Why Your Contact Center is Your Key Competitive Advantage (Video)
In this video blog, Mitel’s General Manager for Contact Center Brian Spencer discusses how mobility and big data are influencing customer experience, and how to transform your traditional contact center into a customer experience center for a sustainable competitive advantage.
Video transcript:
I’m Brian Spencer, the General Manager for Mitel’s contact center business, and I’d like to share with you our vision for the contact center as it evolves into the “customer experience center.”
Today’s consumers – they’re different. They’re not waiting until they get home to pick up the telephone and call into an organization to handle personal business. They’re working in real time. They want instant access to services – how they want it, when they want it. They’re typically going to start on a mobile device using a mobile app or a mobile website, some sort of digital tool. And, often, they’ll complete an end-to-end engagement and access the services they need autonomously, completely on their own.
Think about how you may engage with mobile banking. I know when I engage with mobile banking, I handle everything through the mobile app or the web app. In fact, I can’t remember the last time that I interacted face to face with a teller at the bank. That’s how consumers want to access goods and services, and that’s going to permeate businesses of all shapes and sizes moving forward – even yours.
So, my vision of the future is taking myriad contact centers and converging them into a center of excellence – a customer experience center – that is focused relentlessly on driving positive customer outcomes to create customer retention, loyalty, and long-term, lifetime customer value. How is that going to happen? Think about the customer journey. Your customers will engage through the mobile or digital tool of their choice. They’ll be on a mobile app and they’ll hit a point where they need to interact with a human. Today, there’s nothing more frustrating than getting 80 percent through accessing a service, having to stop, place a telephone call and start all over.
In the future, they’ll be accessing that service, they’ll hit the point where they need to interact with a human and, right through that mobile app, natively, they’ll be able to start a communication channel – maybe text-based, maybe voice-based, maybe video-based or using some media we’re not even thinking about today. But, in any case, it will come into that center of excellence, hit the right person at the right time – someone who’s relentlessly focused on pleasing them, who knows exactly what they’ve been through already and is able to pick up that conversation, creating a seamless transition from the digital tool to live assistance. They’ll be able to handle that sophisticated or more complicated requirement that couldn’t be handled through routine automation.
All of the data from that interaction will be captured, and business analytics will be used to allow management to constantly adapt the tools and the customer experience center processes and technologies to optimize the interfaces that customers want to use, increasing the level of service available through automation and also increasing the sophistication that the workers have in their ability to satisfy more complex tasks when engaged. They will be able to use that information to create a sustainable competitive advantage for your business, because you will be pleasing your customer better than your competitor down the road.
That’s our vision for contact centers transforming into customer experience centers in the future. I hope you share that vision and come along for the ride with Mitel and Towner Communications.
Google “business collaboration tools” and you’ll get 58 million results. Suffice it to say, there’s a proliferation of collaboration tools out there, especially over-the-top (OTT) applications to help your business.
Some tools are for chatting, some for conferencing, some for screen sharing, some for file sharing, and so on (to the tune of 58 million results).
Most organizations use a large number of tools for communicating, collaborating, and sharing, so it’s easy to understand how workers can feel overwhelmed by the different collaboration tools used between departments and vendors.
The company might have an official collaboration tool. But your department uses the free version of another tool for convenience. Another department is running an inexpensive version of the latest, flashiest social/mobile group chat platform. Several people use screen share software from a new startup they just heard about while your vendors are using the old standbys, and somewhere, somebody is still trying to use AIM.
That means your users’ desktops and browsers are cluttered with collaboration tools. The minutes wasted just figuring out which tool to use and updating to the latest version at the beginning of meetings begin to add up to hours, days, weeks of lost productivity. And security is probably a distant pipe dream. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can tame the overload.
Here are eight steps you can take to get your company’s collaboration tool situation under control, pare down the number of applications in use, and start standardizing across your business to increase productivity.
Step 1: Identify current tools
When you run out of space on your smart phone, what’s the first thing you do? You identify the applications that are on your phone and take a hard, honest look at what you do and don’t use.
When employees run out of the capacity to handle the deluge of collaboration applications in use at your company, the first thing that needs to be done is similar—take an inventory of the tools users have on their systems.
You’ll probably find multiple applications for chat, video-conferencing, file storage, file sharing, etc.
