Brian Nichols (New): [00:00:00] Well, hey there folks. Welcome to today's episode of CX Without the bs. I'm your host, Brian Nichols, and today we're talking all things unified communications, uc, ucas, whatever you wanna call it. It feels like it's moving at the speed of light here in 2025. Blink and you'll miss it. One week. We're just trying to figure out how to schedule a meeting in teams.

And the next we're hearing about AI co-pilots and real time voice translations, like I guess we're living in a sci-fi movie. But here's the thing, for a lot of small and mid-sized businesses, and frankly even for some of the technology advisors out there trying to sell these solutions, the pace isn't just exciting.

It's frankly exhausting. It's overwhelming, and it feels like you can't catch up before the rules change again. And this is a big pain because too many businesses are stuck asking the same question, do I even have the right system anymore or am I already behind? Now, if you're still on legacy phones or you're juggling [00:01:00] three, four, five different apps just to get through the day, you already know what the impact is.

Dropped calls, missed Emails, customers getting frustrated because they don't know how to reach you. Employees are juggling logins and passwords and wasting hours every week on manual busy work. And for advisors out there, you're the ones stuck fielding those late night texts from your clients asking why.

Unified communications don't actually feel that unified at all. And this isn't just annoying. This is costing real money every extra minute wasted. Every customer who gets frustrated and takes their business somewhere else, that's margins slipping out the back door. And the emotional toll is real too, because owners are feeling it when they see their teams burned out or their customers walking away.

Advisors are feeling it when they have to try to explain why the last solution didn't stick. But I promise there is good news and we're gonna talk about that in today's episode. There is a path forward. And it doesn't mean you have to chase every shiny object or be an [00:02:00] expert on every new AI feature that pops up in your LinkedIn feed, but what it does mean is paying attention to the trends that actually last, the ones that aren't just hype, but the ones shaping how small and mid-size businesses are communicating today, tomorrow, and fingers crossed for the next five years.

So for today, we're gonna be cutting through the noise. No fluff, no buzzwords, no. Digital transformation, bingo cards, just straight conversations about real unified communications in 2025 and beyond. And just to clarify, this isn't just for the CIOs at Fortune 500 companies, though it'll be good for you too.

This is for small business owners trying to keep their teams connected without over. It's for the credit unions that are suddenly realizing that their member service teams are in fact contacting call centers. It's for that five location pizza shop that wants one number one system and one bill. It's for the technology advisors, the folks out there in the channel who are trying to make sense of all this and figure out what to [00:03:00] recommend, what to avoid, and where to plant their flags.

Because the truth is, uc isn't just phones in the cloud anymore. It's become the backbone of how businesses actually run. It's how you connect your team, your customers, your partners. It's how you keep work moving, whether someone's in the office, they're at home, or they're on the move. And if you don't have the right tools in place, you're not just a little behind, you're a lot behind.

You're putting your whole business at risk of falling behind. Now, I'm not saying you need to throw away everything you're using today and start from scratch. That's frankly not realistic. But what I am saying is that if you don't take the time to understand where things are headed, if you don't take a step back and look at the five or six big shifts that are shifting in the uc world right now, you're gonna find yourself in a situation where your customers, your employees, and your competitors are all miles ahead.

And that, frankly is hard to dig out of. So what we're gonna do on today's episode [00:04:00] is break it all down into simple digestible sections. Think of this as your top five unified communication trends that you can't ignore in 2025, and frankly going into 2026. 'cause each one we're gonna look at, we're gonna dig into the pain.

The impact and the emotion and, and why it matters. Who this affects and, and most importantly, how you, whether you're the advisor recommending these solutions or you're part of the business, is actually using them can take action without losing your mind or blowing the budget because the dirty little secret that no vendor wants to admit, you see, it doesn't have to be complicated folks.

It doesn't have to feel like you're trying to run a NASA mission out there on Mars just to answer a customer call. The right platform, the right partner, the right strategy. It can actually be quite simple and simplicity going forward is what's gonna win.

Alright, so let's toss the jargon out the window. Dig into the five uc trends that are shaping how small and mid-sized businesses will communicate, compete, and win in [00:05:00] 2026 and beyond. Let's get into it.

So first let's start with, I think the most obvious, but still the most misunderstood, and that is this shift in how businesses operate with the hybrid workforce

because a lot of businesses are still treating hybrid, like it's some temporary fix or some kind of perk in a post COVID world. Like, oh yeah, we let our people work from home a couple days a week, but really they should be in the office. Sorry. No, that mindset is backwards and broken because the reality is that hybrid isn't going away.

