The Benefits Of Combining UCaaS And CCaaS

Are there benefits to combining UCaaS and CCaaS?

These days, both UCaaS and CCaaS are emerging as essential investments for any business. In an evolving workplace, UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) ensures companies have what they need to stay connected. Colleagues can interact at speed, and knowledge can flow easily throughout the ecosystem.

CCaaS (Contact Centre as a Service), supports companies in serving and supporting their customers. Now customer experience has emerged as the only consistent differentiator for any brand, CCaaS isn’t just for large companies anymore.

Both CCaaS and UCaaS offer the flexibility of technology based in a scalable cloud environment. Each option can help businesses to save money, improve efficiency, and better manage business operations. Imagine then, what your company might accomplish by bringing UCaaS and CCaaS together?

UCaaS vs CCaaS: The Basics

CCaaS and UCaaS solutions are similar in the way they offer simple, flexible ways to generate growth online. Both of these tools are purchased by companies for different purposes, however.

UCaaS, currently worth around 13.8 billion is the tool organisations use to consolidate enterprise communication applications like video, voice, messaging, and conferencing. These solutions are often purchased by IT to enhance phone system performance and minimize workflow complexity. UCaaS and CCaaS both support better mobility and “inter-office” connectivity. UCaaS also supports collaboration through video, messaging, and knowledge sharing.

CCaaS, approaching a value of $28.6 billion, is a solution supporting multi-channel communication through a cloud-based environment too. The major difference is that while UCaaS focuses on internal communication, CCaaS concentrates on customer communication, and customer service. Contact centre solutions allow companies to accelerate sales, and support clients.

Both UCaaS and CCaaS exist as part of the same overall communication stack, which is why bundling both technologies helps companies to leverage the power of both platforms in a more effective way.

Connecting UCaaS and CCaaS

At first, the idea of integration UCaaS and Contact Centre environments might seem unusual – particularly for companies still living in the age of legacy and on-premises technology.

However, it’s becoming increasingly common for companies to want more of their technology in the same place. This is particularly true following the pandemic. Tracking hybrid and remote workers in a simplified, unified environment is crucial.

The ability to combine multiple cloud-based services is one of the biggest benefits of the cloud. Within a UCaaS or CCaaS environment, it’s easy to add extra functionality, whether you’re looking for customer experience tools, or analytics and reporting. As organizations continue to shift more of their technology into the cloud, it makes sense to align everything an environment that’s easy to track for compliance purposes.

Previously, in a world before cloud innovation, there was little reason to think about linking UC and contact centres, as the platforms were operating in different spheres. However, now, the two tools are closer than ever before. With open standards, APIs, and other tools helping companies to make the connection, why wouldn’t you want to leverage the best of both worlds in your stack?

The Benefits of UCaaS and CCaaS Integration

Already, many companies are transitioning to “as a service” offerings as a way of reducing costs and improving efficiency. Tools like UCaaS and CCaaS pave the way for agility and easy transformation in a changing workplace. What’s more, these services delivered over the cloud don’t require as much on-site maintenance and IT support.

UCaaS and CCaaS together forge a more lucrative opportunity for businesses who want to empower their employees and keep customers happy at the same time.

Let’s explore some of the biggest benefits.

1. Better Backend Collaboration

When all aspects of the business are properly aligned, it’s much easier for innovation and productivity to thrive. Information silos in the workplace have been a problem for too long already. The more gaps you have between different groups of staff, the greater your chances of ending up with inefficiencies, mistakes, and expensive, time-consuming problems.

Combining UCaaS and CCaaS helps to connect everyone in the same shared, digital environment. Contact centre agents can collaborate directly with internal departments. For instance, an outbound call centre agent might need to pass a warm lead to the sales teams. Alternatively, a contact centre agent dealing with a complex customer concern may need to access help from a specialist.

If a customer calls the contact centre with an issue the agent can’t immediately handle, the agent can view a directory of available specialists in UCaaS, determine who’s available, and start a chat with that expert. If the issue is complex enough that the specialist needs to speak to the customer, the contact centre agent can route the call directly to that number.

2. Stronger Customer Experiences

Better customer experience often begins with good teams. Most people reach out to a business in search of support and guidance. These people don’t mind who they talk to in most cases, provided they get a quick and reliable quality of service. Customers now, more than ever, are looking for convenience and speed. Unfortunately, when contact centre agents and office employees can’t connect, speedy first-time resolution can be difficult to achieve.

For instance, imagine a client calls your team in need of tech support with an issue they’re having in their own service or software. The client calls the salesperson who helped to onboard them into the service initially. If a CCaaS and UCaaS environment is already connected, the salesperson can search through the UCaaS directory for a support agent who understands the service.

