MARKET REPORT UC&CC
“As employees shift to a remote setup, providing UC within a Contact Centre gives additional presence
options as well as providing availability across all channels, ensuring high customer service levels can be
maintained despite disruption.” Joe Pratten, Hosted Sales Specialist – Mid Market and Enterprise - Gamma
Adam Wilson, Regional Channel Manager at Vonage
on a sixpence on 24 March and
dusted down their business
continuity plans found to their
horror two problems with their
plans; rstly, most BC plans
are geared towards a maximum
of a 14-day disruption to their
business and secondly, there was
little thought given to having a
dispersed workforce of the scale
needed. No storm lasts that long.”
Looking ahead
e analysts have been
scrambling to adjust their
predictions for 2020 for obvious
reasons. e pandemic has
suddenly o ered up a future
which may be here sooner than
we think.
Adam Wilson at Vonage said
“As we return to workplaces
and o ces I expect businesses
to accelerate plans and decision
making in relation to support
of 1. remote working for their
employees, 2. remote delivery
of the services such as telehealth
and remote education and
3. business continuity. ese
decisions will drive greater
adoption of cloud services
and public cloud delivered
communications to ensure
organisations are better prepared
when their employees work and
serve customers remotely.
In terms of how technology
can help, I expect the postpandemic
world to drive a
greater appetite for application
programming interfaces (APIs)
and arti cial intelligence (AI)
powered Virtual Assistants.
APIs to embed voice, messaging
and video into telehealth and
e-learning platforms and Virtual
Assistants to automate customer
contact.”
Gamma’s Joe Pratten
commented, “In regards to the
technologies themselves, we see
vendors making it even easier
to consume, understand and
price. We also predict further
enhancements and integrations
to be made particularly focussed
around self-service, AI and
IoT. e current period will see
many brands try new ways of
working to deliver an enhanced
customers experience and we
see this driving innovation from
technology providers to meet
this requirement and to support
better internal communications
and new ways of working within
their business.”
Keith Jackson added
“We’ll also see AI solutions
become more commonplace
and integrated into products.
Initially, AI solutions in the
contact centre were often
focused on call de ection and
automation, to reduce the
overall labour cost. However,
these solutions became a
communication barrier between
the customer and the business,
which negatively impacted the
overall customer experience.
Now, we are seeing the
emergence of a more potent form
of AI, focused on enhancing
the capabilities of agents during
calls and enabling them to better
serve customers in real time.
By leveraging the ability
to extract intent from
conversations, AI is able to make
real time recommendations to
agents. ese recommendations
extend from - suggesting
relevant information, appropriate
responses, the best actions
to take - to who is the most
appropriate person to talk to
inside the company for further
information. By enhancing the
capabilities of individual agents,
AI is able to not only increase the
e ciency of the contact centre
but also to improve the customer
experience provided.”
ED SAYS…
These two technologies blurring in the Contact Centre is signifi cant for the market
as customers look to compete in an increasingly digital world. Those partners
which specialise need to think about their vendor relationships carefully, taking on
someone with a foot in both camps (UC and CC) might be advantageous.
approach of sales people? It
depends on the company
size, but no matter what, the
somebody should be able to
work remotely. Operating with
a softphone on your smartphone
or laptop is a must.
e contact centre
functionality would enable call
ow to be set up, experts to be
named, etc. It can widen the
net of people available to help
customers. But even if an
employee isn’t trained to ‘talk’
to a customer, the person on
the phone can certainly instant
message an expert they know of,
or is on some list. I’ve seen this
happen in Sangoma, and I’ve
even been on the end of a couple
of these instant messages when
a sales/support person is on the
line.”
Adam Wilson, Regional
Channel Manager at Vonage
commented “Yes, absolutely.
With the right infrastructure
in place, every employee
can be an ‘agent’ of their
organisation. Why implement
separate customer contact
and collaboration solutions if
you’re required to escalate a
customer problem to the head
of sales or head of engineering
for example and they also need
to communicate with the end
customer to provide a response?
A single collaboration and
customer contact platform
provides a consistent and
uni ed experience, bene tting
employees and their customers.”
Richard Potts, Managing
Director of North Supply
commented “From personal
experience I can attest to a
certain amount of latitude
being a orded to remote
workers when I call a rm with
a query – I know they are at
home and probably don’t yet
have all the tools they need to
deliver the level of CX I want
or had become used to. Usually
my calls would be passed on to
an expert for resolution if the
CC agent could not solve the
problem and every caller wants a
swift resolution.
At the other end of the scale,
most organisations that turned
34 | Comms Business Magazine | July 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
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