Remote work is not going away and pretending otherwise is like pretending that the internet was just a fad back in 1995. It's got that Paul k Grubin vibe of saying the internet is no more of a revolutionary tool than the fax machine. Right. And the impact here is. I mean absolute chaos. 'cause employees are gonna be bouncing between tools that frankly weren't built to work together.

You got teams splitting their day between Slack or Microsoft Teams Zoom, email, and some legacy phone system. That's, of [00:06:00] course, bolted onto the side. And meanwhile, customers are calling and landing in voicemail purgatory because no one's at their desk on their phone at 2:00 PM in the afternoon. Meanwhile, managers are frustrated because, well, they don't actually know what their teams are doing, and employees are frustrated because they feel like they're always chasing the next notification instead of, I don't know, actually doing their jobs and.

I mean, this all leads to burnout. It leads to distrust, this quiet tension between employers and employees that bubbles up every time you see some headline about big companies forcing people back into the office, or trying to use like bonuses for office attendance. But imagine you are running a 10 person accounting firm.

Half your team wants to work from home three days a week. The other half is in the office full time. You've got clients emailing, texting, leaving voicemails, and sending an occasional fax because, well, you know, hey, some industries still do that, and your people are trying to juggle all of this across their personal devices, their office phones, and of course, three different apps.[00:07:00] 

And what happens? Well, clients slip through the cracks, deadlines get missed. Oops. Communication turns into a stress test instead of a business advantage. See, hybrid doesn't have to be chaos. If you build it intentionally, the right uc stack turns hybrid into a strength, not into a liability.

And what does that actually mean in plain language? It means tools that work, whether you're in the office, in your kitchen, or waiting at the carpool line to pick up your kid. It means persistent chat where conversations don't disappear just because you log off the day.

It means asynchronous video where quick huddles you can record and share aren't being forced to drag everyone into a live meeting.

It means asynchronous video where you have quick huddles that you can record and then share without having to drag everyone into a live meeting every single time. It means a cloud phone system that follows you wherever you are, so your office number. Is your number, not some piece of hardware sitting on your desk [00:08:00] collecting dust.

And yes, it means virtual whiteboards that make brainstorming possible even if your team hasn't been in the same room together for over six months. And by the way, for advisors, this is a real opportunity for you to position hybrid as the default reality and not a nice to have. 'cause now you're shifting the conversation.

You stop selling features, and you start selling outcomes. You're not just pitching a cloud phone system. You're helping a business owner sleep at night knowing that whether their people are in Toledo, Tampa, or on the road, their customer experience doesn't skip a beat. And by the way, for SMB owners out there, this isn't about chasing fancy tech, it's about protecting productivity and culture.

Hybrid done wrong feels like whiplash 'cause employees are disengaged. Customers get frustrated and managers get burned out. Hybrid done right, feels invisible. And that's the magic. 'cause when your communication tools actually work, I know you stop thinking about them calls. Just connect messages. Just [00:09:00] show up.

Teams just collaborate and listen, I get it, some folks are very skeptical, but maybe it's because you've been burned by clunky systems before. Maybe you've had the one size fits all vendor who swore our solution was perfect. But the second you try to onboard your team, everything broke, and that's fair.

But the world has changed, especially in the past few years. The tools have matured and what felt like gimmicks back in 2020 are actually productivity lifelines in 2025. See, hybrid isn't just about saving time or money, it's about trust. Trust that your team can do their jobs without being chained to a cubicle.

Trust that your customers can reach you without being bounced around. Trust that you as a leader or an advisor, can finally stop duct taping five different apps together, and instead start focusing on growing the small business. So if hybrid has been feeling like a burden in your world, too many moving parts, too many headaches, well, it's not because hybrid doesn't work, it's because the tools you've been using weren't [00:10:00] designed for the way that actually worked out.

See the businesses who win in 2025 and beyond, they're not gonna force people back to their desks. They're gonna lean into hybrid. They're gonna get the right uc tools in place and then make work from anywhere a reality that just works. See, that's the shift.

Hybrid is no longer an experiment. It's the expectation. And if you don't adapt to that reality, the pain. Isn't just internal chaos, it's losing your best people to companies that actually do get it, and losing your customers or competitors who are easier to reach, and that is a hybrid reality.

