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How Successful SMBs Are Exploiting New Opportunities in the Future of Work

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Coming out of the disruption of the past few years, how the world of work is changing is becoming more apparent. Challenges remain, but there are also opportunities for small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) to set a course for sustained success.

Successful SMBs are adapting to the shifting terrain. A recent SMG Group study reveals two main challenges to navigating ongoing changes and preparing for a prosperous future…

  • There has been a significant power shift from employers to employees. It has, in many ways and many sectors, become a seller’s market for employees’ skills, expertise, and time. As a result, competition between businesses to attract and retain the best people is intense.
  • There is a need for longer-term strategic thinking. Businesses are reviewing the decisions they made to survive during the pandemic. And many are realizing those decisions have led to disjointed technology solutions, overly complex processes, and inefficient systems.

Factors making successful SMBs optimistic about the future…

1. Resilience

Many digital transformation strategies adopted over the past few years were applied reactively and ad hoc. Businesses implemented disjointed technologies, putting multiple systems in place that don’t necessarily play nice with one another. Many of the solutions were needlessly complex and may buckle in a changing environment.

Unified and simplified technologies have played a role in making businesses more resilient. This is particularly true for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) options. Industry-leading UCaaS systems bring features like advanced messaging, phone, and video together in one app, centralizing and simplifying communication. By bringing internal and external communications together, teammates can collaborate more efficiently and communicate more effectively with customers.

2. Putting People First

As important as technology is, it is simply an enabler. Running a successful business is about people: your employees and your customers.

The SMG report identifies people as a significant priority for businesses that want to future-proof their operations and continue to thrive. Hybrid work, once a rare offering for unusual circumstances, has been fully embraced by both employees and employers: 90% of SMBs that have adopted hybrid work find it valuable. And for job seekers, hybrid work is a significant priority: over 80% of applicants to a well-known job board said they’d feel more loyal to their employers if their work environments were flexible.

When many businesses switched to a digital workplace, much of the focus was on the technology needed to facilitate it, not on the people who would be using that technology. Working remotely exposed significant gaps in the digital employee experience, with some employees feeling they have been left on their own to manage multiple incongruous technologies without timely support.

Simplified UC tools that bring together multiple modes of communication make it easy for people to work together and work flexibly. Collaboration across geographies is faster and easier for employees, ensuring they feel supported no matter where they work. Using centralized, cloud-based tools eliminates the hassle of deploying and managing systems in multiple locations and helps keep your business agile.

3. Getting and Staying Agile

The agility that new technologies provide has proven to be a fundamental enabler of SMB growth. The SMG report shows that 80% of SMBs committed to technology adoption and investment anticipate revenue increases. The reason is simple. Many businesses have discovered that the customer experience is directly correlated to the employee experience. Happy, productive employees have happy, productive interactions with customers. And agility enabled by new technologies is fundamental to employee happiness because it allows them to work effectively from anywhere and still deliver excellent customer service.

Giving employees the ability to quickly adapt to changes like this while still working in a hybrid or remote environment, without struggling with outdated technology, is crucial to an employer’s ability to attract and retain top talent.

Plan Now for a More Prosperous 2023

Let’s talk about your Future of Work. Your local TCI experts are here to help you create an agile, successful work environment. Contact us: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

Focus on K-12 Education… 6 Technology Trends Schools Are Preparing For

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Digital transformation — the rapid evolution of technology to connect people, things, and information — has been a business trend for years. Upon graduating, many high school students will enter a workforce where employees spend more than six hours daily using digital tools to communicate.

To prepare students to thrive in these digital environments, elementary and high schools must embrace digital transformation, passing on benefits to administrators, staffers, and parents. Amid this transformation, schools have several considerations about how digital transformation is altering the educational experience. Here we look at the top six education technology trends your school should prepare for.

1. Increased Parent Interaction with Teachers and Administrators

Parents often have meetings several nights a week with teachers and administrators. Beyond meeting in person, parents look to digital media for important contact from teachers and administrators.

