Is your company maximizing communications? If not, how can contextual communications be your game-changer? dotbenjamin/Flickr
Personal communications are becoming more user friendly every day. However workplace communications seem to be getting more complex. Every time employees log-in, there are more applications that they are required to use and more streams to keep up with. Despite communications advances, the inevitable truth is that employees spend too much time messaging and not enough time communicating. This is harming many organizations’ ability to be productive and responsive to customers as workers manage more communications streams across disparate portals, applications and devices.
They say that the typical person only uses 20 percent of their brain capacity. Well… what about companies? With the pace that business moves today, are we maximizing the opportunity to improve processes, drive efficiencies and profitability? The short answer: Probably not.
I believe we need to reimagine the entire communications process. We no longer require stand-alone or vertical unified communications (UC), customer relationship management (CRM) or social solutions. We as innovators need to help companies build communications that are more integrated and immediate — built right into the way their customers and employees are working. Just like we do on our mobile devices in our personal lives.
This is contextual communications. And companies are starting to transform the way they do business by deploying these cutting edge technologies. For example, SAP is in the process of integrating click-to-call, click-to-video chat, and instant messaging directly into its CRM and field service offerings. Under this model, an employee using SAP CRM software could quickly solve a customer’s problem by creating a video conference in real time between the warehouse, supply chain manager and customer.
What if at the end of the quarter a sales executive wants to know why someone on his team did not make quota? Under this model he could quickly establish a multiparty video conference with the sales manager and sales person and review customer call history, contact logs, notes, etc. via a screen share where they were all collaborating in real time from the same tool to provide the sales executive with the answers he needs.
Toy Genius, a high-end retail toy store in New Jersey, used contextual communications to build its unique customer service culture from its brick and mortar location directly into its new website — allowing an online shopper who has questions on popular toys by age group, or questions on specific products, to click to video chat with a toy specialist.
Data has truly become the voice of the customer. Are we listening? What channels do you use to communicate?
Successful companies will create processes that match what we know about our customers online with the information we know about them offline. Extracting information from CRM, services data, data warehouses, third party data and most importantly real time data. In this scenario data and communications services are not simply combined, they are seamlessly integrated into the user’s workflow. The key here is not making this about the business process workflow, but about the user’s workflow — giving an agent all of the data he or she needs to help the customer on their journey.
The real time enterprise is not only about technology. To become the real time enterprise, companies must break down silos, come together and take action on the voice of the customer. And enterprises are in luck as new innovations come to market that eliminate stove-piped work flows and allow real time communications to be embedded directly into business applications for both employees and customers.
Mobile-first — or mobile-only? Digital Natives or Digital Immigrants? In this digital era success won’t come from the latest trend, such as personalization, mobile, cloud, ideation, engagement, viral etc. Success will come for those who are focused on creating a singular, unique experience for their customers. If something is limiting us, if something is not as great as we know it can be, it can’t be passed over. It must be fixed.
With an emphasis on listening, user empathy, whole-brain thinking, collaboration, and experimentation, the design-thinking process that creates the real time enterprise will enable us to acquire greater skill sets in problem-finding, in analytical decision making, and in being creative, and innovative — in a whole new and exciting way. The real time enterprise of the future will be able to communicate with its employees and customers in context — at the right time, with the right people, in the right application. This is the future of enterprise communications.
Is your company maximizing communications? If not, how can contextual communications be your game-changer?
Paul Pluschkell is EVP for Strategy and Cloud Services for Genband, and founder of Kandy.
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