See if hybrid work is the reality we live in. Then Cloud native UCaaS is the foundation it sits on, and the painful truth is that a lot of businesses are still clinging to systems that they belong in a museum. And you know what I'm talking about? It's those on-prem PBX boxes that are sitting in telco closets, chewing up electricity, and it budgets like it's still 2005, or the so-called [00:11:00] cloud solutions that.

They're not really cloud at all. They're just old hardware models that are duct taped into the cloud. And vendors love to rebrand those as cloud enabled or cloud adapted. But if we're being honest, that's just putting lipstick on a pig. See, the pain here is obvious. If you're someone who's ever managed one of these systems.

Because updates are a nightmare. Scaling up or down can take weeks, if not months. And by the way, if something breaks, which it will, you're waiting on a technician to physically show up in your office. And if you want to integrate with modern tools, mm, yeah, forget about that. 'cause half the time the answer is, uh, yeah.

Um, that's not gonna be possible with this version or this technology. Just, I mean, imagine this folks picture a 10-year-old PBX that crashes on a Friday afternoon. Your customers can't get through. Your staff is scrambling on personal cell phones. You are calling the vendor for support, and they tell you, sorry.

Um, turns out those parts aren't even being manufactured anymore. [00:12:00] See, that's not just an inconvenience at this point. That's your revenue pipeline completely frozen until someone figures out a workaround, if at all. Or think about the the half step cloud systems. They promise flexibility, but you still get stuck with clunky management portals and contracts that make no sense for small and medium businesses.

And what happens is you end up overpaying for features that you never use and under delivering for the people who actually depend on the system every single day. And what happens? Well, businesses burn cash on maintenance, licensing, and downtime. Advisors are burning credibility when the system that they recommend falls apart during crunch time and the emotional side is heavy 'cause owners are feeling trapped, advisors are feeling embarrassed, and employees feel unsupported.

This is the opposite of Michael Scott's win, win win scenario. This is a lose, lose lose, and nobody wins. See, the third wave of uc is finally here and it's fully cloud native. No more [00:13:00] halfway measures. No more patchwork solutions. Cloud Native UCaaS gives you the flexibility, the resilience, and scale that on-prem just can't match.

It means your phone, your messaging, your video, your integrations, they all live in the cloud from day one, meaning updates happen in the background, new features roll out without downtime. Adding and removing users takes minutes, not days. And when you need to connect to Salesforce or HubSpot or Microsoft 365.

It just works. See, for advisors, this is a game changer because instead of fighting fires with legacy systems, you can now finally get proactive. You're not stuck explaining why something broke. You're showing your clients how the new system prevents those headaches altogether, and that's entirely flipping the script because you're going from being the person who fixes phones to being the trusted guide.

To future proof their business communications. And for SMB [00:14:00] leaders, this is where peace of mind enters into the conversation because no more worrying about hardware failures. No more surprise costs where the server needs are placing. No more feeling locked into contracts that punish you. If you scaled down with cloud native ucas, you can get transparency and what you see is what you pay for and when you grow, the system can grow with you.

And this is a lot bigger than the tech. I mean, imagine you're a business owner walking into the office on a Monday morning and instead of dreading what system broke over the weekend, you now know that your phones, your messaging, your video meetings, they're all exactly where they need to be. And your team can log in from anywhere and get to work.

Your customers can reach you without frustration, and you can actually focus on strategy instead of playing it firefighter. That's relief and that's confidence. See, here's another angle. Resilience. Cloud native ucas isn't tied to a single building or server rack. So when the power [00:15:00] goes out at HQ or a storm knocks out your local grid, your business doesn't grind to a halt.

Your team keeps working remotely or wherever your customers keep getting answers and your reputation, it's staying intact. Try pulling that off with that old dusty PBX from 1997 and. The reality is, folks, cloud native isn't optional anymore. This is the baseline going forward. The businesses still dragging.

Their feet are falling behind, and they're feeling it. Their competitors are answering calls faster. They're training their teams quicker and onboarding new locations in days instead of months. So advisors who keep selling the good enough cloud adapted solutions are the ones getting left out of renewals when clients realize they've been paying for bandaid instead of real solutions.

So the main takeaway, cloud native UCaaS is no longer the shiny new toy. It's the new normal. And if you're not there yet, whether you're a business leader running your own shop, or advisors who are guiding clients, [00:16:00] now is the time because the longer you cling to the legacy or half baked cloud setups, the more painful it will be when the system finally is gonna force your hand.

