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Trends Driving the Fusion of UCaaS and CCaaS
Last Edited: March 6, 2023
Tom Wright
Managing Editor
Today’s professionals spend much time in the cloud. The rise of hybrid and remote work means cloud environments like UCaaS and CCaaS platforms are quickly becoming the digital hub of the workforce. These spaces allow for more agile and flexible access to technology wherever your team members might be. However, the disconnect between different cloud tools can cause problems.
With so many tools to use daily, it’s easy for teams to become overwhelmed in a disconnected digital environment. Some studies suggest that the average company uses up to 245 SaaS applications daily.
Combining communication environments for UCaaS and CCaaS can help to minimize these issues, improve productivity, and even drive cost savings. Here are some of the hottest trends driving the consolidation of the clouds in 2023.
Perhaps the most significant factor pushing UCaaS and CCaaS together today is the consolidation of various “as a service” cloud solutions. XaaS, or “Everything as a Service”, is growing increasingly popular as more companies transition people and processes into the cloud. The UCaaS landscape is increasingly flexible, allowing for more integrations with additional SaaS tools, from CRM systems to workforce management solutions.
A flexible cloud environment can open the door for more aligned cloud technologies across various platforms. UCaaS and CCaaS (Contact Centre as a Service) offerings are becoming more intertwined, and many vendors are also offering additional XaaS services. For instance, it’s becoming more common to see CPaaS and API offerings included with UCaaS/CCaaS platforms.
With consolidated cloud environments, companies can leverage the power of an end-to-end ecosystem for internal and external communications. This can lead to more contextual conversations in the contact centre, with access to CRM data and other valuable insights. It also means companies can build more versatile omnichannel strategies for CX, where teams can easily connect and collaborate.
Hybrid and remote working strategies are more popular than ever. Around 76% of employees in one study said their companies are shifting to a hybrid working model, and more flexible work modes are constantly emerging. As companies discover the engagement, productivity and efficiency benefits of flexible working, they also recognize a growing need for suitable cloud environments to empower their distributed workforce.
While individual UCaaS and CCaaS tools can support hybrid and remote workers, these disconnected environments can reduce productivity and information silos. Bringing the two spaces together ensures the team members can access the same information, support, and guidance wherever they are – even through mobile apps.
With UCaaS and CCaaS combined, business leaders empower their hybrid teams to deliver better levels of customer service, greater productivity, efficiency, and accuracy. At the same time, an all-in-one environment makes it easier for IT and security teams to track the performance and processes of team members wherever they are. We even see a rise in cloud environments expanding for intercompany collaboration.
Concepts like “Total Experience” and a rising focus on employer empathy have recently transformed the workplace. To retain the best talent across the contact centre, businesses must ensure they’re supporting their team correctly. Today’s UCaaS and CCaaS solutions can help with this.
Aligning both communication platforms ensures team members can access support and assistance from colleagues when they need it most, making them less likely to feel isolated when working remotely. The same tools also make it easier to get insights into employee engagement levels and areas where staff might benefit from additional training or guidance.
Many UCaaS/CCaaS platforms even come with workforce management tools and collaborative environments where businesses can optimize and enhance their teams. With a team collaboration system as a central work hub in the cloud, business leaders can even implement gamification methods to bring distributed staff together.
Fusing unified communications with contact centre technology can improve internal collaboration by enabling agents to find the appropriate resource within an organization to resolve a customer query and contact them based on their skills.
An integrated unified communications and contact centre system tackles legacy issues head-on and replaces them with successful collaboration between the contact centre and the rest of the business⁴. This integration can also increase agent productivity by three times because it reduces agent time spent looking for information.
When unified communications and collaboration functionality is integrated with a contact centre system, agent productivity increases because agents spend less time addressing customer queries. This integration also makes it easier for agents to share information and collaborate in real-time, which means that their response to customer questions is faster¹. Unified communications can bring significant business benefits to your contact centre by improving agent productivity, efficiency, and agility³.
With the integration of unified communication technology and contact centre technology, businesses can collect and analyze data from multiple channels, including voice, email, chat, and social media. This data can then be used to gain insights into customer behaviour, identify areas for improvement, and optimize agent performance.
This can benefit organizations in several ways, including customer journey, performance and speech analytics.
Customer journey analytics involves analyzing the entire customer journey, from initial contact to final resolution. By analyzing the customer journey across all channels, businesses can identify areas where customers are getting stuck or frustrated and take steps to improve the overall customer experience.
Performance analytics involves tracking agents’ key performance indicators (KPIs), such as call volume, call duration, and customer satisfaction ratings. By analyzing agent performance data, businesses can identify areas for improvement and provide targeted coaching and training.
Meanwhile, text analytics analyses customer interactions, such as phone calls and chat conversations, for sentiment, intent, and key phrases. This data can be used to identify common customer issues and develop targeted solutions.
Part of keeping employees engaged and satisfied in a transforming workplace is ensuring they have access to the tools they need in a personalized space. By aligning UCaaS and CCaaS, business leaders can provide teams with a way to customize their workplace experience. Tools like Microsoft Teams are growing particularly popular as a new work hub.
Teams solutions not only enable UCaaS and CCaaS in the same place, but they also allow users to add apps and integrations specific to their needs without disrupting the productivity of other team members. Companies can further personalize the experience by using BYOC solutions like Operator Connect and Direct Routing to bring existing communications providers into Teams.
With versatile cloud environments, companies can adapt their technology to suit the various employee personas in their workforce while ensuring everyone has access to the same central tools. Teams can even choose how to communicate with colleagues through video, chat, or phone calls.
Finally, consolidating UCaaS and CCaaS solutions allows businesses to build an agile and adaptable environment for the new age of work and customer experience. With everything your teams need to communicate internally and externally in the same place, it’s much easier to implement new and disruptive tools as they emerge.
For instance, companies can add artificial intelligence capabilities to the cloud, allowing teams to offer customers self-service solutions. However, those same self-service bots can also help employees find information and assistance quickly when working in the cloud. The right tools can also open the door for augmented meetings with colleagues and customers.
Not only are many vendors experimenting more with VR collaboration and XR tools for customer service, but they’re also looking for ways to bring more contextual insights into conversations. This could mean using AI to get information about a contact to a user, whether they’re having an internal meeting or discussing a service with a customer.
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