throughout the event (ironically captured through AI summary), this year’s summit was no exception. As artificial intelligence finds its place in our sector, we are in the privileged position of being able to discuss and even shape where it settles, and a wide range of AI topics were tossed around including enablement, monetisation and of course security.
Starting right from the opening keynote, Cavell’s Executive Director Matt Townend firmly addressed how providers need to press forward into enabling an even more intelligent workplace with the help of artificial intelligence. With the introduction of AI voice agents, vendors specifically focusing on agentic AI may start to be seen as a threat to more traditional CSPs. The silver lining however is that according to Townend, buyers now rate how smoothly a solution integrates into various technologies and general expertise over product features alone.
One clear theme that emerged throughout the day was that when it comes to enabling the intelligent workplace in a scalable way, AI functionality only becomes powerful if it is secure and compliant. This is due to not only the fact that a lot of buyers have a general distrust of AI in its current fluid state, but also the heavy implications that providers would incur for breaches, failures, downtime or technical hiccups.
As AI becomes more and more central to various providers’ efforts, there is a growing focus on security and compliance, and those that are already trusted in these realms are already seeing that they have a potential leg up on the competition.
It was the opinion of multiple panellists that driving significant revenue from AI solutions still had significant blockers, and would potentially continue to do so moving into next year and beyond. But it’s not all doom and gloom - the key to driving commercial success with AI in the comms space lies in focusing on key buyer pain points over infrastructure scaling.
This means moving from AI tools that perform generic functions to ‘highly targeted, iterative agentic solutions’ which are tailored to industries like hospitality, law and customer services. On top of this, one potential outcome that was floated for the current AI boom that we are seeing was channel partners who already have extended reach acquiring AI innovation through acquisition rather than in-house development.
As well as looking into the future of AI, the Cavell team were also able to provide some data-backed insights into how it is already shaping the comms world. Namely the fact that even though 72% of 2000 firms across Europe and North America are currently embedding some kind of AI into their telco solution, 95% of projects reportedly fail to land expected ROI. Now, before you go jumping to conclusions, the panel of experts also agreed that whilst these numbers were quite stark, they were more reflective of the experimental phase that the industry is currently going through instead of a phase of premature decline. This conclusion of course being stamped by the massive amounts of funding that is still being driven into voice AI startups, currently sitting somewhere around $2 billion and climbing.
But the speed in which AI features are being created and adopted, is matched only by the speed in which they are copied and distributed across markets. Where we previously saw various UC capabilities becoming increasingly commoditized, it is now AI capabilities which are becoming table stakes in as little as three months from their point of creation. It is precisely because there are so many different solutions being created that interoperability, not individuality, that may be the way forward for a lot of providers who are looking to remain relevant.
When it comes to customer engagement and experience, more conventional channels like voice still hold the most favour. In spite of the rapid investment we are seeing into AI and automation, the humble phone call still remains king for problem-solving and anything above basic queries & functions. Going further, due to the current experimental factors attributed to AI pilots, agents are in fact seeing their task complexity increase rather than decrease thanks to AI. Whether or not these investments will start to chip away at voice’s crown in the years to come is yet to be seen but for now traditional methods reign supreme.
A lot can change in a few years, and there were certainly a good mix of views as to how the CX landscape could transform up to and past 2030 from both a technical and a practical perspective. With customer experience being the current focal point for AI changes in our industry, it comes as no surprise that some of the biggest shifts were predicted in things such as:
Interestingly, some experts even floated the idea that human interaction would become an indicator of premium brands and services, where the option to talk to a human agent becomes a luxury rather than an expectation.
Providers who have been dipping their toes, or cannonballing straight into the CCaaS pool are realizing the potential that being CX-forward holds. With a lot of features and functions already becoming commoditized in the UCaaS space, Contact Centre as a Service models are driving revenue with boosted pricing and less compression on margins.
However, a transition away from providing UC as we know it needs to be carefully managed. With contact centre outages coming with a high price tag, phased migration (or migrating on a smaller scale) is necessary. If the industry continues to blur the boundaries between UC and CX, we can expect a big shift in how we deal with people experience in general.
If we look at the way things are going, as agentic services become more and more advanced in the long run they will probably be at the forefront of customer experience. In the present and the near future however, voice again still reigns supreme when it comes to the necessary support it takes to deal with urgent or complex situations. And with 80% of agents using phone calls to support customers, the demand is still well and truly there. On top of this, 38% of agents currently say that handling frustrated customers remains their biggest challenge, often involving sticky situations which only human interaction can diffuse
To verticalize or not verticalize – A big theme that ran through the entire summit alongside other strategic topics such as integration and forecasting. Looking at the big picture, the question that was on a lot of people’s lips was how to turn all of the changes we are currently seeing into measurable success.
In one of the day’s key panels (not that I’m biased or anything) we held a magnifying glass up against two strategic approaches for providers in terms of how they drive success – A focus on platform enablement & broader portfolios vs focusing on specialized solutions & micro-expertise.
A broader approach hinging on integration and enablement – With hyper focusing at scale being non-viable across wider Europe due to the general fragmentation of the comms industry, Daan de Wever of Dstny argued that helping partners to integrate and drive coopetition was the way forward.
A more focused approach that caters for maximum verticalization – In geographies such as the US, full-send verticalization becomes a lot more viable. With the first step of this strategy being to enable partners and help them sell specialised solutions, with a provider’s core business being seen as a facilitator rather than a bespoke tool.
One thing that everyone agreed on however was that providers need to keep an eye on how they orchestrate their services between voice, AI and messaging. This is down to the fact that the next battleground will be in how providers can generate value through integration and automation rather than their own solutions in isolation, no matter the vertical.
According to Cavell, there are a few strategic imperatives going into next year that have been raised from the summit. Based on the rise of AI and a constant shift towards change in essentially all aspect of our industry its of no surprise that fitting in with the new set of needs that your customers will have is top priority. To succeed going forward, you may want to consider:
1. Focusing on vertical-specific AI solutions and finding efficient ways to get them integrated into your audience's workflow
2. Making sure that you can address what is sure to be a fragmented industry in terms of tooling
3. Leaning on partners to become more channel-led (Jut look at Intermedia, Zoom and Comcast who aim to have ~80% channel led sales by the end of next year)
4. Evolving how you look at your pricing and monetisation - Sell outcomes not just services
Long story short (if you’ve made it this far), there were some clear themes that ran through summit this year. AI of course was the belle of the ball but there were still some big question marks over how its currently being used and how it can be implemented to drive success going forward. Agentic AI led the way in terms of use cases, but with high percentages of project failure, the experimental phase for artificial intelligence seems far from over. On this, it was reiterated that traditional communications such as voice and email still had their place in the future of UC & CX, be it for dealing with complex or volatile situations or used as a luxury alternative with automated customer journeys.
Moving into the future, things like IVR being phased out in favour of automated agents and AI becoming an enabler as well as a connector were heavily agreed upon. And when it comes to how all of these new capabilities are brought to market by providers, strongly focusing on certain verticals and acting with a broader, enablement based approach were both seen as viable options.
For providers to succeed in the next chapter of the business communications story, they have to start focusing on delivering outcomes instead of specific features or tech stacks. Instead of throwing AI solutions into the market, building from a secure and compliant foundation and adding layers of robust yet scalable functionality that enable people to work and communicate effectively is the way forward.
Ultimately, you should be trying to evolve what you can offer to the market, not revolutionise it based on technologies that while novel, in the end do not deliver in any meaningful ways.
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