But the good news there is good news. Moving to a cloud native solution isn't as scary as it sounds. Actually in 2025 going into next year, it's faster, it's cleaner, and it's more affordable than trying to keep the old stuff on life support. And by the way, folks, once you're there, the headaches of the past, the downtime, the surprise bills, the frustrated employees, they stop being your daily reality.

See, that's why Cloud Native ucas isn't just a trend we've seen here in 2025. It's the new baseline. The cost of entry, the table stakes. If hybrid work is the expectation, then cloud native UCA is the foundation that is making it possible.

Now, let's talk about a word that's thrown around in our industry, but never gets explained in plain English. And that is convergence. And no, this isn't a buzzword for the next Gartner magic quadrant. It's the the [00:17:00] real world trend that's reshaping how companies choose their communication stacks. See, too many businesses are still running customer communications on one platform, employee communications on another, and then bolting in integrations to just make it so it all plays nice.

But that means that the sales team is on one system, the service team's on another, and half the time the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. So when you put this all siloed set up together, customers are getting bounced around like a pinball machine. So they call in service rep, doesn't have the context from the sales conversation.

So they email and it doesn't sync with the call notes. And then they try to chat. But the, that lives in a different silo too, and that turns into big, frustrating mess for them. And it's draining for your team who's trying to copy and paste information across tabs instead of focusing on, I don't know, solving the customer's problem.

And that's frustration on both sides of the the call, right? Customers start thinking, dude, does this company even know who I am? [00:18:00] Employees start thinking, why am I working harder just to do the basics? And advisors start thinking, how do I sell this solution with a straight face when I know it's creating more headaches than it solves?

I mean, imagine a small insurance firm. Their advisors are logging notes into Salesforce. Their customer support is maybe using a legacy call center app. Their billing team is answering questions through email and nothing talks to each other. So when a customer calls in about a policy change, the rep has to put them on, hold one sec, dig through three different systems, or worse, tell them someone's gonna call them back later.

That customer's gonna walk away feeling like. Ah, look at that. I'm just another ticket number. Woo hoo. And, and, and the business. They look unprofessional, inefficient, and probably vulnerable to churn.

See, and here's the solve. Convergence, UCAS and CAS contact center as a service are no longer living in two separate categories in two different corners of the [00:19:00] world. The winners in 2025 and beyond are the platforms that are bringing them all together under one roof, because that's one system, one interface, and yes, one bill.

So what does this actually look like? All your sales team, your service team, your support agents, all working together in the same communication environment, so that means calls, chats, videos, emails, SMS, they're all flowing through one platform. No more app switching. No more, Hey, I'll forward this to another department.

And when a customer reaches out, the person answering the call now has the context that they need right there in front of them from the start. So advisors out there, this is a huge sales advantage because now instead of competing on price alone or trying to differentiate on the the crazy features that every vendor claims to have, you can now lead with outcomes.

You can say, look. My solution's gonna help reduce app sprawl. It's gonna improve reporting, and it's gonna create a single pane of glass for the truth of how you engage with customers. [00:20:00] That's a message that resonates way more than, Hey, our phones are $5 cheaper per seat. And for s and b leaders, convergence is all about simplicity and clarity.

You don't have to pay for separate platforms. You don't have to train your team on five different tools. You don't have to play middleman between your uc provider and your CCAS provider when something will inevitably go wrong. You get one partner, one point of accountability, and one place to see what's really happening with your customers.

And let's talk about integrations too, because convergence doesn't mean closed system. In fact, it's the opposite. A converge. Uc and CA platform should have open APIs and prebuilt integrations with the tools you already live in, like Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, you name it. That's where the magic happens.

And now suddenly your CRM notes, your call recordings and your customer emails, and your chat transcripts are all connected. What does that mean? Well, productivity immediately is gonna go up. [00:21:00] Training time is immediately gonna go down and the businesses are finally operating as one team instead of five disconnected ones.

Now imagine if you're a business owner and knowing that when your customer calls your employee doesn't have to scramble. I mean, think of that customer's history, the last conversation, maybe even sentiment insights right there on one screen. That employee now feels empowered. The customer feels understood, they feel heard, and you as the leader feel confident that your team is now able to deliver an experience that matches the value you built your business on.