Make a consolidated list of all the related applications you find and make notes about the primary functions of each.
Once you have a complete inventory, you’ll have laid the groundwork for step two.
Step 2: Identify your business needs
Now, it’s time to understand what exactly everyone is trying to accomplish with the different collaboration tools they’re using.
Ask yourself, your employees, your vendors, etc. what exactly they use each tool to accomplish, and why they prefer the tool that they use.
Some common functions include chat, group chat, file sharing, video calls, video conferencing, screen sharing, simultaneous file editing, approvals, and task/workflow management.
During this exercise, you’ll be able to see not only what collaboration tools different groups prefer, but why they use each tool. You might be surprised to learn that workers value one chat tool when you thought they preferred another. Or you might discover that they place more value on file sharing than they do on video calling. It may turn out that employees engaged in shadow IT are using a different tool simply because it offers a better user experience. Maybe the most important feature isn’t an application or communications channel in itself, but rather a capability—like a persistent experience across mobile as well as desktop.
The more data you gather, the clearer your company needs will be.
You may be able to gather a lot of this data by scanning employee devices, but some sort of direct employee engagement will be required. Employees are typically happy to fill out surveys to indicate their preferences, especially if the survey itself is intended to help make their lives easier.
If some employees are nervous about sharing, it may be important to assure them they won’t be disciplined (if you have company buy-in for this) for answering honestly. Some workers may be concerned that using things other than company purchased and/or approved collaboration tools will get them disciplined. But if you don’t create a safe enough environment to have an honest conversation about your company’s tools, you’ll never get a true view to help you get tool overload under control.
Step 3: Map needs to tools
Remember the application inventory you gathered? Now’s the time to bring it back.
Map the needs you’ve identified to the current tools you have. Which tools are offering the most collaboration capabilities based on the feedback you received? Which tools are under-utilized? Which tools are rarely utilized?
Take careful note of what you have, what you need, and be honest with your responses.
This step is for analysis only: don’t jump the gun and start cutting out applications. There are other consideration factors than the most popular applications for your employees (although that is absolutely important).
Step 4: Understand integrations
Here’s where your careful evaluation in step three will come in handy. Knowing the collaboration tools worth keeping depends on more than how certain tools map to certain needs: it’s also important to know how these applications interact with other applications, other collaboration tools, existing software—including, but not limited to—CRM, ERP, CMS, etc.
Is it necessary for your collaboration tools to be platform agnostic? Mobile-first? Easily scalable?
Different businesses have different needs, which is why so many collaboration tools exist in the first place. Different tools integrate with different vendors, software and APIs. Be picky—your employees will thank you for it.
Step 5: Consolidate tools
You’ve identified your current tools, specified your needs, mapped your needs to existing tools, and ran through your integration needs. Now’s the time to head to the chopping block.
See where you have overlap between tools. Look for opportunities to consolidate multiple functions into fewer tools if possible. Cut the applications that do not meet your needs or have insufficient integration capabilities.
It’s up to you if you wish to have multiple application tools to use if that works for you—otherwise cut the collaboration application dead weight.
But remember, it’s important to ensure that your final list of tools serves your workers’ needs.
If you cut critical capabilities when you cut out tools, you’ll find yourself right back where you started—with workers embracing shadow IT and unapproved tools to fulfill their needs.
If you’ve done your analysis thoroughly, your collaboration application list should shorten dramatically. If it hasn’t, it may be time to repeat steps one through five again to maximize the benefits of this exercise.
Step 6: Establish collaboration tool standards and policies
One of the reasons team collaboration tool overload exists in the first place is that companies haven’t established standards for preferred tools, that they fail to provide/approve tools that meet specific worker needs, or that they don’t enforce existing standards and policies. It’s never too late to lay down a concrete foundation for company-wide tools and applications.
If you don’t have standards and policies in place, this is the time to create them.
If you already have existing standards and policies in place, review them to make sure they’re up-to-date, especially with the company-wide collaboration applications now in place. Communicate your standards and policies far and wide within your company ad nauseum—it’s crucial to get your message across the multitude of messages your employees deal with every day.
Lastly, empower your IT staff to enforce these policies, whether it’s blocking certain applications from downloading, or performing daily/weekly/monthly scans for unapproved applications. If you find violators, be sure to understand why. They may help you uncover an important gap in your standards.
