Maximizing ROI: Enterprise Communication Services Explained

When you’re looking for the best place to allocate business funds for maximum revenue, never underestimate the power of investing in your customer service. 88% of customers value good service just as much as a good product. The same number of customers say it’s good service that determines whether they return for a repeat purchase.

When you dive deeper into what good customer service entails, you face a fork in the road: investing in training or enterprise communication services. Your communication systems are the foundation for prompt responses, helpful answers, and seamless movement through the stages of your sales funnel and customer experiences.

Switching from older communication tools, analog telephones, and a tech stack of unsynced tools to a completely unified communication system makes an immediate and measurable difference in how both your customers and employees interact with your company. To maximize your ROI, it pays to understand the differences between what you’re using and what enterprise communications solutions offer. With that knowledge, you can fully capitalize on all of the advantages with custom strategies and a tailored service plan.

Enterprise Communication Services vs. Traditional Communication Management: Key Differences

Most business communication tools evolve organically over years. You likely started your business with email accounts from a particular provider. You added a website. You subscribed to a third-party customer support or help desk platform. 

Depending on the size of your team and your specific industry, employees may use their personal phones for business or mostly use a video call platform. In recent years, you may have added instant messaging, workspaces for collaboration, and so on. Some of these systems might be linked through third-party integrations, and some might be completely separate.

A cohesive enterprise communication service, on the other hand, is a single unified system that houses all of your internal and external communication channels. It includes email, instant messaging, video conferencing, telephony, and even communication records and metadata, all in one space. The tools are fully synced together from the start, making it easier to locate information across multiple channels and ensuring everything is secured to comply with industry standards. 

These two overviews may already give business stakeholders a clear understanding of how enterprise communication services can easily outperform more organic tech stacks. However, three specific areas separate modern solutions from traditional tools: unified communication systems, VoIP, and collaboration tools.

Unified Communications Systems for Multi-Channel Support in One Hub

Unified communications (UC) are software options that include all the tools you and your staff need to manage communications. Your UC system will allow each worker to switch between channels without moving in and out of different programs, logging into multiple systems, or losing track of messages. Popular systems often house the following types of communications within a single interface:

• Video calls
• Conference calls
• Telephony 
• Email
• Transcripts
• Chat and text
• Virtual meetings

You can plug your preferred UC software into your greater business tech stack elements, such as your CRM, billing or accounting software, and marketing platform. Private or sensitive communications stay housed within a secure environment, and no one has to search through multiple interfaces for essential details. You can also link communication records to specific accounts or process documents. 

VoIP for Enhancing Worker Flexibility

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) replaces analog phone systems with more versatile virtual systems. Users can use VoIP within their communication solutions to make one-to-one phone calls, conference calls, and voice recordings. They are easy to organize and reassign for businesses with fluctuating staff. 

Because they’re virtual, employees can answer calls or contact coworkers and customers from multiple devices. Through managed VoIP services, companies can implement SIP trunking to enable seamless, high-quality calls over the internet or public switched telephone network (PSTN) in office buildings.

On a practical level, you and your team can take calls on the go or while working remotely. As long as you have a computer or smartphone with access, you’re plugged in.

Collaboration Tools to Prevent Communication Silos

Many businesses have had to use communications as a separate layer around work rather than a cohesive layer in work. Consider these example scenarios of getting work done:

• Emailing someone about changes you’d like made to a document versus making redlines and leaving comments within a document
• Calling someone about updates to key contacts within a client account versus making those changes in a CRM record and flagging the change
• Training someone and having them take notes versus creating a screen recording about how to manage the step-by-step process and pasting it into a workflow page

The primary—and novel—advantage of collaboration tools is that your team can communicate directly within workpieces. Without a UC component, collaboration becomes fractured as it requires sharing a document, updating the access settings, and flagging someone’s email address in every comment, for example. 

However, once everything is housed within the same environment, you and your team can easily tag multiple team members (with a high level of certainty you’re tagging the right person), chat in the margins of a document, and follow revision histories of work products. 

How Enterprise Communication Services Maximize ROI

Simply switching from traditional communication tools and telephony systems to the right enterprise options can automatically increase business production and revenue. But if you want to maximize your ROI, approach new communication solutions strategically to extract every possible avenue of value. Explore the following benefits and implement policies or projects that focus on each one.

More Productivity

Enterprise communication services benefit your team by allowing them to get more work done faster. They don’t have to log in across multiple systems, track down half-recalled answers, or manually bridge the gap between channels. Requests, tasks, edits, and comments intermingle with work products rather than siloed channels. 

Some ways to maximize this benefit are:

• Create defined permissions for different roles so new hires and internally promoted people instantly have the tools they need.
• Train your employees on how to use communication channels as a holistic option rather than separate, isolated channels. 
• Integrate communication software with other hubs.

This approach allows your team to spend more time serving customers directly and completing tasks.

Clearer Knowledge Bases

Comprehensive communication services allow enterprises to create better internal and external knowledge bases for employees to use. Consider your internal options first: 

• Your staff can easily search for key terms and answers across every channel (including email, transcribed calls, and documents) without searching each channel individually.
• Key team members can easily update shared resources and standard operation procedure documents.
• Your subject matter experts can easily share knowledge through screen recordings and digital calls rather than emails or sporadic notes.

As a result, your staff are more informed. They can answer customers faster, check in on the status of orders or work, and gain insight into client accounts for smoother interactions.

Harnessing clearer internal knowledge can have unexpected benefits. You can use the knowledge amassed—and your team’s additional time—to create more detailed knowledge resources for customers. CSMs and AMs can competently create tutorials, how-tos, and informational videos or articles.

Better Customer Experiences

Ultimately, the benefits must feed the core goal of serving customers better and creating more satisfying experiences. Proactively use your enterprise communication services to do precisely that by: 

• Reaching customers through their preferred channel, whether it’s email, chat, phone calls, or SMS
• Achieving faster problem resolution because your team can search every communication channel at once to track down answers or real-time status updates
• Focusing on reliable and consistent experiences when customers call
• Choosing UC providers with the best uptime records, which minimizes client frustration and mistrust

Less Frustration With Options Like SIP Trunking and UCaaS

Your internal frustrations matter too, and a stressed internal team provides worse service (even when they try not to). Dropped calls and staticky service contribute to internal friction, which is why more reliable systems like SIP trunking can provide relief. 

Turning to a reliable UCaaS service provider that puts together your ideal communications package also removes internal stress and sets your operations on the right path. To make the most of your investment, consult with a UCaaS reseller rather than try to package your own enterprise communications tech stack.

24/7 Business Coverage

Finally, the benefits of 24/7 coverage speak for themselves. If you run a business that’s even partially online, your client base will expect instantaneous responses to their questions, whether that means speaking to a chatbot, getting human answers at an atypical timezone, or simply logging into their portal. 

Not having these options reduces your business’s convenience, while consistently having them enhances consumer trust. To capitalize on the drive for 24/7 access and instant answers, prioritize finding services that guarantee a 99.99%+ uptime and proactively managed services. 

Maximize Your ROI With Enterprise Communication Services From the Right Provider

Unified communications are essential to efficiently run any enterprise in our digitally focused environment. By adopting managed services, you can maximize your ROI and implement optimal tools that support your long-term goals.

At BCM One, we provide tailored UCaaS packages and enterprise communication services for modern businesses. We offer customized service levels, 24/7 monitoring, and multi-channel communication options within a single, secure interface. Contact us today to learn more about our solutions and why better communication tools are one of the best investments you can make.