See folks, convergence isn't just a trend. This is the natural evolution of communication platforms. First, we move from analog phones to VoIP and then from VoIP to Cloud uca, and now that wall between uc and CC is breaking down and the businesses who lean into convergence are gonna run circles around.

The ones still juggling a patchwork of tools. [00:22:00] You, your customers don't care, by the way, what platforms you're using. They just wanna be heard, understood, and helped quickly. So convergence makes that possible. And if you're not there yet, the risk isn't just inefficiency, it's losing customers to competitors who are, and that's why convergence in 2025 and beyond is king.

Not because it's trendy, not because vendors are hyping it up, but because it solves the single biggest pain point that business communications are facing. The disconnect between how teams work internally and how customers experience your brand externally.

Now let's talk about everybody's favorite elephant in the room, artificial intelligence, ai. Now, I know you've been hearing about AI nonstop over the past few years. I mean, every vendor pitch, every LinkedIn post, every conference keynote. And if you're like most people, you're probably wondering, alright, how much of this stuff is real and how much of this is bs?

[00:23:00] See, a lot of businesses are still treating AI like it's a future thing. Something to think about in five years when it's more mature. And what's happening today is that they're missing the reality that AI is already baking itself into the core of modern uc platforms. So folks, it's not a question of if it's a question of whether you're taking advantage of it or ignoring it while your competitors are getting faster, leaner, and smarter today.

And if you're sitting on the sidelines, you're, you're gonna be facing wasted time and wasted money. I mean, think about the hours your team is spending manually taking notes in meetings or writing follow up emails after every client call or digging through transcripts to figure out why a customer escalated.

Those are very real hours that could already be cut down dramatically using ai. And if you're an advisor selling into this market, the impact is just as real. If you are not showing clients how AI saves them time, someone else will. [00:24:00] And what comes from this frustration? Plain and simple, employees are sick of doing the same repetitive BS admin tasks.

Customers are tired of repeating themselves because the system didn't capture what they said the first time. Leaders feel like they're stuck in the stone age while the world around them is leaping forward like the Jetsons and advisors. You feel the tension of trying to sell a solution that doesn't sound outdated before the ink is even dry on the contract.

Now, imagine you're a five person law firm. Every client call needs detailed notes. Right now your paralegal is spending two, maybe three hours a day just transcribing and summarizing conversations. That's not time spent on case prep. That's not time spent supporting clients, not spent moving the business forward.

Or what about taking a 20 seat customer service team? They're manually logging call outcomes into the CRM, but half the time the notes are inconsistent, incomplete, or they're lost [00:25:00] entirely. And that inconsistency snowballs into poor reporting, bad customer follow ups and leadership making decisions based on bad data.

See, AI isn't just coming to fix this stuff. It's already here today, folks. It's already inside the uc platforms you're using. If you have a newer solution that is and meeting transcription that happens in real time that's happening today, summaries that auto generate and send out the action items before you even close a tab that's happening today.

Call coaching tools that analyze tone and sentiment to help your reps improve without a manager shadowing every call that's happening today, intelligent scheduling assistance that find the gaps in everyone's calendar and book the meeting for you. That's all happening today. See, in many cases you don't even have to buy AI as like some brand new massive add-on.

It's included in the modern platforms and it's becoming table stakes. The difference isn't whether you have access to AI features, it's whether you're actually using them [00:26:00] to drive results and advisors. This is an opportunity hiding in plain sight. 'cause instead of getting lost in the feature and benefit checklist, you can now talk about outcomes like, Hey.

My platform I'm bringing to the table is gonna save your employees two hours a day. The platform I'm bringing reduces your QA overhead by half my platform. Makes sure your managers don't have to chase data because it's already there. See, that's not a buzzword selling situation. That's real world value and outcomes.

And for you, SMB leaders, the emotional side of this is huge because AI done right isn't about replacing your people. It's about empowering them. It's about freeing them from the junk work so they can actually do meaningful work. It's about a rep who doesn't go home burned out because they spent half their ship typing notes.

It's about business owners who can finally feel like they're ahead of the curve instead of constantly behind it. Now let me be clear. There is a trust gap with ai and that matters

because [00:27:00] businesses want governance. They wanna be able to audit, they want control. They don't just want the magic. They want proof. They want documentation. They want to know that AI isn't going to hallucinate a false summary or mishandle the sensitive information, and that's fair. That's why the vendors who will win in this space are the ones building AI with transparency and compliance at their core, but.