]Step 7: Provide adequate training
After you have the tools you need, and standards in place, make sure you provide training sessions so your employees know how to use your chosen tools and feel comfortable with them.
You can have the best collaboration tool out there, complete with chat, conferencing, calling, storage, and sharing features, with mobile-first design.
If your employees can’t figure out how to use it or access it from their devices, adoption and usage will suffer.
Then they’ll download the collaboration tools they are comfortable using, which will result in multiple applications across your company, and before you know it—you’re back to collaboration tool overload. Train your employees, provide support templates, enable your IT staff to answer any questions, or provide vendor contact information for product support.
When collaboration tools that meet your company’s needs are used effectively, productivity soars.
Step 8: Monitor and adjust
Keep an eye on usage to gauge what’s working and what’s not. When you catch something that isn’t working, make adjustments to tools, policies, standards, or workflows as necessary to get your employee collaboration back on track. There’s no reason to stick stubbornly to a standard or policy if it’s simply not working.
Kiss overload goodbye
Collaboration tool overload is more common than you think, but you can tame with this simple eight-step process. Making sure you understand the “why” that created the overload environment is key to getting it under control. And when you do, workers will benefit, your company communications will benefit, and overall company productivity and efficiency should benefit as well.
Pokémon GO is a hot topic. It seems you can’t escape it—in the news, on social media, or in your day-to-day life as you see people of all ages hunched over their phones, walking around outside. This wildly popular application has spurred discussions across a variety of topics—health, social interaction, marketing, gamification, pedestrian safety, and more.
There’s another lesson to learn from Pokémon GO: the value of a single, comprehensive application to enable team and project collaboration.
Observing strangers collaborate through this application can open your eyes to the potential potency (and potential shortcomings) of a business application that can foster teamwork in your business.
Setting the stage: the prologue
For those who aren’t sure how Pokémon GO works, it’s a real-time application in which you can catch Pokémon while walking around. With geo-tracking and real-time updates, players all experience the same interface—provided they’re in similar areas. The same creatures pop up on the screen, at the same time, at the same location. This accounts for many observations of increased social interaction, and also accounts for the parallel in team and project collaboration.
It begins with a quest
Parks are one of the best places to catch Pokémon. My husband and I frequent the park closest to us as a place to walk around and play Pokémon GO. We recently encountered a player who was on a quest for a specific Pokémon. He wasted no time in telling us he drove over 45 minutes to reach this park because he heard it was rich with a Pokémon he desperately wanted to add to his collection and asked us if we’d seen any.
We pointed him to an area where we found the creature he sought and we heard his triumph when he found it and added it to his collection. He proceeded to scour the park. Anytime we found the Pokémon he was looking for, we called out to him to help direct him to the right area to catch it. Strangers collaborating to chase invisible pocket monsters on a smartphone application—who’d have thought?
Teamwork makes the dream work
For this particular Pokémon GO player, he was able to complete his quest for catching Pokémon because all players experience the application in real time. By collaborating with other players, he identified the park as a place he needed to visit and he was able to add the necessary Pokémon to his collection. This story is a testament to the power of a real-time application and online collaboration capabilities accessible by all. If a player can accomplish so much from the application, what implications are there for businesses?
But could teamwork be easier?
The Pokémon GO collaboration experience could be better because it doesn’t offer the in-app ability to message another player or group, or share images of any kind. Although the application revealed the necessary Pokémon for this player, he relied on friends and external websites to provide the best possibility of completing his collection.
Maybe it’s because I’m a millennial but I honestly think the Pokemon Go collaboration experience could be both easier and improved: taking a seamless application operating in real-time and adding the ability to message others, post discussion threads, share images and insights, and work in other applications and links would enable any player to get the information needed to play effectively.
Relying on multiple applications to allow full collaboration creates a disjointed, less effective experience than if all of the capabilities were built-in.
Business collaboration in real time
It’s estimated that the average employee spends up to an hour every day trying to get in contact with people, find meeting rooms, and track projects and emails.
Helping employees easily contact each other can immediately boost productivity.