At the same time, that agent can send information about the customer to the new agent, so the client doesn’t have to explain everything again. This means the problem is more likely to be addressed with speed. Additionally, in an environment where compliance and security are crucial, a connected UCaaS and CCaaS environment means callers only need to authenticate and validate their identity once.

3. Aligned Technology

These days digitally transformed companies are relying on a higher number of technology innovations to deliver excellent experiences to both agents and customers. This often means integrating both UCaaS and CCaaS solutions with various tools. You might have a connected CRM system in your UC and contact centre environment, making it easier to track valuable information about individual customers. A CRM in a combined UCaaS and CCaaS environment can even offer screen-pops automatically as soon as someone contacts a member of the team. Combined UCaaS and CCaaS environments mean you don’t have to worry about installing the same integrated technology in different parts of your communication stack – and making sure they sync correctly. When logged into UCaaS or CCaaS, all members of staff will be able to easily access the same valuable technology.

Even better, because everything is so well aligned, it’s easier to install new and disruptive technology into the stack, when necessary, too. For instance, companies could use AI assistants to support both back-end office workers, and agents trying to provide the best quality of service. These AI assistants can work and manage information throughout the whole ecosystem.

4. Stronger Data Analytics

Data is a crucial part of running a successful company in the modern communications landscape. The more information we have, the better our decisions become. Data can provide useful insights into customer preferences, so you can provide a better quality of service. For instance, the data in your contact centre might show you that customers generally prefer to use chat services, or self-service technology, rather than calling the contact centre.

The data in your UCaaS environment can give you an overview of how all members of staff in your organisation are working to stay productive. This can be particularly useful when you’re running a hybrid or remote workforce, where supervisors can’t always check in to see how agents are doing.

Aligning the data environments for both UCaaS and CCaaS could mean you can make better assumptions about how back-end employee behaviour prompts increases in retention and customer satisfaction. A combined communication stack allows you to bring all the information you need together in a shared environment, so you can quickly and seamlessly leverage insights.

5. Improved cost management

One of the major benefits of moving into the cloud with an as-a-service offering, is that it can be an excellent way to save money. Cloud-based communications, both from an internal and external perspective, come with minimal on-site maintenance costs to worry about, fewer initial investments, and various other ways to save money.

Combining your UCaaS and CCaaS landscape means that you can improve the productivity and performance of your teams, which also leads to better earnings and stronger connections with customers on a lower budget. At the same time, an aligned environment gives you a single bill to plan for at the end of each month or year, which is ideal for financial planning.

Most of the time, companies offering aligned UCaaS and CCaaS environments will also offer special deals and bonus savings for people who are willing to get both of their technology solutions from the same cloud-hosted vendor. At the same time, you can even reduce your costs from an IT perspective. When IT professionals only have one platform to manage, they can often get things done more efficiently.

6. Complete Business Agility

Finally, a combined UCaaS and CCaaS environment supports the new age of work, where employees in the contact centre and the back-end environment are working in more distributed environments. Around 83% of workers today don’t need to be in an office environment to stay productive. The traditional nine-to-five is also becoming less common thanks to the ongoing influence of the 2020 pandemic. A UCaaS and CCaaS environment means it’s easy for businesses to provision and roll out new technology to employees wherever they are.

You can issue numbers and crucial tools to both administrative and contact centre workers in the same cloud portal. Additionally, you can track exactly how many members of staff you have working in both areas. This makes it easier to prepare for things like peeks in demand or new challenges as your business continues to grow. UCaaS and CCaaS also means that if anything goes wrong with your employees’ technology, engineers can address the issue from a distance.

There’s no longer a need to go out and install or manage complex contact centre systems in every environment an agent might encounter. This paves the way for a more agile business for today’s companies. With UCaaS and CCaaS, companies can continue to grow at the pace that makes the most sense for their organisation, making changes as they go.

Should You Combine UCaaS and CCaaS?

A more aligned business environment will always have benefits to offer in today’s digital world. Whether you’re looking for an opportunity to streamline your digital data or you simply want to lower costs, combining UCaaS and CCaaS could be an excellent idea. However, it’s still important to remember that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to this transformation.

Finding the right combination of UCaaS and CCaaS technology means considering your needs and future expectations as carefully as possible. You’ll need to think about how much you’re currently spending on both aspects of your communication stack and how much you’re willing to spend to make the transition. If you have existing legacy investments, you may need to find a vendor that can take these into account when bringing your new as-a-service solutions into the mix.

Choosing a UCaaS and CCaaS vendor with plenty of flexibility will help you to plan your migration into a full cloud communication stack more effectively. This could reduce your risk of having to 2rip and replace” some of the old technology in your business. The right vendor will also give you the training and guidance you need to implement your new tools and make the most out of them.

With more companies now beginning to offer UCaaS and CCaaS as an aligned package, it can be difficult to determine which option is best. Reach out today for help choosing the perfect service.