These days, there’s a lot of talk about what you should and shouldn’t do as a business to woo new customers and keep existing ones happy. Just read any one of the many marketing-friendly guides out there and you’ll see a host of tips about improving your customer service, adding new features, beefing up product quality, and so on. Indeed, these are all good changes to make, and they lead to a more successful business overall, but they have one thing in common, and that’s why they make such a difference. They are customer-centric. They put the customer’s needs and experience first while improving the general experience for everyone else.
Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those that aren’t. But that’s such a broad term, and it could reference so many different facets of a business from customer service to product delivery and personalization. Where is the best place to start, and what should be a core focus? It all boils down to creating and delivering, a seamless, connected experience for employees and customers alike. In other words, “customer-centric” can be achieved today by deploying an integrated unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and contact center as a service (CCaaS) solution like RingCentral. Wait, what? Slow down.
Why do unified communications matter?
Think about it like this. Customers, or people rather, no longer spend their time on a single platform. Even Facebook is sharing a piece of the pie with other social networks these days, like Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter, TikTok, and more. It means that most people are no longer content with a single communications channel. They want to be able to interact across different channels, but not just that, they want their experiences to matter and to carry over between them. They don’t want to start talking on one platform, move to another, and then have to reboot — explaining everything all from the beginning. Chances are, your customer service team doesn’t want to deal with that either. Your employees want to follow along with the customer’s journey and meet them on whatever platform they’re using. Cue UCaaS and CCaaS platforms, combined as one, to deliver the best-connected experience for everyone, including customers and employees.
When combined, these platforms can help build confidence with customers, deliver a top-notch experience(s), connect your business communications and call center activities, as well as boost value and ROI across business or customer communications. Finally, the tools also improve communication with customers by putting you, and your team, in the right place, at the right time. In fact, merging UCaaS and CCaaS creates something so valuable, proponents have seen the following results, according to a RingCentral and Metrigy report:
- A 56% increase in customer satisfaction ratings.
- Reductions of 19% in operational costs.
- Another 23.4% reduction in monthly per-agent spending on licenses.
Where’s the proof?
These are some bold claims, and while it’s not difficult to figure out that being a customer-centric business is beneficial, there’s no hard evidence that unified communications can make that happen, at least not yet. There are four major benefits that RingCentral’s unified communications — UCaaS and CCaaS — can provide.
- They help build confidence with customers by empowering your customer service team and supporting CRM integrations.
- The tools combine business and call center communications to help solve customers’ problems faster and better and keep agents in the know.
- Unified communications deliver high value and exceptional ROI results across business and customer communications, by supporting better resources, smarter experiences, and cross-collaboration.
- With RingCentral, customer service teams can meet with customers in the right place, at the right time, across a variety of platforms and services — from phone calls and video meetings to live chat and social media.
A prime example is Gempler’s success story. The nationwide supplier of farms, Gempler, experienced high growth in 2019, however, their ordinary telephony solution could no longer support their needs and growing demands. Their team was relatively small, at about 60 agents, so they needed to choose something that would accommodate them. They landed on RingCentral’s UCaaS and CCaaS solution, making it the single vendor for all their business and customer communication activities. Gempler’s agents grew to be 28% faster, which has led to a 70% reduction in abandoned support calls, and a drop in response times to email from 14.5 hours down to 6 hours. They’re faster, better, leaner, and more successful!
Gempler isn’t the only team that’s seen success after implementing RingCentral’s solutions. There are many others, including the University of Radiology, virtual assistant provider Pheonix Virtual Solutions, Goosehead Insurance, and more.
Unified Communications: Message, video, phone, and contact center
Customers are the lifeblood of your business, and they should be treated as such. They drive revenue, profits, and in many ways, the success of your marketing and advertising initiatives. If they respond positively, the benefits and rewards are limitless. The best way to appeal to them is by developing a customer-centric team that puts them first and makes them a priority. Deliver a unified communications experience that merges all potential channels and platforms and empowers meaningful conversations, regardless of where they’re happening.
Wondering where you should start or where to go for more information? RingCentral is an award-winning provider of UCaaS and CCaaS solutions, and they can help you up your communications game fast — faster than ever before.
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