Why Combining UCaaS and CCaaS Is Great for Business

Cloud, Customer Service, phone systems, UCaaS1

Your contact center should offer more than simple answers. It’s the mothership of your customer experience, but its processes require integrations for optimal performance. A unified communication platform can empower collaboration between your contact center and the organization to provide a more seamless customer experience. But why? 

Unified communications as a service (UCaaS) can be combined with a contact center as a service(CCaaS) to improve the customer experience at large. Before diving into exactly how these improvements occur, it’s important to understand exactly what UCaaS and CCaaS are in your organization.

UCaaS and Contact Center as a Service: The Basics

While both UCaaS and CCaaS provide essential functions for your operation, they have distinct differences in how they accomplish results.

  • UCaaS: a cloud-based business collaboration solution that consolidates various communication channels such as video, voice, messaging, and presence on a unified platform.
  • CCaaS: an advanced cloud-based call center tool for empowering a business’s omnichannel customer communication, whether it be by phone, SMS, online chat, or email.

At a glance, you can think of UCaaS as an internal resource for improving communication and CCaaS as a way to bolster external communication with the customer.

The emergence of online resources for call centers revolutionized contact centers — creating contact centers as services to benefit the entirety of the customer journey. This prompted companies to adopt new ways to communicate externally and internally — but all too often, businesses are lagging behind in one of these departments.

Better Together: Why Unify UCaaS and CCaaS?

Combining your UCaaS and CCaaS offers a plethora of unique benefits.

Besides the avoidance of integration headaches when working with multiple companies, there are also cost advantages. Minimizing administrative burden frees up IT staff to focus on core competencies and strategic opportunities. Additionally, you can avoid weighty upfront capital outlays because a contact center as a service is a more predictable cost structure that centers around regular recurring operating expenditures.

1. Access to Information

Contact center employees gain seamless access to contextual information regarding a customer, allowing them to spend more time addressing the problem rather than familiarizing themselves with a customer’s situation or past interactions with the business.

As a customer, this is a huge plus in the customer experience department. Nothing is more frustrating than contacting a contact center for the second or third time and being forced to re-explain the predicament.

2. Meet Customers on Preferred Platforms

Another benefit of combining UCaaS and CCaaS is the ability to readily access and communicate engagement data with these platforms. This data provides valuable insights to where and when a customer engages with your company — whether it be on their phone, SMS, chat, email, and beyond.

Your contact center agents can leverage this data to easily communicate with customers on their preferred platform or device to better the customer experience and provide satisfying services faster.

3. Less Stress on Your Team

Learning new systems can inevitably slow operations and create workflow issues — especially when there are more multiple platforms to familiarize oneself with. Employees have enough on their plate when juggling multiple contact center customers — and keeping mental tabs on platform differences can inevitably affect performance.

Mitigating frustrations with your team is difficult to measure, but it can have an immense effect on the customer experience. Making the lives of your employees simpler and less confusing with combined UCaaS and CCaaS systems will certainly improve work satisfaction and in turn — customer satisfaction.

4. Seamless Coordination

Contact center agents can leverage collaboration tools within the UCaaS to harness rapid answers to inquiries that provide a fast and reliable resolution. Even on their own, contact centers as a service offer incredible business benefits. But, combining these external communication systems with your internal contact center as a service platform allows seamless coordination to handle problems efficiently and quickly.

5. Combined Analytics

Contact center data is a treasure-trove of vital information that can help to improve the customer experience and create advocates for your company. Unified analytics offer a comprehensive view of your business communications along with vital customer engagement systems.

As a business leader, you can highlight ways to adjust the customer experience in meaningful ways — creating a more valuable omnichannel approach.

Enhance Communication Stack By Combining UCaaS and CCaaS

Today, moving communication to the cloud is a must. It’s a flexible environment capable of pushing companies forward and creating new opportunities for collaboration, productivity, and an enhanced customer experience.

  • Strengthen Your Data Access: Gain visibility on the entire spectrum of your customer journey along with your business process in a unified platform. Improve decision-making, give employees more accessibility, and enhance your analytics across the board.
  • Unmatched Collaboration: Ease communication and collaboration between contact center agents and specialists, internal department heads, and vital sources for a more unified environment. Remove siloes to solve customer problems faster and create a landscape that facilitates sales opportunities.
  • Quick Integrations: The cloud makes implementing new tools, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation easier than ever before.
  • Boost Customer Experience: Combining UCaaS and CCaaS systems allows agents to work together more effectively, and engage with customers faster and smarter than ever. Additionally, agents can view the entire customer journey from a birds-eye view, easing pain points and providing solutions along the way.
  • Cost Reduction: Unifying these systems means less maintenance and less hassle — allowing IT specialists more time to focus on improving processes.

Supercharge your company’s communication stack and improve customer experience across the board by combining your UCaaS and CCaaS systems. Give agents, IT leaders, and even customers the resources needed to grow your business and boost sales today. Cost Reduction:

How to Tell if Business VoIP Makes Sense for Your Business

Business Phone, Business Phone Minneapolis, Business Phone Systems Mineapolis, Business Phone Systems MN, SMB, VoIP1

Telephones have existed in the United States since 1876, and they have experienced an impressive evolution. A device that once was a rare commodity is now something that individuals and businesses rely on each day. The same goes for the internet. When the internet was invented in the 1980s, it was slow and rarely used. However, the internet today is considered a necessity for schools, businesses, and homes.

