To integrate various channels, workflows, and applications, enterprise-wide CX necessitates the use of converged UC and contact center tools.
By now, organizations of all sizes recognize the strong correlation between CX, customer loyalty, and ultimately the bottom line. They also recognize the significance of integrating various parts of their organization beyond the contact center. While small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) and some enterprises can use a single stack solution to connect the contact center with the rest of the organization, large enterprises with multiple vendors and products face greater challenges.
These larger organizations can create positive customer experiences by taking an enterprise-wide approach and leveraging the convergence of cloud-based unified communications (UC) and contact center applications and technologies to better serve customers. Here, we’ll further explore this concept, address barriers, and propose solutions.
The Need for Enterprise-Wide CX
For years I’ve said that responsibility for CX should expand to the entire enterprise, across various departments because creating engagement with your customers extends beyond the contact center. We’re starting to see the convergence of customer service, marketing, and sales, as well as the ability for subject matter experts throughout the organization to assist contact center agents in the collaborative contact center. Companies understand that caring for customers involves not only front-line workers interacting with customers, but also knowledge workers, subject matter experts, and specialists throughout the enterprise. Enterprise-wide CX requires converging UC and contact center tools, as well as communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) to integrate various channels, as well as workflows and applications.
Unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) and contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) tools can provide a seamless customer experience as customers move from researching a company’s website to responding to a marketing campaign or sales call, to contacting customer service. Communication, collaboration, and coordination between employees inside and outside of the contact center also require the right tools and technologies, as well as integration between the enterprise’s UC and contact center technologies.
By integrating UCaaS and CCaaS, enterprises can create a collaborative contact center, (as mentioned above) that enables agents, specialists throughout the enterprise, and customers to work together to solve CX issues.
With tools such as instant messaging or chat, telephony, two-way video, screen sharing, co-browsing from the agent desktop, and team collaborative spaces, agents can more quickly and effectively identify the customer’s problem and find a solution. Agent-customer interactions can start in a chat session and escalate to a web conference with document sharing and other collaborative tools, enabling agents to visually guide callers through a process. Agents, customers, and specialists can use team shared spaces to not only share documents and videos, but also to truly collaborate and work together to solve the customer's problem.
When you include CPaaS, the number of use cases skyrockets. Customizing solutions, integrating different applications, from customer relationship management (CRM) to vertical applications, integrating communications into business applications and workflows become much easier.
IT organizations understand that they need to more deeply integrate communications into the core experience of the user, which means that enterprises need to integrate fragmented applications and capabilities. Making this a reality, however, is easier said than done, especially for large, geographically dispersed enterprises. Integrating UC and contact center (or in most cases today, the cloud-based versions—UCaaS and CCaaS) is generally easier for SMBs than for large enterprises. That’s because SMBs are more frequently turning to full-suite vendors like 8x8, Dialpad, Edify, Mitel, RingCentral, Vonage, and others. Conversely, large enterprises generally have multiple vendors for their communication, collaboration, and contact center solutions, making integration much trickier.
Challenges Large Enterprises Must Solve
While large (and very large) enterprises know the importance of ensuring a positive customer experience throughout the customer journey and lifecycle, they’re aware it’s not easy to achieve. These organizations must overcome the following unique challenges:
One recommendation for large enterprises is to use a unified carrier-based platform to connect the various elements and applications.
Сarriers can play a role in helping enterprises more deeply integrate their UC and contact center capabilities.
Achieving CX across a large enterprise is challenging, but with the right type of cloud service and underlying communication provider platform to integrate the various services and solutions, enterprises can find the right balance.