An Intro to Unified Communications

You can’t be everywhere when it comes to your business. The tools and the services you use to improve your customer experience, however, can be. Through unified communications services, you can digitally transform the way you interact with customers and dramatically improve the experience of your customer service team, too. 

What is unified communications? 

Unified communications (or UC) refers to the consolidation and integration of multiple messaging and communication tools—such as voice calling, SMS, email, and chat—on one central platform. Unified communications allow real-time customer interactions to happen across multiple channels, meaning that your customers can switch between different modes of communication at any point in their journey. They might start a web chat with your agents and then escalate their query to a voice call, for example, and they can do all of that with one click in the same app or medium.

How do unified communications work? 

In traditional business communications, every channel is siloed from the other, operating independently and not exchanging information. In a unified communications platform, all channels are united and share data between themselves, including both your customer-facing and employee-facing channels. This gives you a single source of truth so everyone in your organization has the most accurate and up-to-date information.

Unified communications are supported by powerful back-end management systems that allow services to be integrated together. These systems (or UC platforms) combine both your real-time communications channels, giving the user quick and consistent access to your team of agents from whatever device they’re on. 

Unified communications systems can operate from a physical location, a private or public cloud, or a hybrid of the three, making them versatile and adaptable.

(If you’re still using an on-premise contact center platform and you’re ready to upgrade to a cloud-based contact center, we can help.)

Unified communications platforms unite almost every tool you need in your communications, including: 

• SMS
• Chat
• Email
• Voicemail and voice calling services, including fixed phone, mobile, and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) 
• Screen sharing
• Audio and video transcription
• Web and video conferencing
• Social networking platforms
• Calendars and scheduling 
• Business communication gateways
• Traditional, IP, or cloud-based private branch exchange

What are the benefits of unified communications? 

If you’ve read this far, you’re likely getting a sense of why unified communications are valuable resources for businesses. Unified communications are incredibly powerful tools that increase productivity and improve consumer satisfaction in almost every way.

Some of the benefits you can expect from a unified communications platform include:

• Flexible and accessible communication: unified channels allow customers and agents to interact with each other in whichever way they feel the most comfortable, whether it be text, voice, chat, or social messaging. This helps agents personalize every interaction and it makes your services more accessible so your customers get help sooner—and in whichever way is most convenient for them.
• Fewer costs: the cost for siloed tools isn’t cheap—you have to pay for installation, maintenance, updates, and other user fees for every single platform tool your company invests in. United communications platforms reduce those fees by acting as a single, unifying tool for all of your channels. They’re also easier to install and maintain. 
• Consistent, context-rich interactions with customers: unified communications give agents access to customer histories, interactions, questions, and movement across their entire journey and every channel they communicate through so that their experience can be made more personalized and consistent. UC platforms like UJET do this by integrating securely and natively with your CRM to make it your primary source of truth.
• Greater collaboration: agents can more easily work together and help each other when communications across every platform are centralized in one platform, particularly one cloud platform.
• Better for remote work: unified cloud communications platforms allow your agents to work from anywhere in the world, accessing all of the information that they need to  provide informed responses to customers and communicate with other members of your team.
• It’s more enjoyable for customers and for agents: with unified channels, your customers can self-serve easier than ever and your agents are able to work on queries that delight and engage them. 

Find the right unified communications tool for your business

When it comes to unified communications, there are far more benefits than there are downsides. The biggest challenge is picking the best platform! 

Brands looking to transition from siloed tech stacks to a unified communications platform should look for something that will easily scale with their brand. You may not need every feature a platform has to offer right away. Choosing a platform with customizable features will save you money and also allow you the space to figure out what tools you do need to transform your company and customer communications.