A new report has commented on what it sees as a growing impetus towards the future implementation of unified communications (UC) among call centres using VoIP (voice over internet protocol) for their business phone systems.
The report, published by the subscription arm of research organisation Heavy Reading IP Services, identifies this push for UC – whereby different communications are received via a single source, regardless of their original transmission platform – as being driven by two growing trends.
The first trend, says the report, is the increasing number of platforms used by customers to communicate with organisations, The second, it says, is call centre staff’s increasing willingness to accommodate messages via different platforms; helped by the fact that many staff bring in and use their own mobile devices for work purposes (a trend known universally as ‘bring your own device’ or BYOD).
According to the report, whilst businesses had always recognised the need to communicate with customers via different channels, these various communications channels had always been strictly demarcated between different customer response units using separate applications.
Call centres which use business VoIP, however – the report says – are now accommodating a far more complex intertwining of communications platforms in their dealings with customers; whether the particular platform preferred by the customer is voice telephony, social media, instant messaging, or real time web chat.
The report says there now exists an enormous business opportunity for any company which can introduce compatibility and standardisation of these different channels, so that these can be applied to business VoIP call centres, and true UC can start to take place.
Elsewhere, the report says that the adoption of business VoIP has been accelerated by the ability to bypass the need to invest in expensive physical equipment, now that partial or total cloud-based solutions can be accessed via a business VoIP provider or VoIP reseller.
