Adopting Unified Communications for your business

Innovation and new technologies

Having looked at the emerging trend of AI and the metaverse use, Andy shared what we can expect in the world of Unified Communications (UC). He highlighted that while AI is important to adopt in a business model, that we must not “sleep” on the metaverse.

“If we run the clock back a couple of years ago, everybody was talking the metaverse. That was going to be the big thing, and AI was nowhere to be seen. We've seen that turn around,” Andy said.

“But what I would sort of say is, don't sleep on the metaverse, because that is quietly ticking around in the background and some really interesting innovation going on.”

There is a lot a business can do with UC, but Andy noted that one industry failure he has seen is there is not enough connecting the technology to the business outcomes.

“When you're thinking about your UC requirements, really think about not just the technology, the SLAs, scoring on voice quality, things like that - think about how that's going to impact your hybrid work strategy, your employee experience, and how are you going to serve your customers,” he said.

There isn’t one UC process that will suit all businesses, so organisations need to define their personas and find out what set of UC licenses and tools work best for them. Along with this, Andy noted that UC is an ongoing strategy because of the “fierce competition” between all major vendors.

“UC is not just a one-off project that the minute you get everything into the cloud, you can just exhale. There’s day two, day three, and beyond where you continue to evolve and deliver great capability for your business.”

The right tools will boost efficiency

Andy also spoke about the benefit of UC for remote work, which was echoed by Sarah O’Connor, Head of End User Operations at Musgraves Group. Sarah’s team adopted a UC solution from Vodafone Business to give their call centre managers more capacity. Musgraves Group has 16 well-known and loved brands under its umbrella, including SuperValu, Centra, Mace, and Daybreak, just to name a few.

Sarah admitted Musgraves were very vendor-dependent and had to log calls for Christmas. Giving an example of one issue they faced, there was a six-week lead time to complete their opening/closing calls. “It was a very limited capacity, and the managers could do very little. So we were looking for a tool to give the managers more capacity, and call recording was something newer and more manageable,” she told Paul Smith, Head of Sales in Vodafone Business, at the event.

The call centre is the “bread and butter” of Musgraves Group, with about 19 teams, so it was critical that they didn’t have any outages when migrating. The business was already using Microsoft products, so adding Microsoft Teams was seen as an add-on tool and an easy decision.

“Using new services such as call recording gave the managers the ability to do all the IVR changes, lotting, closing, all of that – just full in the cloud, full secure. It’s just one system, one manageable system together.”

The Musgraves Group can now also see more details about the calls coming through, including calls abandoned, which helps the business improve customer satisfaction and engagement. “They can see if there’s a problem where the calls are building up,” Sarah explained.

Musgraves Group are growing at a very fast rate, Sarah shared, and are relieved to now having a blueprint to expand their business. For other businesses, Sarah insisted it was a “no-brainer” to add a UC solution such as Vodafone Business UC with RingCentral to help work more effectively. “There’s no training required. You carry your DDI, you’ve got your phone incoming and outgoing in your pocket. It’s great technology, and it’s been a great experience – and I'm delighted to now be off on-premises systems and logging tickets.”

Know your network, know what you need

When implementing a UC solution into your business, a key part of preparing for such a technology is knowing your network readiness. Stephen Hurst, UC Specialist at Vodafone Business, shared that Vodafone Business will see if a business is ready for UC – including analysing the network, providing a report back to the business, and presenting that report to them. By knowing the state of the network, a business can then know what sort of solutions they can invest in.

“We're seeing customers who are now looking to find a more consistent hybrid way of working. We're starting to expect that from pretty much everything, every system that we've got.”

Stephen continued that the main benefit of having a UC solution is the enhanced employee experience.

“The employee is not going to a phone that's disconnected from somewhere. They’re not trying to call for their mobile device and not have that categorised and captured within the business. We directly connect your public services network to your Team's solution. So click-to-call functions, anything UC, calling my customer from direct with single clicks, speeds up and makes me more productive, speeds up my efficiencies from it. That's simplified management.”

For more information about Vodafone Business Unified Communications with RingCentral, you can visit our webpage or call 1800 383 830.