Work-from-home is a growing business trend. While the coronavirus pandemic accelerated this trend, companies and employees will continue to work remotely, at least part-time, in the future.
It means a need for flexible, straightforward communication tools. UCaaS is an emerging solution. Here’s how it can benefit businesses of all sizes.
Streamlined Communications
Unifying your communication tools reduces the number of platforms employees can switch between, minimizing time wasted on routine tasks. It allows employees to concentrate on high-priority tasks. It also saves IT departments the burden of coordinating multiple solutions and ensures consistency across employee-facing contact channels for the best customer experience.
Brands must adapt and quickly adjust their messages when business processes change. What is UCaaS role? With less risk, UCaaS provides the flexibility to satisfy these evolving requirements. With a single cloud-based platform that integrates phone systems, messaging apps, videoconferencing, and more, employees can access streamlined communication features at the touch of a button.
For example, a salesperson on the go might need to communicate with a customer on a different schedule than her own. With a simple call or text, she can notify the customer that her meeting will be held in a virtual conference room and join them within minutes. Instead of having a lengthy “reply all” email chain, they will have an engaging face-to-face conversation to help them reach their objectives.
UCaaS solutions offer other productivity-enhancing features, like remote workers’ ability to transfer calls to their desk phones or mobile devices without disrupting call quality or dropping the line. Additionally, many UCaaS providers allow employees to set their work status so colleagues can instantly see which team members are available for chat or call-ins.
For businesses with global teams, UCaaS solutions often offer presence and collaboration tools that let employees see each other’s availability across time zones. Managing workload and building remote relationships is more manageable. Moreover, UCaaS platforms have various applications and features for specific employee groups. For example, field service employees can use mobile apps with push-to-talk functionality and location-based services to communicate on the go.
UCaaS is easily integrated with other business solutions with customizable application programming interfaces (APIs). That makes it easier to monitor the performance of your communications stack and optimize each component to increase efficiency. It also simplifies your business’s security profile because it is hosted by a trusted third party rather than on-premises infrastructure. It minimizes your brand’s exposure to security risks and eliminates the need for costly IT resources and dedicated staff to maintain a centralized communication system.
Optimal Customer Experience
Unifying communication solutions across departments, applications, and devices allows companies to offer a consistent customer experience. It also reduces friction between employee and customer communications, stimulating collaboration to drive productivity. UCaaS provides an all-in-one, cloud-based platform that can handle voice, video, chat, collaboration tools, and contact center services. However, the specific features that a company needs can vary depending on its business plans, growth goals, and current technology infrastructure. Senior leadership needs to understand the unique needs of their teams before committing to a UCaaS solution.
In addition to integrating various communication tools into one interface, UCaaS offers omnichannel support through its integrations with leading business applications, including G-Suite, Salesforce, and Slack. As an added benefit, UCaaS provides a single, centralized management portal that makes it easier for IT teams to analyze and improve internal communications.
Today’s employees want to choose how they communicate and when, and UCaaS allows them to do just that. It seamlessly lets workers switch between SMS, audio, and video calls and screen and document sharing. Moreover, the application programming interfaces (API) that UCaaS supports make it easy for businesses to incorporate additional features into the system that can increase productivity and foster innovation.
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While many of these features are great for employees who work from an office, UCaaS is a game-changer for remote and mobile teams. UCaaS can give disconnected employees a sense of connection and visibility by allowing them to stay in touch with colleagues through instant messaging or voice and video conference calls. It can even provide them with their phone number that rings on both their desktop and mobile phones, letting them check colleague availability before a call.
For example, employees out of the office can attend virtual team meetings and webinars using a single link on any device. It helps to increase participation at town halls, lunch and learns, or other events where it may be difficult for people to travel. This flexibility also helps build a more inclusive culture among employees and customers, boosting retention rates and fostering loyalty.
Reduced Costs
A UCaaS solution is a one-stop shop that can help businesses save money. It eliminates the need to pay for multiple programs, hardware, and vendors for different communication tools. This way, your IT team will be able to spend time keeping old-school phone systems up to date, struggling to make separate collaboration tools work together, and attempting to stay ahead of software and hardware updates.
Instead of managing on-prem UC/collaboration/telephony solutions, your IT staff can focus on strategic initiatives that create value for your business. UCaaS reduces the total cost of ownership by eliminating costly hardware upgrades, PBX maintenance, and dedicated lines.
Additionally, UCaaS offers a more flexible approach to pricing, so you can quickly scale your services and add additional features as needed. Then, you can pay for only what you use. This flexibility can significantly improve the bottom line of your organization.
UCaaS solutions are built on the latest communications technologies, including voice-over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging. They are accessible from any device with a stable internet connection and come with tools designed to improve your business’s overall productivity and profitability.
In addition, UCaaS solutions offer features that can help you address specific problems in your business and streamline processes. For example, suppose your customers are getting frustrated by having to wait for an agent or being transferred between departments. In that case, you can implement a virtual receptionist or routing capabilities that direct calls to the most qualified reps.
A modern unified communication platform can also help you improve customer experiences and boost sales. It can integrate with your CRM, ERP, workforce management systems, and existing communication tools to create a seamless workflow that helps everyone get their jobs done faster and more efficiently. Some of today’s leading UCaaS providers even offer combination platforms that combine UCaaS with other software and as-a-service offerings like CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) and CPaaS (Chatbots and Virtual Assistants as a Service). The solutions are a powerful, all-in-one business tool that can transform your company’s operations.
Increased Flexibility
A full-fledged UCaaS platform allows businesses of all sizes to work in their way. Brands can select tools and features that align with their business strategy and then deploy them on an a la carte basis, with some providers also offering bundled solutions for specific verticals. It allows brands to build a communications platform that is unique and tailored to their organization’s needs while cutting costs and boosting productivity.
One of the most significant advantages of UCaaS over traditional communication technologies is that it offers greater flexibility and scalability for businesses that need to expand or contract quickly, with little to no impact on existing infrastructure. Adding new users is a breeze, and businesses can easily remove accounts for employees who have left the company or those who no longer need access to communications tools.
The flexible UCaaS approach to business communications can be handy for companies with dispersed workforces or teams that work from home offices. Remote workers can communicate via video conference or text messaging, eliminating the need for in-person meetings. That makes it easier for them to share documents and files and can help foster a sense of teamwork that can only be achieved with a central workspace.
In addition, many UCaaS platforms allow employees to set their work status, meaning they can choose to display their availability and when they’re available to respond to questions or requests. That can make it much easier for teams across multiple time zones to coordinate meetings and collaborations and help managers keep track of employee productivity.
UCaaS is growing in popularity because it allows businesses to overcome the communication barriers that often prevent them from operating at peak efficiency. When employees can’t share information easily with colleagues and customers, projects are delayed, deadlines are missed, and clients become dissatisfied. However, with a UCaaS solution, these obstacles can be removed to enable businesses to thrive and provide quality service.
