As UCaaS platforms become increasingly commoditized, Akixi says service providers can rebuild differentiation, customer value and revenue by connecting analytics, CRM, recording and AI into one experience.
By Doug Green
“Fragmentation doesn’t just cost service providers on renewal—it knocks their ability to win business too.”
UCaaS was once one of the communications industry’s clearest growth stories. Today, however, many service providers are facing slower growth, tighter margins and declining revenue per seat as the major platforms become increasingly similar in their core capabilities.
In this Technology Reseller News podcast, Andrew Cantil, Chief Revenue Officer at Akixi, explains why the next competitive opportunity is no longer the underlying communications platform alone. It is the connected experience that service providers and MSPs can build around it.
Akixi began as a provider of real-time communications analytics. The company has since expanded its portfolio to include CRM integrations, call recording, AI-powered call scoring and sentiment analysis. These capabilities are brought together in the Akixi CX Suite, a value-added services layer designed to sit above platforms including BroadWorks, Webex and Microsoft Teams.
Cantil says service providers are experiencing two pressures at the same time. Customer expectations are moving beyond basic reliability, while revenue per user continues to erode. The major UCaaS platforms now perform the fundamentals well, making it harder for providers to charge a premium based on the platform itself.
That leaves providers looking for differentiation in the services surrounding the platform. Yet many are still managing separate vendors, dashboards and logins for analytics, recording, CRM integration and other capabilities. The result can be a fragmented customer experience and an equally fragmented sales story.
At renewal, that fragmentation can push the conversation back toward price. A customer may value the individual services, but without a connected view of the business impact, the provider has little protection against a cheaper competitor. The same problem can hurt new sales when solution engineers must switch among multiple systems to demonstrate what is supposed to be one solution.
AI is accelerating the shift. Capabilities that recently appeared advanced are quickly becoming expected. Akixi uses AI to analyze and score calls, evaluate sentiment and review far more customer interactions than a manager could assess manually. Instead of sampling a small number of calls, organizations can examine nearly every interaction and identify patterns in near real time.
Cantil also points to compliance as an increasingly important use case, including for smaller businesses. AI can help organizations locate key statements, identify when specific terms were used and create a clearer evidence trail across call recordings, analytics and CRM records. Capabilities that were once affordable only to large enterprises are now becoming accessible to SMB customers through their service providers.
Success, Cantil says, means giving customers direct visibility into measurable business outcomes—not simply adding another reporting layer. A connected experience can reveal productivity gains, staffing needs, coaching opportunities, agent performance, cost optimization and compliance evidence in one place.
For service providers, the benefits extend beyond customer experience. Consolidating several value-added services under one vendor can simplify procurement, product management, training and support. It can also make it easier to develop a coherent proposition that sales teams can demonstrate and customers can understand.
The larger message is that service providers remain well positioned because they already own trusted customer relationships. Those that connect their value-added services, demonstrate measurable outcomes and move beyond disconnected point solutions may be better able to protect renewals, win new business and rebuild average revenue per user.
Listen to the podcast to learn why Akixi believes connected experience is becoming the new differentiator for UCaaS providers, MSPs and their customers.
Learn more: https://www.akixi.com/