Some business challenges affect companies of all sizes; they’re inherent in being a for-profit organization. One of these is finding the most efficient, effective way to maintain customer loyalty.
A common barrier to building relationships and creating loyal customers is delays caused by business processes. Such processes can be internally focused (like complexities in applications for keeping track of inventory) or customer-focused (such as systems within a call center).
Regardless of where they originate, business process delays are not great for customer relationships—or customer loyalty. Most companies (as many as 80%) think they have such things pretty well under control and provide great customer service. Meanwhile, only about 20% of customers feel they are getting great service.
So, how to close the gap?
Technology holds at least part of the answer. More specifically, unified communications solutions can greatly reduce, or eliminate altogether, some of the business processes that cause delays and negatively affect customer service.
In a recently published white paper, cloud telephony provider Fonality lays out three main reasons why migrating to unified communications is a good move for companies of all sizes.
First, it unifies the user experience across different modes of communication (such as e-mail, instant messenger/chat, phone, and conferencing). Second, UC enables employees to be reachable at a single phone number, no matter where or how they’re working (on a desktop PC, on a smartphone, on a tablet computer, etc.). Third, unified communications does away with boundaries between wireless and wired communications, and between public network and in-building connectivity.
More specifically, two key capabilities of UC make it a smart choice: functionality for more easily delivering great customer service, and capabilities that get more value out of business processes.
“For example, a customer relationship management application can maintain the context of the customer’s experience as a customer moves from a self-serve environment to a live agent to a dialogue with an expert, wherever he/she may be,” Fonality (News - Alert) points out in the white paper, referencing the concept of improving customer service.
And how can UC help with getting more value out of business processes?
“An application that detects a need for exception handling could initiate a Unified Communications (News - Alert) session and deliver relevant data to your increasingly mobile staff, exponentially speeding issue resolution,” Fonality said in the white paper.
For more discussion on this topic, including how UC makes workers more efficient, download the full white paper.
Mae Kowalke is a TMCnet contributor. She is Manager of Stories at Neundorfer, Inc., a cleantech company in Northeast Ohio. She has more than 10 years experience in journalism, marketing and communications, and has a passion for new tech gadgets. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Patrick Barnard