For a workforce on-the-go, uniting multiple channels of communications in a single mobile-first application—email, chat, phone calls, text, video—can drastically improve both productivity and output for a business. Top team collaboration tools make it a point to prioritize accessibility, visibility, and real-time tracking of various projects, documents, and presentations so workers get more out of every hour they put in.
If it works for Pokémon GO players, it will work for your business
Back to the zealous Pokémon GO player who traveled 45 minutes to get to the park that held the Pokémon he needed.
On the positive side, the synchronized application experience paired with real-time capabilities helped him to complete his. On the negative side, he had to lean on other applications to accomplish his mission, and was ultimately successful.
A comprehensive interface certainly would have helped him accomplish his goal more efficiently, just as a more complete collaboration tool helps workers get more done faster.
Unlike Pokémon Go, there are applications with a complete set of tools to help your employees collaborate. If you give your employees the opportunity to collaborate with a communications system that promotes project collaboration on a platform designed with mobile in mind, your employees will be able to work efficiently and effectively, at any time, in any location.
Many businesses today have one piece of the puzzle—like Pokémon GO—but choosing a truly integrated collaboration experience can really give you a competitive edge.
Team and project collaboration checklist
There are many communications vendors for businesses to choose from. In order to get the most effective solution for your business, make sure it is:
Mobile-enabled
Real-time
Inclusive of all communications channels
Ready for project collaboration
Able to share documents and track updates
Secure
CRM-compatible
Our MiCloud Office platform has all these features and more. To get an idea of what a first-class, comprehensive system looks like, watch the MiCloud Office Demo.
Whether for cost-savings, BYOD considerations, ease of administration, or reliability, school districts across the United States are actively shifting communication and collaboration to the cloud. It’s a Path to the Cloud!
As part of this shift, schools and administrative offices are deploying Google’s cloud-based education apps – like Google’s free email services – allowing them to free up millions of dollars for other initiatives.
Some K-12 organizations have hesitations about the security of sensitive data in the cloud, but as adoption grows across the education sector, more and more schools are considering cloud technology to achieve their goals. Many educational organizations seeking the benefits of cloud communications and collaboration look to Mitel. We manage a rich ecosystem of solutions that’s integrated with the largest technology partners in the industry, including Google and Microsoft.
Many educational organizations seeking the benefits of cloud communications and collaboration look to Mitel. We manage a rich ecosystem of solutions that’s integrated with the largest technology partners in the industry, including Google and Microsoft.
Microsoft Lync Integration
Mitel MiVoice for Lync, for example, seamlessly integrates features – like integrated softphone, voice integration and click-to-call support – with Microsoft applications to offer robust voice capabilities.
Google Integration
Mitel MiCollab is our anywhere, any-device collaboration software. It integrates with Google Cloud Platform and Google Apps, enabling collaboration through voice; instant messaging; presence; and audio, video, and web conferencing. MiCollab also seamlessly interacts with Google’s calendar, email and contact management apps.
Bonus: With MiCollab, a user’s presence status automatically updates according to the Google Calendar scheduling.
“Given the explosive growth of cloud-based apps and communications, Mitel provides the best path to the cloud for schools.”
Cloud Deployment Flexibility
With a unified communications and collaboration architecture focused on ease of use and administration, Mitel provides public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid deployment models. With Mitel, your school can deploy applications in a private cloud, a public cloud, on premise, or a combination thereof. And you’re never locked in to a single deployment model—you can move applications when conditions change.
The software remains the same; only the location changes. It’s how our MiCloud for Education solutions easily accommodate school districts’ changing needs and preferences over time.
Cloud Security & Reliability
Cloud deployments merit special consideration when it comes to security. Your educational organization will need to work with communications and collaboration providers like Mitel to isolate and protect your networks, applications and data. But the technologies and strategies for securing cloud-based deployments are advancing every day, and Mitel is leading the charge.
If you’re concerned about the reliability of cloud communications, consider this: If your network fails, communication with the outside world will be impacted whether your system is on premise or in the cloud. Fortunately, in a highly distributed school system, a network failure in any building will only impact a single location, and mobile communications can help your school weather the event until full service is restored.
Finding Your Path to the Cloud
Hundreds of school districts throughout the United States have deployed Mitel Voice and Unified Communication solutions. They’ve found that the cloud is a far more dependable platform than they expected, and that it offers advantages they had never imagined. It’s time to start taking a serious look at long-term strategies for cloud communications at your school—and how MiCloud for Education can help.
