Speed and good communication are the two important factors that can greatly influence customer experience. Whether you’re catering to business customers or you are running a retail business that deals directly with end-users, being able to communicate and react quickly to market changes will help you stay ahead of the competition.
The same things are making unified communication systems very popular. As the name suggests, unified communications or UC integrates different communication channels into a comprehensive suite that can sit comfortably at the heart of the company’s workflow.
While there are a lot of obvious benefits offered by unified communications – such as the ability to use one number to reach key personnel at all times – there are also hidden benefits that are just as rewarding for businesses. We are going to take a closer look at some of them in this article.
Affordable Communications
Many business owners and decision makers don’t really consider UC solutions for one obvious reason: the best solutions are expensive. This may have been true a few years ago, but it is certainly no longer the fact today. In fact, some of the best UC solutions on the market are specifically targeting small businesses with their pricing and marketing strategies.
Instead of investing in your own servers and hardware, you can now ‘rent’ an entire unified communications system along with the cloud infrastructure to support it from service providers. Running and maintaining a UC solution is both easy and affordable thanks to companies like KBZ offering a wide range of implementation and support services.
In the long run, the cost of using a unified communications system is actually lower than maintaining multiple channels. The system itself is upgradable, so you will be able to allow the system to grow as the business grows.
Work from Anywhere
UC solutions may not be primarily designed for letting employees work from anywhere, but the features and services added to the system are making it easier for modern workers and team members to stay efficient and effective even when they are out of the office.
Presence, for instance is a feature that will keep you connected no matter where you are. Clients and vendors can still reach you on your office number and extension, but the system will actually forward the call to your mobile device or other devices that you’re using to stay connected.
A collaborative platform is also built into the system. While hosting a multi-party meeting, any team member can present a slide show, share screens and work on documents or other files together. All of this can happen in real-time with minimal delay, pushing the boundaries of working remotely even further.
The same benefits can be enjoyed by vendors and customers too. Vendors can easily connect to your company’s UC system to attend virtual meetings or talk to the person in charge. Customers, on the other hand, can see the customer support officer helping them with their issues directly through video chat.
Unrivaled History Tracking
Everything you do within the UC system is recorded. Did you say you want the logo revised when the design department called you yesterday? It’s no longer a tricky situation to solve, since you can review the call history and even check the transcript. All logs are stored for as long as you want, allowing every action to be traced meticulously.
The same feature applies to meetings and conferences. There is no need to create manual meeting minutes because the system will do everything for you. All shared documents and the discussions that happen during the meeting are documented without flaw.
As mentioned before, some systems support automatic transcript creation through voice recognition and automation. This particular feature is handy for the sales department, since they can focus on talking to the customer while the system keeps track of everything for them.
Better PR and Social Media Presence
One of the key feature of UC systems is the person tracking through Presence. When a decision needs to be approved by a manager, the system can reach out to that manager using any method it knows. The same feature can be used during crisis management or for maintaining a strong social media presence.
Social media administrators no longer have to worry about making mistakes and issuing the wrong answers, since they can always reach the right person through the UC system. Questions can be answered in minutes, not hours or days. When a new question appears on your social media pages, or when a complaint is posted online, the entire company can react as one and perform good PR.
These hidden benefits may not be as technical, but they are as valuable. The moment your internal UC system is online, you can do so much more and push your company to a new level.