Don't miss the forest through the trees. AI and uc isn't something coming down the line. It's here today and it's already saving time. It's already cutting costs and it's already improving experiences. The only real question is whether you are putting in the work to help put it to work for you, or are you gonna let your competitors be the ones who are getting ahead And, and this is why I say AI isn't.

Gonna be coming. It's already here. And the businesses who embrace it with the right guardrails will be the ones who thrive today, tomorrow, and in the future.

See, and here's the thing a lot of people are forgetting about when we talk [00:28:00] about unified communications. Not every business is a Fortune 500 organization with a giant IT team. Most businesses in this country are small or mid-sized. They're the Fortune 5,000, or dare I say, the forgotten 5,000. They don't have someone whose full-time job is to babysit their phone system or decipher regulatory compliance checklists.

They just need their communications to be safe, simple and predictable, and too many SMBs have been burned by solutions that are either way too complex to use or they're too flimsy to trust. So on one side you've got platforms that are bloated with features, but impossible for a small team to self-manage.

And then on the other, you've got the budget friendly systems that cut corners on security and compliance. And what happens is that both lead to the same place, frustration and risk, and, and there's real world consequences here. The local medical clinic that accidentally mishandles patient info because their uc platform didn't meet HIPAA requirements [00:29:00] or what about the small financial advisor who gets hit with fines because, well, sorry, you're.

Provider didn't have proper audit logs or data retention policies in place, or what about that nonprofit that loses a major donor because an email system failure made them look careless. See, these aren't hypotheticals. They are the very real stakes that SMBs live with when security and simplicity aren't baked into the platform from day one.

And the emotion that comes from this is fear and distrust. A sense that the technology is working against you instead of for you. And for advisors, that's even worse because when your client trust gets shaken, that's your reputation. That's also on the line. I mean, imagine you're running a 20 person construction company.

You don't have an IT department. You got Bill and, and you're focused on bids, crews, and deadlines. And if your uc provider rolls out some new complicated compliance tool that requires hours of training, you're not gonna use it On the [00:30:00] flip side. If you ignore compliance altogether and then something slips like, I don't know, a ransomware attack that exposes customer data, suddenly you're staring down legal headaches that you can't afford, and that's the trap.

SMBs find themselves in all the time stuck between systems that are too much or not enough. See, the best uc platforms for SMBs are designed around really two non-negotiables, security and simplicity. On the security side, that means zero trust frameworks, multi-factor authentication and encryption standards built in, not bolted on.

It means compliance support for GDPR, hipaa, CCPA, whatever regulation your industry demands, and it means vendors taking that responsibility seriously instead of treating it like an afterthought. When security is embedded at the foundation, SMBs don't have to constantly worry about whether their communications are exposing them to risk.

On the simplicity side, it's all about usability and [00:31:00] predictability. SMBs don't need 47 different dashboards, folks. They need one interface that feels familiar, intuitive, and fast. They don't want three week onboarding schedules. They want their team up and running with minimal disruption, and they don't want gotcha pricing with hidden fees.

They want clear, predictable monthly bills that can actually be budgeted around. For advisors, this is a sweet spot to really lean into because your clients don't always care about the jargon or the acronyms. What they care about is will this system keep me out of trouble? Will, will it make my team's life easier,

and will I know what it's going to cost me every single month? If you can deliver yes to all three, you're not just selling uc, you're selling peace of mind. And for s and b leaders, here's why this matters. 'cause SEC security means you get to sleep at night knowing your data and your customer's data is protected.

Simplicity means your employees are actually gonna use a [00:32:00] system instead of finding workarounds. And predictable pricing means you stop bracing yourself for surprise invoices. The combination frees you up to focus on growth, not firefighting. I mean, think about the, the feeling of onboarding a new employee Instead of spending days wrestling with setup, you can just send them a login.

They download an app. And that's it. They're connected. I mean, think about how freeing that is the feeling of explaining your tech stack to a potential customer or partner instead of apologizing for downtime or glitches, you can now confidently say, Hey, our communications just work. See that confidence ripples through your team and through your customers and through your brand.

Because here's the bigger picture for SMBs. Uc isn't just technology. It's reputation, it's trust. If your system is insecure, it's over complicated or unpredictable. It reflects directly on your business. Customers don't think, oh, well, you know, it was their vendor that messed up. No, they think this company [00:33:00] doesn't have their crap together.