The term “contact center” often conjures up an image of large numbers of agents handling incoming and outgoing calls all day, every day. In some cases, this is an accurate interpretation of how customer engagement truly works.
However, Gartner predicts that by 2020, customers will manage 85 percent of their relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human
With this in mind, it’s clear that contact center technology is going to increasingly drive digital engagements and organizational workflows. The focus is on removing departmental silos to ensure the full context can be brought to every single customer engagement and interaction.
A busy port tackles complex logistics
By way of example, a European sea port had a challenge connecting their large database of lorry drivers to incoming ships full of containers that needed ongoing transportation around the continent. The drivers were typically paid a day-rate, so the company needed a system to ensure that they efficiently allocated jobs, and then accurately and quickly paid for the work they’d completed. This may sound simple, but with one of the world’s busiest sea ports and a very large number of contract drivers, this was proving a complex scenario to manage well, and was potentially open to error and fraud.
The port ultimately worked with us to design a system that integrated our contact center with the company’s ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. As a new ship arrives in the port, the ERP system calculates the number of trucks, forklifts and cranes required and the contact center then automatically contacts the drivers by SMS. The driver responds by SMS, directly back into the contact center, indicating acceptance of the job in the ERP system. The driver then receives the destination by SMS and makes the delivery. Goods-in confirms the delivery by SMS, and the driver is automatically flagged for payment.
Keeping trucks rolling at a manufacturer
Similarly, a large truck manufacturer wanted to ensure fast, efficient, consistent and cost-effective repair and recovery when one of its vehicles suffered a breakdown. With their new system, in the event of a breakdown, the driver makes a quick call or SMS into a centralized contact center. The agent uses a desktop manager application to locate the nearest approved repair and recovery service, with an SMS triggering a callout to the truck location. The truck is repaired, confirmed by SMS and the contact center generates a ticket (with the call recording and SMS attached as an audit trail). Payment is then automatically processed via ERP integration.
Automating new advantages in place of human error
In both cases, the company used customer engagement technology and its close integration with the ERP system to facilitate a series of automated workflow processes to minimize human involvement and associated error. The organizations both ended up with an effective solution that both improved efficiency and removed costs. Learn how we can help and talk with us today.
Mitel’s Record-a-Call feature offers you an easy way to archive calls. You can use this for training purposes, for your own reference, or to keep a record of advice that has been given to a client.
Before recording calls, check your legal position. You may need to notify your callers that they are being recorded.
This Mitel phone guide is for MiVoice Business (also known as Mitel 3300 ICP) users only.
Starting to Record On the Fly
You can start recording at any time by pressing the Record Call key on your Mitel IP phone. If you don’t have a feature key assigned to Record Call, you can ask us at Towner Communications if this option is available with your current system.
Many businesses find it more straightforward to record every call. If your phone system is set up in this way, you don’t need to manually start recording.
Pausing, Stopping and Resuming Recording
While your call is being recorded, you can use the soft keys on your phone to Pause, Stop or Resume the recording operation.
Pressing the Erase soft key, or the Cancel key, will stop the recording without saving it.
Note: if you put a call on hold, the recording will automatically stop. If you bring the call back from hold, a new recording will start.
Playing Back Call Recordings
You can listen to call recordings from your Mitel IP phone. All of your recordings are saved in your voicemail mailbox, so simply dial your mailbox like normal and follow the prompts.
Do you have a cloud communications provider? If you do, are you happy with them? It’s a question many business owners don’t ask themselves enough. Cloud communications is an investment of capital, time, and human resources—an investment that you should be thrilled with. Once we sign contracts, we tend to accept the level of service we receive without analyzing our satisfaction with what we actually get. Part of this resignation stems from the contracts signed up front: breaking contracts usually means serious financial detriment. In the business world, that’s highly frowned upon because you’re costing the company even more money. But if you weren’t bound by a contract, what would that mean to you?
When the honeymoon period is over
Business relationships are susceptible to the same characteristics of any personal relationship—sometimes entering into a contract with a vendor starts off flawlessly and everything is sunshine and rainbows. But far too often in business, once the dotted line is signed, things change: service levels drops off, promised features become elusive, and costs can skyrocket. Being stuck with a cloud communications provider who doesn’t put your business needs first is more than irritating—it can harm your customer service, internal productivity, and your bottom line.
