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UCaaS

Fear of Change in the Age of the Customer

By on

March 27, 2018

- UCaaS

Sometimes, we need to destroy the status quo to create a new model of engagement. Sometimes, the market does that for us and that can be even scarier. Change is always scary and overwhelming, especially when it comes to technology. But it is inevitable.

The Cloud is changing the way businesses communicate.  Businesses have a unique opportunity to capitalize on this major shift to offer a secure, seamless communications experience that is simpler to deploy and more intuitive to use.  If you want to play the game, the siloed, broken communications of yesterday aren’t going to cut it any longer.

Regardless of what business you’re in, your customer’s experience is your top priority. Customers increasingly prefer human interaction over digital communications channels, positioning your communications systems as a key enabler for delivering superior customer experience. Cloud communications offers your company a unique opportunity to craft the ideal customer experience, creating a competitive advantage few companies have thought to seize upon. With shifting demands and perceptions, it comes down to the company that’s intrepid enough to pull the trigger first.

Here are a few mindsets that help your organization prioritize customer experience:

Every department is a service department

In today’s highly competitive market, customer loyalty is no longer entrenched as part of our social culture. In fact, 90% of customers today feel that businesses are too slow and unresponsive. 59% of those customers will try your competitor for a better experience, without hesitation. Legacy, premises-based phone systems offer siloed, fractured and inconsistent communications that reinforce breakdowns in employee and customer interactions and slow your ability to provide service. In short, they simply can’t compete with the cloud’s ability to seamlessly integrate communications systems with business applications and processes. The implication is businesses that more quickly adapt to this modern approach to communications will be the clear winner among customers.

Every conversation is an opportunity

Every conversation customers have with your employees provide an opportunity to deliver superior customer service. 20th century PBX systems were never designed to support the remote, distributed workforce of the 21st century. Employees increasingly demand the ability to work flexible schedules from the location of their choosing, across multiple devices. According to a 2015 Citrix and Forrester study in 2015, 85% of employees use a mobile device for work. And yet most traditional PBX systems, with their hardwired infrastructures, can’t easily accommodate needs of this increasingly wireless, mobile workforce.  When employees use tools like personal laptops, mobile devices, Google Hangouts, Skype and Facetime to accomplish this, information leaves company networks to unsecure devices, and collaboration becomes more difficult.   

Failure is not an option

Current business communications options, like traditional PBX phone systems, have many shortcomings. One of the most significant is the cost and complexity of ensuring your phones are one of the first services restored after any adverse event. While it is possible to develop an effective disaster recovery solution with a premises-based solution, it is not as seamless and cost-effective as a cloud solution. Moving to cloud-based business communications is a painless way to ensure a disaster doesn’t leave your phones down for hours or – worse yet – days.

New isn’t always better. However, when sweeping technology changes impact the expectations of customers, businesses must keep up. If the only thing holding you back is a fear of change, consider the risks and benefits. What would more accessible employees mean for your business? How could enhanced collaboration improve time to market? What would a 99.99% uptime mean for your profitability? The fact is you must leverage your communications effectively, if you want to remain competitive.

Don’t fear change. Embrace it. Contact ATI sales@aticti.com to find out how we can help you leverage better communications for the 21st century.

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Network Services

4 Ways SIP Trunking Brings Cloud Benefits to Onsite Phone Systems

By on

November 11, 2016

- Network Services

The Benefits of SIP Trunking

Cost effective, easy to set-up and quick to scale…if you’re already sold on the benefits of cloud communications solutions, but aren’t yet ready to make the big leap, SIP trunking might be just what you’re looking for. SIP trunking is a great way to gain cloud benefits while maintaining control over your onsite communications solution. It blends the best of both worlds to reduce costs and support future growth. Here are four key ways that SIP trunking can add value when paired with your onsite business phone system:

  1. Improved Business Continuity

Onsite solutions require a direct connection. If something happens to that connection, your system goes down. With SIP trunking, your business phone system gains built-in redundancy with access to multiple carriers so if an outage does occur, your call quality and uptime won’t be impacted. Top SIP trunking providers invest a lot into their network to ensure automatic failovers if a hardware or carrier issue should arise.