And that right there is the risk. On the flip side, there is opportunity. When your uc platform is secure, simple and predictable, it disappears into the background 'cause it just works And, and that's when communications become what they're supposed to be a tool for connection, not a source of stress. And that's why in 2025, security and simplicity, they're no longer nice to have features for SMBs.

They are the very lens through which every uc decision should be made, and if your vendor or your advisor isn't speaking to those priorities, well, you might be talking to the wrong partner.

So, where do we go from here? We've talked about hybrid being the new normal. We've talked about cloud native UCaaS as now the new baseline. We've dug into convergence what it means, and we've faced the reality of AI already being here. And of course we've zeroed in on security and simplicity as a make or break for SMBs.

But now it's time to take a step [00:34:00] back and ask, well, Brian, what's next for uc? What's next for Unified Communications as a service? What's the bigger picture that's going to shape the next three to five years? See, the noise isn't slowing down. Vendors will keep flooding the market with flashy demos, buzzwords, and feature announcements, and every week there's gonna be some brand new game changer being touted as the thing that will redefine how we communicate.

And if you're an SMB leader or a technology advisor, that's exhausting. It makes you feel like you can't keep up like you're already behind even when you just signed a brand new contract. But what's the impact of chasing every brand new trend here? Well, burnout, first of all, wasted money. And of course, systems that don't deliver what your business actually needs.

And the impact of ignoring everything while falling behind. While competitors who adopt smartly gain efficiency, cut costs, and deliver better customer experiences, [00:35:00] it feels like a trap. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. And this leads to anxiety, confusion, the feeling of being in the middle of a crowded expo hall where every booth promises the future, but you just want someone to tell you what's real.

What matters and what you should actually pay attention to. So let's solve this together. The future of uc isn't about chasing hype, it's about intentional adoption of what drives outcomes. So that's real time voice translation, emotion detection, AI meeting participants. Those are the headlines, but underneath them, the real story is automation.

Less manual work, fewer errors, faster insights, tools that make work smoother and customer experience sharper without piling on complexity. I mean, think about this. Not long ago you had to spend hours digging through stupid spreadsheets just to [00:36:00] figure out how many calls your team handled or long customers were waiting in a queue.

Now with modern uc platforms, they're delivering those analytics in real time. That's not sci-fi ai. That's literally practical automation, saving your team hours and hours every single week, and giving leaders confidence to make decisions faster. Advisors, this is where the rubber meets the road. Your role isn't to hype every brand new shiny belt or whistle.

It's to cut through the noise for your clients and to say, Hey. I know you're hearing all the nonsense. Here's what matters, here's what doesn't, and here's how this helps your business specifically. And that kind of clarity builds trust. And trust is what keeps clients with you for the long haul. SMB leaders, the next phase of uc is about moving from reactive to proactive.

So instead of scrambling when your old system breaks or reacting to customer complaints, [00:37:00] you get ahead of the curve. Choose a platform that evolves with you, that adds value as you grow, that doesn't force you into ripping and replacing every five to 10 years just to stay current. The future of uc is about confidence.

Confidence that your business can keep up with larger competitors because your tools. Don't hold you back. Confidence that your employees feel supported instead of burdened by clunky systems. Confidence that your customers see you as responsive, professional, and easy to do business with. That's what's next.

Not AI for AI's sake, not features that look cool in the demo, but never get used. What's next is uc. That fades into the background so seamlessly. You hardly notice it at all. Communications that are reliable, secure, and simple. So your team can focus on what matters and your customers can focus on the value you provide.

So the main takeaways as we wrap up today's episode [00:38:00] of CX Without the bs, the Future of uc isn't about being first to adopt every shiny bell or whistle. It's about being smart. It's about choosing partners and platforms that align with how your business actually works today, and it's about demanding simplicity, security, and outcomes instead of drowning in buzzwords.

Because at the end of the day, your customers don't care what technology you're using. They care about how easy it is to do business with you, and that's what you see when done right, delivers. So if you're a technology advisor listening, your opportunity is to help your clients navigate that noise and choose solutions that truly solve problems.

And if you're an SMB leader listening, your opportunity is to stop letting outdated systems drag you down and start demanding tools that make work easier, safer, and smarter. That's what's next for uc, not hype, not noise, not bs. [00:39:00] Just better communication that helps your business thrive. And with that being said, that's gonna wrap today's episode of CX without the bs.

If you've got some value, hit that subscribe button, follow me over on LinkedIn. But as always, this is Brian Nial signing off here. We'll see you next time.