A look back: RingCentral’s top innovations of 2022 | #customersupport #supporticket

We are leaving behind a year of unprecedented macroeconomic headwinds. Entering 2023, we anticipate that businesses will invest in efficiency, “do more with less” tech and automate whatever they can. 

The RingCentral platform is like Lego blocks – unifying calling, team chat, video meetings and more with employees, customers, and everyone in between. You can access it from anywhere—and on any device (PC, smartphone, tablet, deskphone). 

In 2023, our vision is to continue to be the #1 Global UCaaS and CCaaS platform for Intelligent Connect Experiences. We will continue to build this upon our foundation of delivering uncompromising trust and reliability to enable for mobility and efficiencies for hybrid teams. 

Today, we are taking a look back at the top 22 innovations from RingCentral MVP and Customer Experience launched in 2022 and all the new tools your team has available going into the new year. Let’s start with MVP innovations. 

Top innovations of 2022: RingCentral MVP

Innovations that amplify AI-powered productivity

RingCentral’s AI-powered innovations pack a serious punch because we have native access to the metadata needed to make more accurate speaker attribution and separation —which means you get real-time, high-quality transcriptions, summaries and recommendations that can be customized to identify topics with any easy search and filter tool.

1. Say goodbye to interruptions with AI-powered background noise reduction for phone calls and video meetings

Remove all unwanted background noise automatically from your business calls and video meetings with AI-powered noise reduction. Learn how it works here. 

2. Amplify post-meeting productivity with AI-generated Meeting Insights 

Have to miss a meeting? Or perhaps you want to focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. Meeting Insights uses AI powered conversational intelligence to automatically generate meeting summaries after every recorded meeting. With an AI-generated video highlight reel, summary, searchable transcript, keywords/topics, filter playback by speaker, and more to come, there are so many different ways to get caught up and stay productive. Learn more here.

3. Invest in accessibility and improve global audience comprehension with Live Transcription & Closed Captions in global languages

Live Transcription and Closed Captions both use AI to automatically transcribe spoken words in real time—like captions in a movie. For Live Transcription, anyone in the meeting can reference the transcript at any time, or download it for post-meeting viewing. 

Both features also now support participants speaking in Spanish and German — with additional languages to follow in 2023. Participants can hold conversations in their native languages, and the transcript will detect and transcribe in the selected language.

Learn more here.

Features that help you collaborate with immersive, engaging experiences

Today, businesses rely on multiple communication apps, utilizing standalone products such as webinars and whiteboards, and even 2 or more video conferencing solutions for their collaborative and communication needs. With businesses looking to consolidate costs in this economic environment but also maintain seamless and flexible communication, whether it’s on RingCentral or another platform, see how RingCentral this year has continued to improve and make remote collaboration and communications easy.

4. Create stress-free employee and customer webinars with easy-to-use RingCentral Webinar

Enjoy our add-on webinar solution that supports up to 10,000 attendees— with just a few clicks, anyone can host secure, engaging webinars at scale. Try RingCentral Webinar for free during the beta period. 

5. Collaborative digital whiteboarding across mobile and desktop

With RingCentral Whiteboard, meeting participants have a canvas for collaboration to draw, upload images, type, add shapes, and more. Its unique infinite whiteboard capability creates a mini-map to allow easy navigation along a broad whiteboard space.

Whiteboard is available on the RingCentral desktop app, mobile app, and supported browsers. It’s also viewable from any RingCentral Room, with RingCentral Rooms for Touch Room capabilities through a partnership with Avocor coming by the end of this year allowing for interactive whiteboarding on a touch display. Learn more here. 

6. Join Zoom and Webex meetings through RingCentral Rooms

RingCentral Rooms users can now join Zoom and Webex meetings by simply tapping the Join button on the controller. You can also use meeting control buttons or DTMF commands to manage the Zoom/Webex meeting – even encrypted meetings. 

Innovations in analytics that save both time and money 

A recent report shows that not all UCaaS analytic suites are created equal. We democratize communication analytics to serve beyond IT teams, compounding the value your organization realizes from UCaaS investments. Our single interface is easy to use and offers superior flexibility so you can easily empower marketing, sales and operations teams to optimize and make data-backed decisions.

