Customer Contact and Internal Communications

Step No. 3: Determine the tools necessary for comprehensive customer contact and internal communications

IT teams need to evaluate infrastructure requirements, while also working with operational teams to determine how the technology may affect internal communication processes and external customers. It is imperative for organizations to understand how existing technology can work with UC tools such as presence, instant messaging (IM), conferencing and unified messaging. Companies should also evaluate whether existing infrastructure and tools such as PBXs will be able to move their UC strategy forward, or how their existing investments can be augmented with upgrades or additional capabilities to truly leverage UC.

For example, the use of presence, conferencing and IM can be embedded into the systems and applications to enable issues to be addressed based on pre-defined conditions, removing latency, accelerating problem resolution and eliminating human intervention.

Step No. 4: Roll out your UC technology in a phased approach, especially across the contact center

Deploying UC technology in a phased approach is critical, especially for a multisite global organization. Implementing technology by different sites involves installation, configuration, development and testing of UC solutions, desktop/server hardware and software, network changes, testing, and ensuring that these technologies work seamlessly with key contact center capabilities such as inbound call routing, IM routing and voice portal functionality.

In our UC implementation, we needed unified contact center capabilities that leveraged presence technology to determine the availability of experts in other departments. Implementing new telephony infrastructures in our centers in the United States, Europe, India and China required a detailed rollout schedule to ensure continuity in service and support across different regions.