MARKET REPORT UC&CC
“A key driver behind UC in the contact centre is to improve information flow and collaboration between
teams. This is essential to deliver excellent customer experience, and the contact centre is a prime
example of where fluid and open collaboration pays dividends. Tony Martino, CEO of Tollring
Keith Jackson, EMEA Channel Sales Director at 8x8
relationships, and re ect on
the exchanges that happen in
the business environment to
transform customers into longterm
brand advocates.
Business continuity has been
another key driver, particularly
in the current predicament
the world is living through.
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.”
Complexity problems?
e ongoing battle for vendors
that develop UC and CC
technology has always been
between developing ever
increasingly complex solutions
whilst at the same time trying
to make them easily consumable
for the Channel to sell into their
customers. With the Contact
Centre now being a hotbed of
innovation for technology such
as Arti cial Intelligence and
IoT are they still palatable for
www.tollring.com
CX for everyone
As UC tools enable all
parts of the Contact Centre
to collaborate and share
information the traditional roles
of back o ce sta and front
facing agents are potentially
blurring. Customer Experience
has become the focal point for
many organisations, but does the
technology now allow everyone
in the business to impact that
experience?
Simon Horton, VP of Sales,
Europe at Sangoma said “I don’t
know about every employee
(depending on the company
of course), but certainly more
employees. Let’s start with
routing to the appropriate
person or department. When
a call comes in, the call should
be able to get to the right place
easily. And this means the UC
system should have basic IVR
functionality. So now the call
is going to somebody in your
company, but what does that
mean? Is it a receptionist, an
agent who is trained to take
calls, or some round robin
>
Justin Hamilton-Martin, Director at Centile
Live Wallboards
when the UC CC solution is
not able to compete with the
established CC players and its
import for the vendors to know
their limits.”
Keith Jackson, EMEA
Channel Sales Director at 8x8
commented “We provide our
partners with the options of selfpaced,
Virtual Instructor-Led
Training (VILT) or classroom
training to suit their needs and
in as little as 2.5 hours, channel
partners have the knowledge and
understanding to sell, con gure
and build their own tenants
for our Virtual O ce solution
– thanks to the simplicity of
the product and the di erent
opportunities to participate in
our training.
Successful training means
accelerated partner sales and
deployment cycles – which is the
new battleground for businesses.
e team can carry out a 100-
seat deployment within 3-5
days, from design right through
to build and con guration,
testing and implementation, all
remotely.”
and Contact Centre
Analytics
MONITOR • CONTROL • UNDERSTAND
partners to take on?
Ian Rowan, Channel Sales
Manager, Wildix UK says “ e
bigger danger is they don’t have
these tools today and miss the
opportunities that they can’t
convert without them, If we
look at the real di erences
between UC and CC, the real
di erence is monitoring and
assessing agent performance,
the underlying technology of
UC allows the same methods of
communications as the CC stack
but many lack the ability to
monitor the agent performance
both live and retrospectively.
With the lockdown and rising
acceptance of smart home
working as the new normal,
having the ability to monitor
that performance has become
even more critical. Partners
that sell UC will be able to
supply CC that is part of that
solution they already know and
understand, having a complex
third party solution is still viable
but has to be through vendor
allegiance with CC products
that take the same route to
market. ere will be times
32 | Comms Business Magazine | July 2020 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/www.tollring.com
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