Collaboration and Communication

Transforming how we connect with both colleagues and customers through true omnichannel solutions

Collaboration
and Communication

Transforming how we connect with both colleagues and customers through true omnichannel solutions

Ignoring the hype, the rise of true unified
communications - with voice, email, online chat, and video calling fully integrated - has been crucial in the journey towards hybrid working, allowing teams to cultivate a more inclusive approach to customer contact, ensuring different demographics can be treated with the appropriate standard of care and attention, and services remain functioning seamlessly for all customers and end users, without any disruption.

Laying the foundation for more effective communication and collaboration

The concept of ‘unified communications’ has been well-established for some time now, but the transition to a distributed workforce has led many organisations to accelerate the implementation of such solutions. Indeed, by September 2020, 42% of organisations had accelerated UC adoption, with 65% migrating UC solutions to the Cloud, and 85% viewing such platforms as crucial to future business growth . It’s no surprise that companies across the UK have been accelerating their digital transformation initiatives, phasing out legacy infrastructure in favour of more agile, scalable, Cloud-based models.

With such solutions having been successfully utilised to keep staff connected with their colleagues and customers throughout the pandemic, we must now consider how they will fit into a hybrid working model and establish a new standard of best practice around communication and collaboration.

As we do so, technical solutions must be delivered in response to cultural changes in the workplace. For example, with video calls now the default mode of communication for many professionals, the network must support the use of such platforms at scale, offering sufficient bandwidth to maintain call quality at all times. As a result, strengthening the underlay has become a priority for many organisations.

Bringing together internal and external communications

With remote working now firmly established, it’s clear the contact centre as a dedicated office space with staff answering phones is very much redundant, and that siloed channels of communication -are no longer fit for purpose. When working at home or remotely, staff must be able to access the tools they need to collaborate with colleagues and manage customer interactions as effectively as they would in the traditional working environment. With this in place, supported by infrastructure capable of guaranteeing consistent performance for any UC solutions utilised, the location of contact centre staff will have zero impact on the customer journey.

As organisations explore how this can be best achieved, the segregation of internal and external communication platforms is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, with solutions such as direct routing for Microsoft Teams providing centralised communication platforms that not only ensure a consistent QoS, but also support cross-site and cross-team collaboration - the best of both worlds.

Taking all this into account, an effective unified communications solution, built on a secure, high-performance network, and surrounded by a robust cyber security ecosystem, is now an essential part of both a successful customer contact strategy and efficient, productive working practices.