The benefits of a unified communications and collaboration for contact centers

Collaboration is important in the workplace, and without the right tools and systems in place, it can be difficult to keep operations running smoothly. Most businesses rely on a long list of hardware, software and other technologies to keep employees productive and aid them in collaborating and communicating with coworkers. Unified communications and collaboration help businesses to streamline these tools to provide workers with simple, cohesive and reliable systems.

What is unified communications and collaboration?

Unified communications and collaboration, or UC&C, is a customized solution that incorporates all of a business's communications-based technologies. UC&C helps businesses to ensure that their communications tools, including web conferencing, instant messaging, VoIP telephone systems and instant messaging, interact with each other seamlessly. This ensures that regardless of where employees are working geographically, they're able to collaborate with teams as efficiently as possible.

The benefits of a unified communications and contact center

The benefits of a unified communications and contact center are plentiful for both businesses and their employees.

Cost-effective

A unified communications and contact center is typically cloud-based, so the need to host servers and other expensive hardware is virtually eliminated. Cloud-based solutions reduce costs in several ways:

  • No hardware to purchase
  • No effect on power bills
  • Reduced labor and maintenance costs
  • Hardware is stored off-site

Improve employee productivity and collaboration

With access to an array of communications tools, employees can more easily collaborate and communicate important details about projects and other initiatives. Using unified communications and collaboration, team members can take advantage of virtual tools to collaborate on documents, share screens, chat via video or audio and share quick notes via instant messenger.

Enable employees to work from anywhere

With cloud-based unified communications and collaboration tools in place, employees can log on and access work from anywhere. These tools allow employees to access all communications systems, and they help them to collaborate with other team members even while working remotely.

Unified communications and collaboration examples

There are plenty of examples of successful unified communications and collaboration systems that have helped real businesses increase productivity and collaboration among their employees. These tools can benefit organizations in just about every industry.

Schools and education

School administrators, teachers and other staff in educational institutions can use these systems in several ways. They're convenient for remotely logging into teacher conventions and hosting meetings with coworkers, and they're essential for teachers and professors who provide virtual lessons for students learning at home.

Health care facilities

Hospitals and other health care facilities can use unified communications and collaboration systems to offer telehealth sessions as well as to meet with other professionals to discuss patient data, diagnoses and treatment plans.

Offices

Other businesses can make use of these communications tools in plenty of ways. Workers can access simple tools, including conferencing, live collaboration, file sharing and instant messaging, to work on projects with other team members. Tools for video and phone conferencing are also useful for client meetings and sales calls.

If your business is ready to streamline communications across your organization, 8x8 can help. Contact us to find out more about how we can implement a unified communications and collaboration system for you and your team.