  1. On-Demand Scalability

When your business grows, you’ll likely need to add phone lines. If your current phone system uses analog technology that means one phone number per line. As your business grows, you’ll have to forecast adding new lines in advance to prevent capacity issues, plus invest a lot of time and money into physical space and installation management required to turn up additional lines. With SIP trunking, your technology can grow with your business without incurring extra costs. Call capacity can be increased on-demand to support unlimited concurrent calls, while ensuring you never pay for more than you need.

  1. Pair with Unified Communications Solutions

SIP trunking isn’t just compatible with your PBX – it can also be leveraged with other communications solutions such as UC. SIP trunking plays nicely with a variety of onsite and cloud solutions to deliver a seamless experience that can work with your current business phone system or systems you may be considering for the future.

  1. Easy Implementation & Management

A new SIP trunking solution can be deployed within 30-60 days – or even a few weeks depending on the scope of the project. Because SIP trunking installation is handled behind the scenes primarily by your trunking provider, you will be able to get up and running without any disruption to your business. Once you’re up and running, adding trunks is as a simple as contacting your vendor. Plus, if your vendor offers other communications solutions, you’ll have one point of contact for all of your communication needs.
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Voice

Choosing a Business VoIP Phone System

By on

March 31, 2016

- Voice

An Office Manager’s Guide to Choosing a Business VoIP Phone System

March 31, 2016 – Most office managers are hearing a lot these days about Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), it’s a service that allows telephone users to make and receive calls using the Internet instead of conventional phone lines and analog phone systems. VoIP services provide a number of benefits for businesses, starting with the enhanced modern conveniences and cost savings. Additionally, business VoIP solutions provide attractive features like call management options, video conferencing, instant messaging, reporting, call monitoring as well as enhanced security abilities. After making the decision to move from analog to VoIP services, next comes the task of sifting through the options to figure out the type of phone system that will be the right fit for the business. Here are a few of the most common considerations many managers evaluate before making a phone system decision:

Set-Up Costs Compared to Traditional Systems

Typically, setup fees for registering new phone numbers are minimal. Local and toll-free numbers are purchased online from any area code with instant activation. Service providers can also port or transfer the existing phone numbers without any downtime. VoIP systems are easy to implement and come with very little investment risks. Monthly charges are typically subscription-based utilizing an operational budget. Hosted IP phone systems also remove the need for any expensive in-house servers. The system is either a cloud-based or off-premise solution, which virtually eliminates the need for any costly servers.

Additional Cost Savings

The savings go beyond just monthly charges and equipment. Since the systems are entirely internet-based, the process of adding more users, additional phone lines, and extra features can be handled through a web browser. Using the Internet removes the need for an on-site technician every time an issue comes up. Typically, the most expensive part of a business phone bill are the minutes used. With VoIP, it treats your phone calls simply as data passing through the IP network. Broadband today is relatively cheap and easy to obtain, so it’s appealing to businesses looking for ways to cut costs and use existing resources.

Functionality Considerations

Phone system benefits go well beyond simply the phone calls. Conferencing options enable employees to remain connected clients and coworkers for meetings, exchanging documents, evaluating agendas, and many other business-related matters from virtually anywhere.

VOIP and Customer Satisfaction

VoIP technologies are advanced enough that you should never notice a difference between a call from an analog service and a VoIP call, as they are equally responsive. However, considerations should be made to the business network to ensure there’s enough bandwidth to support the additional data load as well as the quality-of-service (QoS) capabilities for prioritizing call traffic. Learn more about a hosted VoIP system that takes into account all these considerations here.
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Ascenda™ is a globally recognized total experience thought leader for organizations of all sizes. Our speed of innovation ensures that businesses can transform how they work together with customers and employees while also exceeding key business metrics.

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