Improving Customer Experience in Banking with Unified Communications

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The banking sector has been through a lot for the past 6 years. Starting with the 2008 financial meltdown and continuing with a perpetual lack of customer trust, the banking industry seemed to be on a continuous downward spiral.

Yet, there are signs that banks have finally learned their lessons and have managed to turnaround consumers’ confidence. The 2014 Ernst & Young Global Consumer Banking Survey shows that consumer confidence in banks has risen 50% versus previous year. The report goes on to state that this increase is not the result of consumers turning back to “normal” but rather the result of banks taking an active stance on building trust again. And this trust resides on customer experience.

Why Businesses Need to Leverage the Power of the Cloud

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Businesses today are increasingly migrating their digital resources and tools into the cloud for a variety of reasons. As such, it should be no surprise if the global end-user spend on cloud services will reach $180 billion by next year. It is bound to happen.

By the end of last year, more than half of U.S. businesses were already taking advantage of cloud-based tools. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits these technologies bring.

Saving Money and the Planet with Unified Communications

There is no question that Unified Communications solutions are good for business. But it’s often understated that UC solutions can have a great impact on the environment too. UC tools are all about connecting people and making their lives as easy as possible through smart deployment of technology.

Consider the following two aspects and you’ll see where I’m going with this.

Virtual Meetings Do Pay Off

With the power of UC solutions to unite business partners around the globe at a moment’s notice, in many cases in-person meetings are no longer the necessity they once were. Rather than having international business partners travel to a specific location to negotiate, consuming a lot of resources and time in the process, partners can now call from anywhere they are, with the same personalized, seamless interactions they would have in real life. Add to that the recording capabilities of the best UC software, and you will get an even more powerful means of following up on meetings.

With Unified Communications, Remote Working Is Easier Than Ever

Last year, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made the headlines when she announced that her employees would no longer be able to work from home. Some industry pundits speculated as to whether that meant the end of remote jobs. A few months later however, Dell CEO Michael Dell announced his intention to enable half of his 14,000 workforce to work from home. At the time of his announcement, 20 percent of his team were already working from home.

So, while the jury is still out whether Yahoo fares better or not, Dell’s decision merely expanded what already proved to be a good decision: in 2012, thanks to its remote working policy, the company saved $14 million—and 6,735 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. It seems that offices will soon be a thing of the past, or at least will need to be re-imagined, as more and more companies are shifting to flexible working policies.

Unified Communications and the Future in Education

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With technology advancing so fast, it’s often a wonder that the process of delivering education is still a piece of the twentieth century. It’s true that the world of online universities and learning websites from Coursera to Kahn’s Academy and other MOOCs is taking off, but many traditional schools, high-schools and universities are still stuck with paperwork when it comes to collaboration, and to simple voice when it comes to communication. Education should be at the forefront of what tech has to offer.

Some schools are making inroads into how to leverage technology. For example, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) provides interactive video courses for K-12 schools across North Carolina. Students from across the state can collaborate in project teams and class discussions. Meanwhile, NCSSM teachers monitor the class in real-time and assess student learning. Yet, such schools are the exception, not the norm. The 2011 CDW Unified Communications Tracking Poll found that only 17% of higher education has implemented some of the features that are part of Unified Communications.

Summertime Is the Perfect Time to Assess Your Contact Center

Business slows down in summer due to vacation time. That’s a fact. Be that as it may, for contact centers, considering the relatively low call center activity, the summer looks like the perfect time to see if they’re making the grade.

When business starts ramping up again, the quality of your customer service needs to be at its peak so as to bolster revenue, enhance customer satisfaction, and reduce costs. If your contact center isn’t ready for that kind of influx of traffic as business picks back up, you may be in for a surprise. For instance, according to a recent survey by Accenture, 51 percent of consumers in the U.S. will abandon a business if they are not fully satisfied with their customer service.

So what exactly can you do so that your company doesn’t become part of the statistics?

Africa Is on the Brink of a Unified Communications Revolution

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For quite some time, VoIP telephony and Unified Communications tools (voice, instant messaging, video calls, audio conference, and presence combined into a single communication stream) have proliferated on many markets, and now it appears as though Africa too is on the brink of this communications revolution. With technology evolving so fast, businesses in developing areas of the world are catching on to the need to deploy robust communications tools.

By taking advantage of both VoIP and UC, companies benefit from cost savings and increased functionality which, in turn, improve business processes and boost productivity.

As the number of reliable Internet connections increases, so does the number of businesses that can leverage IP telephony. With that in mind, let’s take a look at two countries in particular—South Africa and Nigeria—and how VoIP and UC are making an impact there.

VoIP Market: Revenue Set to Triple Yet Lack of User Awareness Jeopardizes Success

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Due to the myriad of benefits brought by technology, like business flexibility, reduced costs, and bolstered collaboration, the VoIP telephony market is looking particularly sunny. In fact, according to Frost & Sullivan, the North American VoIP market (including SIP services) is expected to at least triple in revenue from $2.83 billion to $9.35 billion between 2013 and 2019.

“Businesses are transitioning from legacy private branch exchanges to IP-based Unified Communications platforms and, as such, are looking to VoIP access and SIP trunking services to complement these new platforms,” said Michael Brandenburg, communications analyst at Frost & Sullivan. He also noted that VoIP and SIP trunking offer business recovery and mobile features that “are simply not available on more traditional telecommunications services“.

The UCaaS Market Is Growing And Here’s Why

An Ovum study conducted with over 1,300 ICT decision makers in 18 countries revealed that organizations are still bound to on-premises Unified Communications. Around 80% of UC systems are deployed on-premises and managed internally or by a third party. Managed UCC arose from the need of organizations lacking in-house experts to support the UC evolution. So where’s the cloud in all of this? If we look below, we can see that hosted core IP PBX stands at 3%, while instant messaging and presence lead the way with 7%; which is a lot less than we’d like.

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