5 Ways Mitel’s Seamless Teamwork App Enables More Wins and Project Success

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You may think that your team is successful enough with just phone and email. Maybe you think screen sharing’s the ultimate in cool. But true teamwork requires more advanced communications. Specifically, it needs seamless access to robust tools from a single app, one that can be accessed via web, desktop and mobile.

Mitel’s innovative Teamwork App can help you build a more effective and efficient team with the goal of helping you come out a winner on every project and customer engagement. Here’s how…

  • Stay organized with a truly virtual workspace – The Teamwork App’s virtual workspaces allow you to easily send messages and track conversations, keeping your conversations neatly collected by topic or project. Better yet, you can take a conversation from online to conference mode with the click of a button.
  • Roam freely with a mobile-first design – Working from home? Working in the field? Driving from one client’s office to the next? A mobile collaboration app for iOS and Android keeps you fully connected to teammates, no matter where you are or where you’re going. Plus, the app puts your safety first – Siri integration and Bluetooth support allow you to talk hands-free.
  • Stay in one place with an integrated user experience – Teamwork App users can automatically cross-launch features. Have a quick question for a colleague? Get the right answer fast with ad hoc conferencing. Need to switch between devices mid-meeting? Transition seamlessly between desktop and mobile. You’ll have a single experience across multiple devices.
  • Manage projects without interrupting the conversation – With Mitel Teamwork App, you can create and assign tasks, archive data and easily share files. A personal dashboard provides alerts specific to you.
  • Meet colleagues and customers where they need you to be – Whether you’re dealing with team members or customers, being able to respond to an email or answer a phone call is no longer enough. Messaging is easier and faster. In fact, many customers prefer text communication. Teamwork lets you send and receive Business SMS text messages that are linked to your business identity. Your team can respond promptly, using their preferred communications channel, even from a desktop application.

Enable more team wins and project success. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

Improving Customer Service… 8 Call Center Trends You Need to Watch

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When it comes to improving the Customer Experience with better technology, 2019 is shaping up to be the year of strategic thinking with focus areas like better analytics, more social media conversations and innovative ways to involve artificial intelligence.

To keep you informed and help you stay on target with your plans, we’ve identified the most influential strategic trends affecting call centers this year.

  • Artificial intelligence integrated into customer interactions – Businesses are getting deeper into predictive analytics, using artificial intelligence (AI) applications to help streamline call center experiences for customers and agents. Early adopters continue to hone AI applications for call routing, and more connections are being forged between various media channels to improve the customer experience.
  • Better contact center analytics – Gone are the days of relying on supervisor skill and know-how to get the most out of contact center agents. Now, even smaller businesses are taking advantage of sophisticated analytics to turn data – like call and screen recordings, chats, SMS messages and more – into truly useful feedback for their agents. More businesses are displaying statistical dashboards on user interfaces, so call agents and managers can get real-time updates on customer experiences.
  • Omni-channel communications for all – Omni-channel communications continues to separate proactive businesses from their more reactive counterparts. This holistic view of the customer experience is helping businesses give customers a more personal feel to resolutions. Unifying customer communications across channels enables businesses to resolve issues faster and helps sales agents identify better opportunities for future sales.
  • Widespread adoption of cloud communications in call centers – Cloud communications has become particularly important for contact centers. With the steady increase in remote call agents, cloud communications are a necessity for businesses that want to take advantage of seamless team communications and collaboration. With the cloud, traditional office-based contact centers can take on new locations, grow and contract workforces as market needs demand.
  • More robust customer satisfaction measurements – Businesses approach customer satisfaction measurement in different ways, but slick all-in-one measuring tools seem to be holding steady. No matter which measurements businesses are using, special care needs to be taken when addressing the customer experience across digital channels. Using effective reporting and analytics tools that are integrated with your communications systems makes this process automatic and valuable.
  • More remote call center agents – Lower overhead, time zone flexibility, and flexible working hours have made remote contact center workers a stable trend for 2019. With constantly improving and unified cloud communications, remote workers have become a permanent and beneficial part of the contact center environment. With collaboration tools, contact center agents can take their work mobile, with access to real-time analytics and customer context.
  • Continued emphasis on self-serve documentation – There is greater emphasis on self-service, problem-solving information on business websites. Giving customers information quickly helps reduce call volumes, and easy-to-navigate FAQs help narrow down calls to those with sufficiently complex issues. Quick access to self-serve solutions to problems also contributes to customer satisfaction and reduces overall call times.
  • Two-way social media conversations – The way businesses approach their social media conversations is changing. It’s not enough to make witty posts or share images. Customers are looking for a two-way social media conversation, and when they interact with businesses online, they expect a personalized and immediate response.

Ready to explore how these Contact Center trends can be applied in your business? Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

Unified Communications as a Service… How it Saves Time for Your CFO, Controller & Accounting Team Too

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Telecom services can be one of your top expenses, so keeping a close eye on these costs is essential for protecting your bottom line.

Unfortunately, accounting for telecom services can be a very time-consuming undertaking for many businesses, particularly if they manage multiple locations or their telecom arrangements haven’t changed in recent years.

This staff-intensive activity is a burden for CFOs and Controllers too because they have oversight responsibilities.

If your business is still using legacy phone services, every month your accounting team could be wading into service provider invoices – sometimes hundreds of pages long – combing through them for accuracy. Charges have to be assigned to department and project budgets. Never-before-seen line items reconciled.

Even with the aid of software-enabled Telecom Expense Management (TEM) systems, it takes specialized expertise and quite a lot of staff time to make sure a business is not paying more than it should.

Fortunately, times have changed and accounting for Telecom has been radically transformed for the better…

  • With Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), you can arrange affordable, flat-rate pricing – with no need for the internal line-by-line invoice reviews of yesteryear or for keeping TEM software updated to track, manage and report on telecom usage. And with flat-rate pricing, there’s no need to deal with variable LD billing and message units anymore.
  • With UCaaS you not only enjoy all the benefits of communications and collaboration delivered to any location from the cloud, you get consolidated, predictable billing for all the services used.
  • You also get easy-to-understand monthly reports and access to online tools that help you understand every facet of your telecom spend for better decision-making and hard-dollar savings.
  • There’s no need to keep TEM software updated with every service and rate change either… Every time you log into your private management portal in the cloud, you can access a dashboard or detailed view of your system expense.

Simplified accounting… Just one more reason to go with UCaaS implemented by TCI. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.