When you want more features
Not every cloud communications provider is created equal. Once you choose your provider, you may initially be happy. You get the service level you expect, the features you wanted—all at a price you are comfortable paying. Technology is notorious for constantly evolving. And your provider may not offer the latest features you’re interested in for your business. While you may be happy with every other aspect of the business relationship, the bottom line is this: limited cloud features and offerings could jeopardize your business.
When the contract dictates your decision
I’d wager most businesses stay with their cloud communications provider because the contract is king. Why evaluate the level of service and feature offerings if both are satisfactory and you can’t go anywhere anyway? Evaluation is crucial to consider because the best-performing and most lucrative companies don’t just think about today, but think about their company’s future. Still, many companies are wary of breaking contracts. But what if the contract was removed from the equation? Right now, our cloud contract buyout program could remove the barrier for you and give your business the best cloud communications applications for today andtomorrow.
Questions to ask yourself
Now that we can remove your existing contract from the equation, there are some questions you should ask yourself to truly gauge your satisfaction with your current provider.
1. Am I happy with the level of service I receive from my current cloud provider?
2. Do I have the features I need to maximize my business productivity?
3. Is my cloud provider a leader in Gartner’s five magic quadrants?
4. Do I trust my cloud provider to offer the latest and greatest features?
5. Is my cloud communications platform easy to use?
6. Does my cloud communications platform enable team and project collaboration?
If you answered “yes” to all the above, congratulations! You have a cloud communications provider that works for you and your business needs.
If you answered “no” to one question, you might have the right cloud provider for you—but why not verify by checking just in case?
If you answered no to two or more questions, you should strongly consider looking into Mitel’s cloud contract buyout program. As a leader in Gartner’s five magic quadrants, Mitel is uniquely positioned to provide the cloud communications your business or enterprise needs.
Nearly 2,000 cloud subscribers choose Mitel each day. Businesses across the world trust Mitel for their cloud communications solutions—see how Towner Communications can help.
I have spent countless hours in meeting rooms surrounded by brilliant people who are all trying to identify ways to stand out from the crowd. “How are we different?” “Why does that matter?” Who will care?” If you’re leading an organization, I bet you have done the same.
Businesses are in constant search of differentiation—that magical intersection of customer relevance and profit margin.
Be better in a meaningful way and watch market share grow by leaps and bounds. It sounds great. And it’s nearly impossible. Right? Maybe not. Standing out may be as straightforward as enhancing your customer service with a simple “hello”.
Have you ever walked into a store and approached the counter for assistance only to find no one there? Did you call out for help? Ring the bell? Ever had a time when nobody showed up at all? I remember this happening once. You know how the story ends. I walked out never to return.
Communication choices abound. Expand your view of the customer counter to include the digital realm. According to a report by Maritz Research, those that do will separate themselves from the pack.
While half of respondents expect a business to respond to tweets, fewer than 30% of such tweets receive as response.
Sadly, I am unsurprised. People are adopting new technologies and shifting their expectations faster than businesses are responding. I get it. Businesses invest time and money designing great processes dependent upon complex technology that cannot easily adapt. Or can it?
Contact center technologies have changed just as dramatically as consumer expectations. Need to expand coverage beyond voice calls to email, web chat—even social media and mobile messaging? No problem. Want to quickly add self-service choices or increase access to service staff? Just do it. What about influencing customer behavior? Would it be useful for customers to reach out by mobile messaging when phone lines are busy? Sure, let’s make that happen.
You may be thinking it sounds great but putting your customer experience into the hands of a startup is scary. But startups aren’t the only ones who can handle these new capabilities. Mitel, yes 40+ year-old Mitel, can do all this for you and more.
And surprisingly, maturity is something we have in common with your most demanding customers. Of those surveyed, it’s not youth that most expect businesses to respond. The more mature demographics may not be most known for tweeting but they are most demanding. Make that your advantage. Meet their demand and stand out from the crowd. Unsure where to start? Let us help.
The ways teams collaborate has fundamentally changed in the last few years. There are seemingly endless tools, apps and software that claim to transform the collaboration experience. Some do more to make good on that promise than others—and you can’t forget to account for the context for how they fit into your organization’s overall IT mix and processes. Given all this change, here are a few important things to know about team collaboration and the tools associated with it to help you get the most of collaboration for your company.
