UCaaS, Unified Communications as a Service, is an umbrella term for cloud-based solutions that bring together all your company’s communications in a single system. With UCaaS, you get a range of benefits such as a more coherent customer journey, lower costs and a better overview.
What is UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service)?
Unified Communications (UC) means the union of different types of communication tools. Everything is interconnected to best communicate with colleagues and customers via telephony, email, chat or video calls. The number of communication channels continues to increase. Therefore, it has become important to ensure that all channels interact. Unified Communications provides the conditions for seamless and efficient communication – both externally and internally.
As in other IT areas, the trend in Unified Communications is towards SaaS (Software as a Service), i.e. subscription-based business models. This has given rise to UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service), which means that you subscribe to a cloud-based solution for UC. This avoids the high upfront costs previously associated with older versions of UC. With UCaaS, you only pay for the number of users you actually need. Because UC platforms are in the cloud today, systems are cheaper and easier to manage.
Why is UCaaS important for businesses today?
Interest in UCaaS has grown tremendously in recent years, increasing by 86% after the pandemic. Huge players like Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Cisco are adding thousands of new users to their platforms every week.
The main UCaaS feature is precisely that telephony, mobile, PBX, chat and video calls are brought together in a single system. Some UCaaS providers also offer contact center features, such as call routing and interactive voice response (IVR).
UCaaS offers enhanced scalability and flexibility as you can quickly add and remove users without making any extensive changes to the infrastructure. Your employees’ lives are further simplified as you can integrate UCaaS with your CRM system or other favorite ticketing or analytics tools like Power BI. Agents can work more efficiently and be more present during calls as they use the same tools all the time.
The result is a unified communications solution that optimizes your telephony, your external communication with customers and improves collaboration between teams and employees.
8 key benefits of UCaaS
- Easy administration and user-friendly interface
- A coherent customer journey
- Effective communication and improved customer experience
- Reducing costs and increasing flexibility
- A great overview of the statistics and fewer missed calls
- Enables remote working and better internal communication
- Fewer security risks
- Save time with self-management
1. easy administration and user-friendly interface
Older UCaaS solutions were complicated to install, update and manage. They required expensive consultants to make changes to settings, and the capacity of the physical system limited the ability to scale up as the business grew. Modern and cloud-based UCaaS solutions are easy and intuitive to both install and manage. They also update automatically, so you always have access to the very latest version of the software.
2. A coherent customer journey
A coherent and unified customer journey builds trust, increases sales and delivers customer satisfaction. With Unified Communications, you ensure that communication with your customers is seamless and smooth – from the first contact via website, phone or email, all the way through purchase and on to customer support. For example, by connecting your telephony and switchboard with CRM systems and customer support, you give your employees optimal opportunities to create a positive customer experience.
{{cta(‘218fd556-6e56-4d20-9720-1bd484c48962’)}}
3. effective communication and improved customer experience
With Unified Communications, you create the foundation for effective communication between agents, as well as between them and customers, and it is a must for increased productivity and growth.
If telephony is linked to the CRM, your agents are immediately notified when someone contacts your company. Right away, the agent can see details about the customer contacting you, like their name and company, which means the agent can offer a more personalized service, like responding to the conversation by greeting them by name. This builds trust and results in an improved customer experience.
4. Lower costs and increased flexibility
UCaaS typically involves a license-based business model, where you only pay for the actual number of users. If someone joins or leaves, you can easily add new users or cancel subscriptions yourself. In this way, you avoid old subscriptions “lying around” and costing you money, long after the user has moved on to a new workplace.
You also get a better overview, as the cost of all your company’s communication is collected on a single invoice.
When people can work wherever they want, there is less need for large offices. This reduces fixed costs, of course, but also costs such as printing, as reports do not need to be distributed in 17 copies, but can be shared digitally.
Continue reading: How to structure your UCaaS budget
5. Keeping track of statistics and reducing missed calls
With Unified Communications, you get a valuable helicopter view of communication in your business. You’ll always know exactly how your queue is doing – in real time. This means you can make data-driven decisions on everything from skills development and planning to staffing and scheduling.
It’s easy to collect statistics on all communications about your business. With the statistics, you can generate reports, integrate with Power BI to get more detailed information, and monitor service level, average wait time and missed calls from one dashboard. You can also review how your employees are using their communication tools and then make sure you are getting the most out of those tools.
6. enabling remote working and better internal communication
Flexible working hours and remote colleagues are becoming more and more common. Having your company’s communications in a cloud-based UCaaS solution allows everyone to work anywhere, anytime, on any device.
To provide good working conditions remotely, you need helpful tools that make it natural for your employees to collaborate. With UCaaS, everyone uses the same platform and tools. You won’t have the hassle of multiple video call solutions or document management systems, and with smart profiles, you can always see which employees are active, out to lunch or home sick.
7. fewer security risks
A digital workplace with an effective digital strategy also lowers security risks. When you can track and measure better, you can also spot questionable behaviors, and thus detect security threats before they become serious. Another benefit of digital workplaces is that less material is printed on paper. What many people don’t consider is that it could otherwise end up in the wrong hands, through something as simple as the company’s trash.
8. Save time by doing a lot yourself
Administrators can use the same interface to manage call flows, statistics, add or remove users and much more. You can manage most tasks yourself and thus do not have to rely as much on support from the provider. All users can manage their availability and set their status, showing, for example, whether they have gone to lunch or are home sick.
Find the right UCaaS provider
You probably won’t have any trouble finding a provider as there are plenty of solutions on the market. But you should be discerning and find the UCaaS solution that best suits your business. Below are some tips to consider when choosing between different providers.
Take this into account when choosing your UCaaS provider:
- List the functionality you need and the requirements you have for video conferencing and collaboration tools, for example, and what you think you will need in the future. Make sure that the provider you choose can deliver what you need.
- If remote working is important, make sure that the solution offers robust mobile functionality and that your employees get the same experience regardless of where they work and what device they use.
- Look for a UCaaS provider that is dedicated to protecting your system and invests in high encryption for communication data.
- Scalability is crucial in a good UCaaS solution. Try to find a provider where you can add or remove tools as you go.
Summary: The benefits of Unified Communications
Unified Communications as a Service is the way forward for businesses looking for a way to communicate that is as ideal as possible. UCaaS solutions today are robust, cloud-based, easy to deploy and less expensive than legacy UC solutions. You’ll see immediate improvements in how your employees can communicate with each other and how customers can interact with you. With detailed insights into how your customer support team is performing, you’ll also have an excellent basis for improving customer service.
UCaaS offers huge opportunities for industries such as banking and finance, retail, logistics and healthcare. Both e-commerce businesses and physical stores will see great benefits from switching to UCaaS.
