Unified communications saves money

Unified Communications provide a centralised channel between the corporate and their clients

Unified Communications (UC) provides always-on, multi-channel corporate communications. In a 2009 European business survey conducted by Strateco and commissioned by Aspect, 85 percent of interviewees stated that they believe UC can improve customer satisfaction by raising service levels and improving first call resolution.

67 percent stated that they believe UC will deliver cost advantages within a three to five year timeframe and 83 percent said that UC will be a competitive differentiator in the future.

“It is starting to change the way organisations work – making people more contactable on the move, communication channels more integrated, and business processes and workflows more efficient,” says Henry McCracken, regional sales director for Africa at Aspect Software.

“Currently, the unified communications strategies of most organisations only focus on using applications, like presence, voice integration and collaboration to improve employee productivity. However, there’s more to UC than just improving productivity,” he states.

“Enterprises should also be focusing on communications-enabling their customer-facing process, such as service, collections and sales to ensure they are fully leveraging the value that unified communications can provide,” he continued.

Aspect believes that by using its UC applications (coupled with appropriate UC services support where necessary), organisations can improve customer satisfaction by 8 percent, increase first call resolution by 5 percent, improve productivity by 10 percent, and reduce overall maintenance costs by 20 percent.