Over the past decade, there have been great advancements in the business communications industry.
If your business has yet to jump on the unified communications bandwagon, it’s imperative that you understand you’re missing out on valuable benefits. Productivity gains are but one of the many reasons to take advantage of unified communications.
Let’s take a closer look at a few of its other underrated benefits.
Presence Everywhere
With a unified communications network, your company can reap the benefits of streamlining all forms of communication.
Recent studies have shown that 49 percent of businesses are able to gain 20 minutes of productivity for each employee that they are able to reach on the first try. When you’re able to contact your employees on a real-time basis, productivity is greatly enhanced.
You’ll find that from instant messaging features to VoIP calls, unified communications improve profit margins by boosting overall operational efficiency; this is especially true for businesses that employ mobile workers.
You Can Record and Listen to Past Conversations
Has one of your employers ever had a conversation with a client only to forget important details? If so, you should definitely be implementing a single communications network because all communications are recorded and saved.
This means all you need is the name of the employee who carried out the conversation to find it in the database. With all communications saved, it makes it simple to boost customer service because you can review clients’ needs and requests on a regular basis to make sure none of them get overlooked.
You can even have the saved communications sent to you after each one of them is recorded. You can keep track of every conversation that takes place over the network, which is also advantageous because you can properly monitor the way employees use your communications network.
Ability to Work from Anywhere
When your workers have access to a unified communications system, productivity is greatly increased because they don’t have to be in the office to perform their duties.
Instead, they can access the system from anywhere with an Internet connection. This means workers can sit at home, log in to the system and contact a client. All the while, the communications will be recorded for you to review, ensuring that you have access to the communications that take place after office hours.
Your clients will be especially favorable of the ability to speak with your employees after the office has closed.
A unified communications network also improves customer service because it gives you and your workers the ability to easily direct phone calls and emails to the right departments.
Even if the office is closed for the day, customer inquiries can be directed across the network to a department manager’s phone. Whether the manager is in the office or at home, he can handle customer inquiries, which reduces the number of customer representatives you need to keep on staff.
Social Media and Presence Technology Can Be Easily Integrated
Did you know that social media communications can easily be integrated into a unified communications network?
In doing this, users of the network can benefit from Presence technology, which helps users determine the whereabouts of one another.
Take, for instance, that you’re trying to get in touch with the media department’s supervisor. You can log in to the network and see where he took his last call, like from from his cell phone, desk phone, home phone, etc. This helps you pinpoint the best way to get in contact with the supervisor based on his last communication.
Access via Multiple Devices
One of the most overlooked and underrated benefits of unified communications for a small business is that users can access the network from multiple devices at the same time. And with more and more workersaccessing their business data on mobile devices, including smartphones and laptops, this makes multiple device accessibility all the more desirable.
Your workers will find it simple to manage contacts, perform IP telephony communications and even carry out multiple communications at the same time.
A video conference can take place on a laptop while a voice call takes place on a worker’s business cell phone. And no matter the number of communications performed, you can rest assured that all of them will be digitally recorded.
The Takeaway
No matter the way you view unified communications, there’s no denying that your small business will benefit from creating and deploying its own unified communications network.
You’ll, of course, enjoy the cost savings that come along with this type of network, but more importantly, it’s pertinent that you assess how the above mentioned benefits can boost your profit margins.
It’s also important to consider how unified communications can improve your customer service, which should be at the heart of your organization’s mission and values.
Switchboard Photo via Shutterstock
[“source-smallbiztrends”]