Important messages can get lost when a parent receives 300 or more emails from teachers in a year. Instead, collaboration and communication tools can help parents, teachers, and administrators better communicate in one location using one app for messaging, to-do lists, and even submitting homework.

2. Students Expect More Out of Their Education

The world is becoming increasingly digital, and many school-aged children have known nothing but digital. Even college students can be considered digital natives. If the technology in the traditional classroom isn’t there to facilitate their learning, they have STEM, charter, and private school options that will afford them the technology they need.

Whether offering your on-campus students the technology they need to learn and succeed or providing the technology for massive online open courses and distance learning, a phone system that can support these tools is essential.

3. Staff Can Utilize More Resources

District staffers often look for open educational resources and try to accommodate new curricula like common core. Teachers now turn to YouTube, Google, and other online tools for help.

But they also need more from their communications or PBX systems than “hello, goodbye” functionality, and voicemail being the main application. Today’s communications systems are more evolved than ever, including capabilities like automatic call distribution, hot desking, twinning, reporting, and a range of unified communications applications. Ultimately, teachers have a right to expect that their PBX system will have a wide range of functionality.

4. Legislation Demands Changes

More oversight by state and federal governments often has school districts scrambling to find the money and resources to comply – and that even applies to communications.

It’s a common requirement for your communications system to tell 9-1-1 responders exactly where an emergency phone call is coming from within the building. If it doesn’t, the school district could be liable.

New laws regarding education for children with special needs also require time-sensitive communications and hours of meetings and collaboration. Teachers, therapists, and principals need communications tools that comply with these laws and help them do their jobs.

5. IT Directors Face New Challenges

IT professionals have long dealt with an environment that is rapidly changing. But only recently have those changes made their way into the classroom. Many classes now use Chromebooks, Macs, PCs, Smartboards, and a Wi-Fi infrastructure that allows them to access cloud software, like the G Suite.

They are also expected to provide functional and updated communications software for their districts. But with E-Rate shrinking and eventually going away, administrators and elected officials are looking to do more with less regarding technology and communications. But just as there are grants for student technology, there is also help for IT directors in the form of Sourcewell, which takes the burden of RFPs off of government, education, and nonprofits.

6. People Need to be Notified on a Large Scale

Schools are also expected to communicate minor and significant announcements to large swaths of parents, students, and staff. Emergency alerts, weather alerts, and even schedule reminders or changes can now be communicated from one central district location to any combination of groups that deal with the district. Whether parents need to fill out prom paperwork or students need to know the next football game has been rescheduled, mass notification is essential today.

Digital transformation is changing how students, parents, teachers, and administrators interact. Let’s talk about what’s next for your school’s technology. Contact us: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

eBook: What Post-Pandemic Life May Look Like for Your Business

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Flexible Work from Home arrangements may not end for many organizations in our region.

Digital Transformation has become comfortable and familiar, and many employees have fully embraced remote working – even when their managers haven’t.

The business world is transforming and adapting with new technology. Video meetings, Digital proximity, and Hybrid workforces are here to stay, and it’s important to have a post-pandemic plan for your business too.

Check out Mitel’s eBook:
Life on the Other Side of the Pandemic

Change can be a challenge, but the good news is that TCI is here to help. When it comes to business communications, we make it easy.

We have decades of experience and the tools and technology that can bring your employees, teams, and business together.

Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

The 9 Most Important Call Center Trends of 2022

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We’ve seen a lot of changes to the call center and customer experience landscape over the years, from cloud communications and virtual agents to more strategic thinking around analytics, more flexible social media interactions, and innovative ways to involve artificial intelligence. And when the pandemic pushed businesses to modernize their business communications overnight, we’ve seen even more shifts in how businesses meet the evolving needs of both customers and their employees.

Here are nine technology trends that are helping companies deliver the best quality customer experience. See how far your business has come in building customer relationships that last — or which of these trends may need to be on this year’s to-do list.

1. Artificial Intelligence

As early adopters continue honing AI applications for call routing, we expect to see more connections forged between various media channels and streamlined call center response.

