What opportunities is voice providing the channel?

Business communications have undergone a significant transformation in recent years with the shift towards UCaaS helping almost all organisations operate more efficiently.

The cloud communications market is forecasted to reach over £1.86 billion in 2028–a compounded annual growth rate of 4.8%. With this trend showing no signs of stopping, it’s crucial technology providers properly understand the benefits organisations are looking to reap from these technologies to be able to navigate this market and maximise on the opportunities it provides.

The shift to UCaaS has three key drivers:

The increase in hybrid and remote working in recent years has called for organisations to have more robust communication methods that seamlessly integrate with other systems, ensuring interactions and therefore time, are used more effectively.

As businesses across all industries have become laser-focused on digital transformation to operate more efficiently, communication methods have been brought into question, with a growing need for more flexibility, scalability and cost-efficiency of these solutions.

Enhancing the customer experience remains a top priority for businesses today, and with phone interactions notorious for causing customer frustrations, UCaaS has a crucial role in streamlining interactions and making them more seamless and constructive.

So how is UCaaS helping in these areas, and what’s the benefit for technology providers offerings these solutions?

Streamlining hybrid workforces

Half a decade ago office workers across the nation were mandated to work from home and since then, many companies have continued to operate in this way or have switched to hybrid working models. During this period, many workforces were propelled onto the likes of Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Webex, to name a few UCaaS solutions – so there’s no surprise that now, globally, there are more than 20 million telephony-enabled Microsoft Teams users, more than 13 million Webex Calling users, and more than 7.5 million Zoom Phone users–all technologies that now seamlessly integrate with our business systems and collaboration tools.

These systems, when used within day-to-day work, help reduce employee ‘toggle tax’ – the inefficiency caused by switching between disparate communication tools that reduces the impact of workforces and thus, business output.

The inclusion of machine learning and AI within these systems is also helping speed up internal employee tasks. Zoom’s AI Companion, for instance, has a live call transcription feature, produces post-call meeting summaries and understands context across communications to help with drafting emails and chat messages–these are just a handful of its helpful features that can enhance employee output.

The shift towards these modern communication tools is a necessity for businesses with distributed workforces wanting to aid productivity and a huge opportunity for the technology providers than can showcase the benefits.

Simplifying systems and communications

Digital transformation has been a buzzword for more than a decade and has resulted in organisations moving many of their workloads online, into an array of systems that don’t always talk to each other. However modern UCaaS solutions integrate many of the digital systems we use in the workplace today–like real-time messaging and business applications–into one central platform. This is proving crucial in helping businesses reduce the complexities associated with managing multiple systems–as well as IT overheads.

Relying on UCaaS providers means the responsibility for the setup and management of these solutions shifts away from in-house IT teams enabling them to focus on core business needs. If you need to scale your solution to suit changing business requirements, UCaaS also offers that much needed agility quicker than traditional solutions.

What’s more, having just one partner manage your communications in one place offers businesses consistency, reliability and a streamlined approach to support and deployment. With an array of benefits available to reap in switching to these systems, the technology providers capable of showcasing the benefits to today’s business will be the one’s that reap the biggest reward.

Enhancing the customer experience

Improving customer services is the number one strategic priority for more than a third of UK businesses today. While it’s no surprise that shifting to integrated telephony services allows for more streamlined customer services and thus, happier customers, modern day tools offer much more.

The power of CCaaS now allows businesses to leverage AI and machine learning to benefit customers, and ultimately, revenue through increased retention. Traits of these technologies such as natural language processing, sentiment analysis and automation are among the desired techniques that are helping keep customers happy, with responses artificially curated to suit specific personalities and situations.

To benefit from these tools, organisations need a cloud-based communication solution. Businesses with bigger customer pools may also benefit from CCaaS solutions that integrate with contact centre communications–encompassing communication and customer service capabilities with more AI-powered features like chatbots, predictive analytics and automated workflows.

The combined UCaaS and CCaaS markets in the UK are expected to exceed £2.3 billion in revenue annually by 2028 giving providers a huge opportunity to incorporate them into resale portfolios.

So how can you maximise on the benefits of UCaaS and CCaaS solutions?

Our white paper showcases the strategies needed to navigate the evolving UK voice market and leverage the capabilities of integrated UCaaS, CCaaS and collaboration tools to drive business growth and customer satisfaction. Download it now or speak to your Account Manager today to find out more.