#1: Team collaboration saves you time
Lost productivity is a big problem and it costs businesses millions of dollars each year. In fact, the average knowledge worker, according to some estimates, spends more than one hour every day simply trying to communicate with people via emails, meetings, leaving voicemails, etc. Cloud-based team collaboration software can save you valuable time and money. For instance you can stop checking multiple messaging apps. You can reach colleagues right away. You don’t have to juggle other people’s calendars anymore. You can get answers now—not waiting until you’re back in the office. Team collaboration saves you time, and time is money—so it’s good team collaboration software is a win-win scenario.
Read more about saving time and money >
#2: BYOD Improves Team Collaboration and Communications
In case you didn’t know BYOD is expanding in popularity due to a rise in millennials in the workforce. When your business leverages BYOD policies you can utilize business collaboration apps that help your company become more productive, efficient, and collaborative. BYOD helps optimize your business as well, since you can do more with less. Employees only need a single device that they can use for personal and work purposes.
Read more about collaborating with BYOD >
#3: Team Collaboration Gives Experiences, Not Just Transactions
In your day-to-day life, you can probably start a TV show on one device, pause it, and then start it on another device right where you left off. As consumers get more and more used to this kind of behavior, we being to see this sort of persistent experience move into the business world, especially in collaboration software where collaboration can start at a desktop and continue seamlessly on a smartphone. If your business communications systems doesn’t support a seamless experiences across multiple devices, you might be missing an opportunity around a big shift in how your workforce expects to get things done.
Read more about changing expectations around team collaboration >
#4: Alarming Team Collaboration Trends
Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher once said “The only constant is change.” Technology is no different and in order to keep up, here are a few team collaboration trends you need to know about. Email has been around for decades but email usage is declining. Email is just one channel and with the growth of other channels like text and messaging apps, that’s no surprise. There are many free apps that do what paid services used to do but now they are 100 percent free. Take WhatsApp or Slack, for instance. In 2010, Apple said “There’s an app for that.” While you may think that there could not possibly be an app for everything, it’s hard to find a specific subject or function not covered by an app. In-app experiences are king. Single-app interfaces that work seamlessly across all multiple devices are the future. The UC landscape is changing rapidly, which is exactly why we created MiTeam to help teams communicate anywhere, any time on any device amid this environment of change changes.
Read more about top collaboration trends >
#5: Shadow IT and Stealthy Applications Are Growing in Popularity
IT personnel used to control how employees communicated and collaborated, but the times have changed. Employees are overwhelmed and according to recent data, the average employee uses 17 different cloud applications, three content sharing services, and three different collaboration services. Most of these are apps not approved by IT for security purposes. That are a lot of apps that operate outside of IT—otherwise known as “shadow IT.” Of course, many employees who are are going rogue would claim they have to resort to this because of the shortcomings of many enterprise collaboration platforms and policies (like an outdated definition of “team.”) While shadow IT may appear to solve problems for small groups on the surface, the proliferation of tools used can quickly become more harmful than helpful.
What’s the benefit of a Mobile Workforce? Some people will say employee morale. Others will say shorter commutes. Some will even tout health benefits. And those are all true. But they don’t make a business case.
What does?
At Towner Communications, we know going mobile saves your business time and money–increasing productivity and efficiently, reducing costs, etc. And even though much of the literature on the subject today focuses on employee benefits and soft advantages, there are plenty of concrete business reasons to embrace mobilizing your enterprise.
So we rolled up our sleeves, did some research and put together this infographic so you have the full picture of the true business benefits of a mobile enterprise. From ensuring business continuity to reducing communications latency to saving on employee compensation, here are eight reasons to untether your business.
Pokémon GO is a hot topic. It seems you can’t escape it—in the news, on social media, or in your day-to-day life as you see people of all ages hunched over their phones, walking around outside. This wildly popular application has spurred discussions across a variety of topics—health, social interaction, marketing, gamification, pedestrian safety, and more.
The term “contact center” often conjures up an image of large numbers of agents handling incoming and outgoing calls all day, every day. In some cases, this is an accurate interpretation of how customer engagement truly works.