2. Digital Transformation

A forward-looking digital transformation strategy is going to be essential for business competitiveness. And it’s not just about using the right channels to interact with customers where they are; the smartest businesses are integrating technologies to provide full customer context with each interaction and leveraging system data to provide proactive service.

3. Better Contact Center Analytics

Gone are the days of relying on supervisor skills 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 useful feedback for their agents. We expect more advancements in analytics as companies continue to implement more unified communications platforms and strategies.

4. Omnichannel Communications

More businesses are recognizing that while a customer journey may begin on one channel, valuable insight and feedback from the customer can be gained on a completely different channel. Responsive businesses are using this trend to create a superb customer experience by unifying communications across channels into one stream. This helps their customers by connecting them with an agent who knows their purchase and service history and provides valuable context. Most importantly, the two-way conversation is public on a social media platform, so other customers can see how the business solved the problem.

5. Cloud Communications

Many businesses have already adopted cloud communications as part of their communications strategies, but cloud communications have become particularly important for contact centers. The steady increase in remote call agents has made cloud communications a necessity for businesses who want to take advantage of seamless team communications and collaboration. With cloud communications, traditional office-based contact centers can take on new locations, and grow and contract workforces as market needs demand.

6. Employee Engagement

Just as customer expectations have evolved in the last few years, so have the expectations of the employees that make quality customer experience possible. And dissatisfaction in the work environment and culture has led to high agent attrition in the contact center space and beyond. Businesses that want to remain competitive will provide their employees with the culture and technology that empowers an efficient, productive, and flexible workforce.

7. Flexible Working Options

Lower overhead, time zone flexibility, and variable working hours have made remote contact center workers a stable trend in 2022. With constantly improving unified communications, remote workers have become a permanent and beneficial part of the contact center environment. By using collaboration tools, contact center agents can be mobile, with access to real-time analytics and customer context.

8. AI-Powered Self-Service Tools

The high priority on process improvement and self-service since the pandemic has addressed the issue of increasing workload for contact center agents, as well as the difficulties around achieving the desired service levels or Average Speed of Answer (ASA). 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 also provides an emotional benefit to customers (that DIY-fix high!) and reduces overall call times.

9. SMB’s Leveraging All Employees to Support Customers

SMBs are extending traditional contact center agent desktop features to employees that work outside of the contact center to supplement customer-facing employees. Blended UC/CC solutions that bring customer and employee experiences together into a single user experience tear down the silos between traditional contact center agents and the rest of the organization.

If you need more help determining how to apply these trends to your call center, TCI’s local experts are here to help. Contact us today: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Top Tech Trends in the Hospitality & Lodging Industry… Some May Make Sense for Your Business

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Hotels, motels and other hospitality businesses once occupied a fairly simple space in people’s lives – they were a place for guests to lay their heads while away from home.

But anyone who’s spent time on the road in recent years knows that the role of technology has greatly expanded. Here are some of the top communication technology trends in hospitality today…

  1. Cloud migration – The hospitality industry is making the transition to the cloud, where opportunities abound for back office efficiency with low technology acquisition costs. Cloud technologies are simplifying operations, reducing staffing needs, and providing a better guest experience.
  2. Service automation through AI – Automation continues to be a trend that’s changing the way guests are served. With the advancements in Artificial Intelligence, hotels are interacting with guests digitally while freeing up hotel staff to work on other tasks. This also improves the travel experience as language differences can be eliminated, ensuring clear communication with travelers wherever they’re from.
  3. Integrated guest applications – Guest apps for personal mobile devices are the natural place to host everything from deal notifications to hotel services to loyalty programs. Innovative capabilities can be integrated into these hotel applications to grant guests increased ability to engage with hotel staff and other guests.
  4. Touchless interactions – The pandemic has emphasized the need to reconsider how guests interact with amenities. From digital room keys that allow guests to unlock doors using their phones to motion sensors that turn on lights, to voice-activated control of appliances, reducing contact with commonly touched interfaces allows guests to stay safe and housekeeping staff to sanitize and prepare rooms faster.
  5. Self-service meeting spaces – No longer are meeting spaces just about table and chair arrangements. Today’s meetings rely on multimedia presentations and videoconferencing to bring in remote attendees. And for marathon meetings, access to services like catering must be handled with minimal interruption. Advanced technology enablement is also becoming a must-have in ballrooms and event halls.
  6. Predictive Analytics – As more technology is added to improve the guest experience, more data is being collected about how guests interact with staff and amenities. When analyzed, the data can provide insights that can improve internal operations as well as the guest experience, resulting in your property becoming a preferred place to stay and the one that gets recommended to others.