7. Next-gen business analytics suite

Though competitors do provide some level of reporting and analysis, only RingCentral provides comprehensive and integrated analytics for both the IT professional and line-of-business user.  From a single interface, both user types enjoy significantly more detail, flexibility, and customization. Learn more here.  

Always-on security and privacy that keep your data safe and secure

When it comes to evaluating a UCaaS solution, you have to be able to trust your vendor of choice has the right security and privacy standards in place to protect your business. We invest heavily in information security protection and global data privacy management to provide peace of mind for our customers. Some of our recent enhancements include: 

8. Comprehensive end-to-end encryption for phone calls, messaging, and video meeting

RingCentral is expanding end-to-end encryption (E2EE) beyond support for video to include both phone and messaging within our flagship RingCentral MVP product. E2EE technology prevents any unauthorized third party – including RingCentral – from accessing users’ communication content. RingCentral E2EE for phone and message is planned to be available in a closed beta globally for select customers later at the end of this year. RingCentral E2EE for video is available now. For more information, learn more here.

Innovations that reduce IT costs

We understand the constant pressures IT leaders and administrators are under and invest in reducing IT burden as a key pillar of innovation every year. This year we launched a more intuitive IT administrative UI, bulk information importing for new user setup, easy to use mobile new user set up for admins, and better error handling and feedback mechanisms. These new features reduce hours of work into minutes—so your teams can focus on bigger initiatives. 

9. Automate dialing or use Line Seizure for emergency services 

• Automatically dial pre-programmed numbers – Set up phones to automatically call pre-programed numbers as soon as they’re taken off the hook. 

• Line seizure – Allows IT to lock down all the lines in particular sites so users can only make and receive calls to/from a phone number designated by emergency services.

Innovations that help you do more with less

Communications are used very differently across different teams. Some employees spend all day talking to customers via text, while others are power phone users (i.e. receptionists) who are transferring and holding calls all day long. No matter who you are, we’ve got you covered to work smarter, not harder. Below are some of our top innovations in 2022 that empower you to do just that. 

10. Instantly forward all calls across mobile and desktop

Forward all your business calls to another extension, voicemail, or shared line with a single click when going on break or vacation. Learn more here. 

11. Embedding rich, interactive apps directly into your RingCentral desktop interface 

Workflows are natively integrated into team messaging so you can perform actions without ever having to switch apps. Explore RingCentral Add-ins here.

Eliminate the toggle tax with even more out-of-the-box integrations

HBR coined the phrase “toggling tax” to describe a common workplace pain – switching from one app to another to finish a workflow. These workflows are a huge drain on productivity. Each toggle takes two seconds, but it adds up. A study of app toggling finds it takes 9% of an employee’s annual time at work!

With over 330 out-of-the-box integrations, RingCentral keeps workers productive. Embed RingCentral into your favorite app or integrate that app into RingCentral – you’ve got the ultimate flexibility. A few of our most popular integration releases include:

12. SMS and Fax integrations with Microsoft Teams

Available on both RingCentral’s embedded dialer and direct routing solutions, users can now send and receive SMS messages and internet faxes. Send either to contacts in the company directory or an external number, all without leaving Microsoft Teams. Learn more here.

13. Supercharge your Salesforce and Hubspot app experience

Seamless Salesforce experiences – It’s more important than ever to reach customers where they are. That’s why we made it simple to send an SMS to a contact, all without leaving Salesforce. 

We’re also helping inbound agents eliminate “Please hold while I look up your account” from their vocabulary. Screen pop searches Salesforce for the inbound caller ID and returns the right contact record, all before the agent picks up the phone. 

RingCentral for Hubspot  – Manual, repetitive work gets in the way of what’s most important for sellers – selling. Automatic call logging eliminates the burden of record keeping, freeing them to get to the next call.

And an integrated message hub in Hubspot eliminates the toggling tax for sellers. Get RingCentral’s top capabilities, like sending and viewing SMS, playing and downloading voicemails, and viewing faxes, all without leaving Hubspot.

