Archive for the ‘Unified Communications’ Category

Simplifying Business with Unified Communications: What the Right Solution Can Provide

Friday, April 15th, 2011

Choosing to turn to a unified communications system is, ultimately, a solid business option. The challenge is that it can be difficult to identify the right system. When all of the options that you consider start to look the same, it’s important to work with a partner who can help to identify your needs and provide a solution that meets them.

For example, let’s say that one of the challenges that your company faces is the inability to adequately staff the phones. Whether it’s a matter of not having around-the-clock switchboard coverage or your customers have commented that the message that greets them is too impersonal, consider looking into a unified communications system like the ShoreTel UC platform that includes an auto-attendant. You’ll quickly find that you are able to automate call answering and routing, and that the messages can be customized by department. This ensures that clients and customers, who call, if they’re unable to speak with a member of your team, will feel confident that their message reaches the right person.

You’ll find that you can improve on the customer experience simply by having those calls returned in a timely fashion, and other components of a unified communications system can help to make sure that it’s done. Your staff will be able to access their messages from their desk phones, mobile phones, or even their computers. The system’s functionality can also allow managers and directors to monitor call logs, wait times, and even staff activity. Not only can working with a partner who can help you to set up a call accounting system and call detail reports help you to provide a better experience to customers, but also it can help you cut costs and better associate calls with projects that your team is working on.

Cutting costs is often a key motivator for organizations who look into a unified communications platform. Rather than simply looking for a system that reduces your day-to-day costs, why not look for a platform that does more? Focus on all of your communications needs. Look for a system that’s easy to use and manage. Focus on choosing a communications platform that you can count on – one that offers the reliability that you look for from all of your vendors and one that your customers and clients expect from you. Be sure that support will be there when you need it, and look for tools that will pay for themselves in a short amount of time.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed when you begin looking for a way to upgrade your company’s communications environment. By recognizing your needs and talking them over, you’ll find that you’re not only able to find a solution that meets those needs but also that you’re able to identify a system that exceeds your expectations.

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Use Unified Communications to Supercharge Employee Collaboration

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

Even if your employees are accustomed to working together, something always seems to get in the way, right? Teams spread out across offices and time zones may try diligently to share ideas and collaborate, but conference calls are inconvenient, and collaboration software usually seems to fall short. So, technology impedes productivity, and overcoming this barrier can unlock lots of potential in your organization.

The way to do this is to implement a unified communications solution, such as ShoreTel’s, in order to help your employees connect with each other, share documents and build off each other’s ideas to help your company maximize its ROI on talent and technology.

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What Your Executives Need to Know about Unified Communications

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

Company leaders, especially CFOs, are right to be skeptical about any proposed IT investment. Unless you have roots in the datacenter, it can be tough to understand – and quantify – the benefit of a particular IT solution to the company. The gap in knowledge unfortunately means that CIOs and IT directors hear “no” too often, even if most of the rejections are prudent. Excellent opportunities are missed, and the problem is neither financial nor technical. Rather, it’s an issue of communication: IT leaders need to make their proposals easier to follow, especially when the overall business benefit is substantial.

This is especially true of unified communications solutions.

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Make Your Entire Company Available to Every Customer

Monday, September 6th, 2010

This sounds impossible, right? How do you open the doors to every resource in your company without letting chaos slip in, as well? The answer is simple: make every brain available to the customer’s single point of contact. With branch and teleworker solutions from Aruba Networks, you can enable the behind-the-scenes collaboration that can fundamentally change the customer care experience.

Some customer issues simply can’t be resolved by the primary point of content. A particular account executive, customer care representative or support technician doesn’t always have all the answers. For thorny challenges, standard escalation channels can fall short, especially if special circumstances arise, such as a product defect or unusual service need. In these unique cases, you may need to gain access to employees not in normal customer support or care roles – from product development teams to senior team members.

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Help Your Employees Talk to Each Other

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

You have a wealth of knowledge sitting inside your company, but little of it is available when you actually need it. Customer care calls, product planning and relationship development – among other business priorities – could be far more effective if you could somehow mine your employees for the experience and knowledge they’ve gained through the course of their careers.

To take advantage of this relatively untapped resource, you just need to make it easy for the right employees to find each other and communicate. Converged conferencing capabilities can make regular collaboration among remote employees a reality.

The plan is to unify web, audio and instant message conferencing with desktop sharing, virtual meeting rooms and online presentations … and preserve the sessions for future use with multimedia recording capabilities. So, you can streamline how your teams meet, share and move forward while keeping a record for reference or other future use. But of course, the solution is only as effective as the infrastructure that powers it.

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Bring Hidden Expertise to the Surface

Monday, July 12th, 2010

There are pockets of expertise tucked away across your company – you just need to find them! In a fast-paced environment, the tools of the past just won’t deliver. Internal message boards, portals and chat tools don’t put employees in touch with each other in a way that fuels collaboration. Instead, you need a solution that makes it possible to combine application sharing, data, voice and video, making it feel like a team separated by oceans is sitting in one room.

A company’s ability to access its resident information – at the most granular of levels – is constrained by employee networks. If you don’t know people in other divisions and can’t access them easily, you may not even know there’s someone who has the knowledge or experience you need to advance a product or address a customer’s problem. Basic communication tools can help you find these experts but will constrain your interaction with them. If you need to review a complex design document or dig into an analytical database, it can be tough to brainstorm or dig into the details by e-mail or over the phone.

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