If you see an application here that could help your business get ahead, reach out to the experts at TCI. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Digital Transformation in 2021… Keeping Up with Touchless & New Ways to Connect with Customers

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Adaptation has always been a necessity for survival, but now businesses are finding that they have to adapt virtually overnight to stay afloat. Touchless technology in the form of contactless payments, expanded mobile app offerings and remote contact centers is becoming the new normal for businesses across industries.

Touchless technology is impacting the B2C world primarily in payment transactions and customer communications. For example, contactless digital payments are replacing traditional paper checks in many transactions. While the primary driver is health and safety, there are other benefits: digital payments are received faster and cost less to process, improving cash flow and reducing costs.

B2B companies, as well as organizations with call centers or large sales teams, have had to quickly figure out how to stay in touch with customers and clients via a largely remote workforce…

  • Unified communications technology keeps the lines of communication open from any device and any location.
  • Cloud-based VoIP phones enable employees to communicate and collaborate via voice, text and screen share, making it easy to assist customers even when working from home.
  • A unified communications contact center empowers businesses to communicate with customers via chat, SMS, voice, email and social media – all with a virtual workforce.

All companies should consider the impact touchless tech will have on how their business is run, and we encourage you to explore Digital Transformation and new avenues of communications with your customers.

Looking for new ways to connect that will grow your business? Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Recapping Mitel’s Recent Road Show on Digital Transformation & Contact Center Innovations

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The emergence of the Digital Economy has led companies to transform their call centers into omni-channel customer experience centers. Increasingly, companies are finding that they need optimization solutions like Workforce Management, Interaction Recording, Quality Management and Speech Analytics to successfully operate an omni-channel customer experience center. They’re also looking at AI-powered Agent Assist technology to modernize the customer and agent experience.

Many companies struggle to make the transition seamlessly and are looking for partners to help them navigate through the maze of choices. TCI and Mitel can help.

On July 10 in Columbia, Maryland, the Mitel UC Contact Center Roadshow was in town, a platform for discussions and demonstrations of the latest innovations in contact center technologies and applications. Experts from Mitel, Google, ASC, TalkDesk, and others covered these topics:

  • How Google AI can power Contact Center Agents
  • How to Optimize the largest expense in a Contact Center
  • Benefits of hosting a Contact Center via the cloud
  • How to determine which Contact Center solutions best fit your company

We were delighted to see some of our valued TCI clients and guests, including…

  • Burke and Herbert Bank
  • American Physical Therapy Association
  • American Society of Civil Engineer
  • Intensive Care On-line Network

If you were unable to attend this event…

We have compiled a 75-page slide deck that provides a recap of the presentations. We offer it in the hope that it may stimulate ideas on the types of innovations available that you can bring into your contact center to improve the customer experience.

Let’s talk about how innovative technologies and applications can advance the effectiveness of your contact center. Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Unified Communications as a Service… 8 Ways it Makes Teamwork and Your Job Easier

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Collaboration doesn’t have to be a complex undertaking. With UCaaS, you get an end-to-end service that puts all your communications tools in one place. Here are 8 ways UCaaS simplifies collaboration – and will make your job easier…