Enhancements that maximize ROI and support phased on-prem to cloud migrations

Organizations around the world are considering deploying cloud communications, but various concerns are holding them back from taking a leap, including risk management, amortization schedules, and expensive long-term Carrier contracts. With that in mind, we have introduced two new offerings that help you modernize your business communications in a cost-effective and realistic way. 

14. Maximize your PBX investments while acting on a cloud migration strategy

RingCentral Cloud Connector, a hybrid PBX solution allows you to continue taking full advantage of your existing on-premise PBX while partially moving to the cloud. Learn more here.

15. Save money while using modern hardware with Device as a Service (DaaS)

A new offering that allows IT departments to deploy equipment with reduced upfront costs, streamlined fulfillment, and quicker hardware upgrades. Learn more here.

Enhancements for global teams and languages 

16. International expansion of our services 

In 2022 we’ve added native PSTN replacement in Estonia, Greece, Slovenia, Lithuania and are now directing selling our solutions to Swiss, Finnish and Portuguese based organizations. We’ve extended the Bring-Your-Own-Carrier (BYOC) solution to Bulgaria, Uruguay, Paraguay, El Salvador and Honduras and we’ve launched a brand new package, Global MVP Select for multinationals with a presence in Taiwan, which offers unlimited DLs and local currency billing. Learn more here. 

Top 2022 innovations: RingCentral Customer Experience

Innovations to delight your customers, retain revenue, and lower costs

Per Salesforce, 80% of customers pick customer experience as a key differentiator in choosing one brand over another. Make sure your customers don’t switch to the competition, and keep your costs under control with our latest AI innovations.

17. RingCentral Contact Center Bot Builder

Build and deploy AI bots affordably and without coding across multiple channels with Bot Builder. These bots can answer repetitive questions about things such as password resets. They can also be customized for industry terms and company formats as well as have some NLU.

18. RingCentral Contact Center SmartAssist 

In a 2021 study conducted by IBM, 99% of companies reported an increase in customer satisfaction from conversational AI solutions like virtual agents. SmartAssist is an intelligent virtual assistant that understands intent and addresses customer requests that involve complex workflows – such as a customer calling a bank to check balances, transfer money between accounts, and pay off his credit card. It also helps contain labor costs. 

SmartAssist can be easily integrated with the RingCentral Virtual Agent Hub, a low code orchestration engine that streamlines the integration for native and external virtual agent products. 

19. RingCentral Contact Center Guide 

Guide customers along their digital journeys to “nudge” them towards a positive outcome. It anticipates issues proactively based on triggers and then provides relevant content & guided assistance including links, knowledge articles, or the option to talk to a virtual agent. 

20. Engage Digital – Multiple new channels for interaction

Customers can engage on several channels including LinkedIn, Apple Message for Business and What’s App Outbound. They can also switch from chat to video based on their preferences.

Innovations that excite contact center staff

21. Real-time Interaction Guidance

Real-time guidance and behavioral coaching in RingCentral Contact Center rides along with the agent on every voice and digital interaction to provide instant tips on what to say, and how to say it in a way that boosts customer sentiment and drives positive business outcomes. Multiple behavioral parameters like active listening and empathy can be tracked to detect patterns for customized coaching. 

22. New supervisor experience 

Supervisors now have a single, modern interface to monitor and take action on all channels. This enables advanced monitoring of agent behavior and customer sentiment so supervisors can intervene as needed. Clickable real-time widgets are also available so supervisors can drill down to identify key performance issues.

New year, new innovations 

The technology trends of 2022 are loaded with “old acquaintances” that are evolving alongside the latest advances that will further transform our daily lives and how we interact at work.

RingCentral wishes you and your teams a happy holiday and hope you take the well deserved break after a stressful year. Coming back into 2023, do take a look at these 22 innovations RingCentral launched give them a try. 

Keep up with our latest and greatest here. Not a user yet? Get the RingCentral app on mobile or desktop for free. 

Originally published Dec 09, 2022