It’s clear that modern businesses depend on reliable phone and internet services, and companies are always looking to improve their efficiency. One of the most efficient ways to utilize an existing internet connection is to set up a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) business phone system. Could VoIP make sense for your business operations? Keep reading to discover if it’s right for you.

How Does VoIP Work?

VoIP is a system that allows businesses to make and receive calls over the internet. This method of using digital lines to carry phone calls was created in the late 1990s. Essentially, VoIP is an alternative option to using a local telephone company. If your business has an internet connection, you can make or receive calls without a local phone service or contract. In addition to making and receiving calls, VoIP provides other functions, such as:

  • Voicemail
  • Call forwarding
  • Call recording
  • Caller ID
  • Conference calling and video conferencing
  • Hold messages or music
  • Fax to email
  • Web-based system administration
  • Integrations with Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Salesforce, and more

VoIP is incredibly accessible for businesses because 93.5% of people in the United States have access to high-speed broadband internet. Broadband internet includes cable, DSL, and fiber internet. VoIP converts phone calls to data and sends the calls over the internet in less than a second. Your business can access the internet through Ethernet cables or Wi-Fi signals.

VoIP works in four simple steps:

  1. Your business phone connects to your switch or router in your Local Area Network (LAN).
  2. When you dial a phone number, your IP phone communicates with your VoIP provider to call the number.
  3. Your VoIP service initiates the call and exchanges data from your IP phone.
  4. The VoIP phone transforms the digital signals into the sounds you hear.

Signs VoIP Is Right for Your Company

With VoIP, your business can bypass analog phone systems and telephone companies entirely. Many companies rave about the benefits of business VoIP, but how do you know if it’s right for you? There are a handful of indicators that suggest your business could be a perfect candidate for VoIP, such as:

1. You Have a Small or Medium-Size Business

If you don’t own a large business, don’t fret. VoIP is ideal for small businesses of all kinds. Small and medium-sized businesses are fantastic candidates for VoIP because many small businesses already rely on cloud-based applications for file sharing, file storage, and backing up data. VoIP fits into this equation by utilizing the cloud, no longer requiring expensive appointments with service technicians, and hosting an unlimited number of incoming and outgoing calls.

2. You Want to Simplify Your Equipment

Quality is better than quantity, especially in the business world. If you’re looking to consolidate your business equipment from multiple inefficient systems down to a few reliable systems, VoIP is an excellent option for you.

Say goodbye to the frustrating and tedious process of installing special wiring and bulky equipment. Companies that utilize VoIP don’t have to purchase extra equipment or use an IT team to install or maintain it.

Businesses that use traditional analog phones know that diagnosing and fixing issues when the landline goes down is time-consuming and irritating. With VoIP, you can cut out the landline entirely and rely on your existing internet network.

3. Remote Connectivity Is Important to You

As society continues to change, the business world adapts with it. Nowadays, it is incredibly common for businesses to operate in a hybrid setting where employees come into the office a few days per week and spend the other days working remotely. Many other companies even provide fully remote working opportunities for all employees.

Not to mention, some occupations require employees and owners to travel for work. Whether you want to support your employees working from home across town or traveling to a different state on business, remote connectivity is essential.

VoIP is the perfect business phone system for remote demands because it allows employees to bring their business phone line with them anywhere they go. Most VoIP providers have a mobile app that can ring when a client or customer calls an employee’s business line. VoIP apps also allow employees to make outgoing calls on their business line from their personal cell phones.

4. You’re Looking to Save Money

Most businesses would happily take any opportunity to lower their operating costs. If you’re looking for additional ways to save money, switching to VoIP can help. Since VoIP doesn’t require special equipment or an IT staff, your business can save significant amounts of money. Additionally, most VoIP providers charge a monthly per-use fee instead of a fee based on how many minutes are spent on the phone.

Some VoIP providers even allow free access to some services. Typically, cloud-based business solutions can be as low as $10 to $30 per user, per month. VoIP avoids toll charges from traditional telephone services and consolidates video conferencing, voicemail, and long-distance calling services into one system, allowing your business to bundle services and save money.

5. Your Business Prioritizes Customer Service

If providing excellent customer service is one of your business’s core values, you may be able to increase your capabilities by using VoIP. With the efficiency and accessibility offered by VoIP, your business’s customer service will stand out from your competitors.

Amp up your customer service by starting calls with a customizable welcome message and add pleasant music or an informative message while customers are on hold. You can even utilize call transcription features so that your employees can give their full attention to clients without having to take notes.

Is VoIP Right For Your Business? Get Started Today!

Does your small business sound like one that we described above? If so, you are likely a fantastic candidate for business VoIP services. Don’t wait any longer to save money, consolidate equipment, support remote work, and amplify your customer service; instead, get started with VoIP today.

If you need a trusted VoIP provider, contact Integrated Communications today. Our team will perform a free telecommunications audit report to decipher if VoIP makes sense for your business. For more helpful advice regarding business telecommunications, check out the other articles on our blog.