  • Never lose your place with one-stop communication. UCaaS makes all your communications available from a single hub on your desktop. Keep an eye on every call and message and never lose sight of important details.
  • Be as productive on the road as you are in the office. With a mobile app, employees can take the office everywhere and get the same experience on the road as they do at their desk. Whether in the office or on the road, they can join a meeting with a single click, without the need to enter those cumbersome participant codes.
  • Take the conversation smoothly from text to voice with ad-hoc meetings. UCaaS helps you connect with the one person who has the information you need – at the precise moment you need their help. With one click, start a meeting and follow through by assigning tasks.
  • Respond to important messages faster with visual voicemail. Nothing ushers in a greater sense of urgency – and stress – than checking your voicemail after a long morning of meetings. With visual voicemail, messages are transcribed and sent to email so you can scan and prioritize who to call back first.
  • Get to the right person at the right time. With presence, colleagues make their whereabouts known to everyone in the organization. So, when a customer calls asking the question only a subject matter expert can answer, everyone knows where and how to reach them.
  • Stay on-track by setting agendas up front. When you create a meeting invite, you have the option to create a timed agenda. Attendees know up front what will be discussed and how much time will be spent on each item. Your meetings stay on track and are more productive.
  • Live in your CRM. When you integrate your phone with your CRM application, salespeople never have to switch between the two. They stay in the CRM to make and receive phone calls. Just by answering their phone, items are automatically added to their to-do lists.
  • Or live in Outlook or G Suite. Your UCaaS can also integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook and G Suite, easing adoption of your new phone system throughout the organization.

With UCaaS supported by TCI, you can have seamless communications designed precisely for your collaboration needs. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

Mitel Delivers More Advantages with Expanding Google Cloud Partnership

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Our strategic partner, Mitel has broadened its partnership with Google Cloud to provide greater security and reliability for businesses looking to move more of their collaboration tools and communications to the cloud in order to accelerate their Digital Transformation…

  • As part of the expanded partnership, Mitel will now leverage the Google Cloud Platform to support its public and private cloud solutions and deliver more innovative artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and reporting capabilities.
  • Google Cloud Platform supports Mitel customers with some of the highest levels of security and availability with dedicated operational practices and 24/7 data center monitoring.
  • Google Cloud Platform is also certified as meeting Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards and Service Organization Control Type II (SOC 2) compliance, addressing the stringent requirements of heavily regulated industries like healthcare, government, education and finance.
  • Google Cloud Platform will initially support new MiCloud Connect and MiCloud Flex customers. New MiVoice Business customers will also have the option of deploying on the platform.
  • With this latest announcement, Mitel gains further access to Google Cloud’s AI analytics, as well as integration with Google’s popular G Suite productivity and collaboration tools.

Check out this Mitel-Google Contact Center video [7:30]

Mitel’s decision to anchor their public and private solutions with Google Cloud Platform enables its customers to move forward with confidence, knowing their services are virtually bulletproof and that the latest communications and collaboration capabilities will be at their fingertips.

Let’s talk more about how Mitel solutions – coupled with Google’s Cloud Platform – can give your business a competitive edge. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

Leverage Virtual Assistants & IoT to Make it Easier to Stay Connected with Your Customers

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Customers are conversing with businesses in new ways, thanks to the Internet of Things (IoT). For many consumers, virtual assistants, chatbots and messaging apps are quickly becoming their preferred methods of communication.

CNBC reports that half of consumers will own a smart speaker by the end of the year, and among the top three uses for it will be shopping and ordering items.

Every business should take notice. According to Gartner, more than half of enterprises have already invested in virtual assistant technology, and 25% of customer service centers intend to integrate virtual assistants or chatbots across channels by 2020.

IoT enables businesses to place a greater emphasis on conversation to improve customer engagement. Gartner points out that companies already benefit from using virtual assistants across channels – ranging from a 70% reduction in call, chat and/or email inquiries to a 33% savings per voice interaction.

As these AI-driven services evolve, there’s an enormous upside to use them to create a more intimate connection with customers. Some businesses already leverage location and other profile information to make personalized recommendations.

For these applications to work effectively, businesses need to put the right communications technology in place. Unified Communications provides universal access to applications and data, which removes the typical barriers to successful implementation of AI and IoT technologies.

The time is right to start experimenting with these technologies and to start studying use cases with the idea of improving your operations. The Digital Transformation experts at TCI understand how IoT and artificial intelligence enhance customer interactions.

Ready to open more doors to converse with your customers? Contact us today: (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.