5 Benefits of Unified Communication Platforms (UCaaS) for Every Business - Computers Nationwide

5 Benefits of Unified Communications (UCaaS) for Every Business

This week’s blog features an article from our partners at RingCentral covering the top 5 benefits of unified communications (UCaaS) for every business.

Running a small business is a one-of-a-kind experience, and streamlining your business communication with a unified communications platform can have some big benefits…

1. Save Time

Think that toggling between apps isn’t costing you? Think again. According to recent research, employees jump between different applications over 1,000 times a day. This kind of inefficiency might seem small at first, but it adds up to time lost, tasks missed, and mistakes made.

When you funnel all of your communication channels into one efficient app, it eliminates the constant switching of gears. That could mean more focused employees and more time spent on the real work of growing your business.

2. Handle More Customers With A Small Team

Speaking of efficiency: a unified communication platform allows you to expand your customer base without doubling your team members—or losing the personal touch your customers love. This kind of sustainable scalability is a critical win for small businesses. Automation is a small business owner’s friend, and the right UCaaS solution for your business should cut down on the manual tasks that slow down your employees.

One example: as you grow, you’ve probably noticed your team answers the same questions over and over again. But with interactive voice response as part of your UCaaS platform, you could create a self-service menu for callers that allows them to help themselves.

Whether they’re checking their balance, confirming an upcoming appointment, or looking for your business hours, more customers will get the help they need without taking up your team’s time.

3. Improve Team Communication

In a small business, it’s important to have all your departments on the same page… but in a lot of cases, they aren’t even in the same book.

When each team has its own set of tools, silos can develop, and things start slipping through the cracks. And if you have remote team members, as so many of us do today, active collaboration becomes even more of a challenge.

Unified communications platforms tear down silos by pulling everyone into the same space for their daily tasks. With features like team messaging and video conferencing, coworkers are just a click away from each other no matter where they work. And with file sharing and task tracking right inside the platform, it’s easy to keep everyone up to speed and collaborating on common goals.

 

5 Benefits of Unified Communication Platforms (UCaaS) for Every Business

4. Delight (and keep) Your Customers

Every customer counts when you run a small business. One surefire way to keep them around is to offer excellent customer service. The customer experience encompasses every interaction you and your team have with someone: before, during, and after a sale. A powerful unified communication platform can help optimize every step of the customer journey so folks feel seen, heard, and valued.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Is there anything more annoying than having to call a business multiple times to have a simple question or concern addressed? That’s why your service team’s first call resolution rate (FCR) is critical to customer retention.

Unified communication platforms that offer automatic call distribution and other advanced call routing features can be clutch for improving your FCR. For example, if you have tech support on hand, you can use skill-based routing to ensure customers who call with IT issues reach an expert the first time, every time.

The best UCaaS platforms also give your customers more ways to interact with you: phone, video, SMS, even online chat for collaboration with your team if needed. Whether your fans are introverts or extroverts, they’ll feel comfortable reaching out, and more likely to stick around as a result.

5. Empower Your Employees

It’s not just important to keep your customers happy as a small business. It costs real time and money to replace an employee when they leave—sometimes as much as nine months of that employee’s salary.

So, it’s cheaper to keep your employees on board. How can a cloud communications app help? The right UCaaS platform could improve your employee’s experience by:

Making work more flexible. The ability to work remotely has become essential in 2020, especially as parents juggle work and virtual schooling. Even before the pandemic hit, the “work from anywhere” trend was on the rise, and now we know people can be just as effective from home as they are in an office setting. Unified communication platforms make flexible work more possible than ever before, and it’s what teams want. Why not leverage these tools for happier employees? UCaaS allows your teams to work together from anywhere, via video conferencing, team messaging, and more.

Strengthening teamwork. Communication breakdowns, especially across departments, are a huge cause of frustration for employees. Increased frustration can lead to greater attrition. See where we’re going with this? With a unified communication platform, you can rid your team of siloed discussions and improve virtual collaboration. Plus, with access to the messaging feature from any device, your team might get faster answers to questions, which means fewer mile-long email threads full of misunderstandings.

Providing tools for success. The right unified communication platform for your business will equip your team with automation to help them do their best work. Employees will love the ability to set their own task reminders, sync the app with their calendar, annotate shared files, and collaborate via their preferred channels. UCaaS can help anyone work smarter, no matter their work style.

RingCentral MVP App via Computers Nationwide

Collaboration is crucial for every part of a small business. From deciding what products or services to sell to providing support to customers. Without unified communication between teams and departments, it’s impossible to get anywhere.

The RingCentral app is a phone, team messaging, video, and task management tool that allows teams to share files, create and manage tasks, and work together on the go. Although it looks like a chat-based tool, you can easily make a phone call, switch to video calls, drop links to files and documents, and integrate it with popular apps like Asana, Google Drive, and Jira.

Basically, it has all your communication channels in one place.

RingCentral’s messaging feature is free, and lets you add unlimited team members. It also has built-in to-dos and tasks so you can coordinate with your team and get things done—without a second project management system.

As the premier UCaaS provider of the Midwest, Computers Nationwide is dedicated to providing the best unified communications experience for your company. It’s the reason why we partner with exceptional industry leaders like RingCentral, 8×8, and Broadvoice to bring you the best communication tools for business.
Professional installation is available if you want it, not just if you meet a size or complexity threshold. Our skilled Solution Architects and Trainers will work with you to ensure a smooth implementation and we offer training at your location so your employees can take full advantage of this feature-rich technology.

Learn how to implement unified communications in your workplace and take your business to the next level!

Let’s connect: (847) 419-9900

 

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