The Enterprise Connect conference in Orlando this month was a great opportunity to get caught up on the latest market trends and hottest technologies. There was a lot of buzz around business workflows enabled by open platforms and APIs. Newer technologies that apply AI to enhance customer experiences in areas such as intelligent virtual assistant for voice and chat, smart contact center routing, and real-time transcription were also top of mind.
From all these technology trends a key theme emerged- how leveraging cloud communications technologies to engage employees and customers can result in greater customer satisfaction and business efficiency. A recent survey of 2,000 frontline employees validated the significance of this theme, showing that employees and customers have essentially the same expectation: They both want and need a seamless communications experience that meets their needs quickly. Their reasons for wanting a frictionless experience are different, however. Employees want to be as efficient as possible in serving customer needs; customers want access to timely service and issue resolution, on the channel of their choice, and not have to repeat information, wait on hold, or be transferred to multiple different agents.
But are the IT teams tasked with architecting this seamless communications experience, aligned with employee and customer expectations? To answer this question, at Enterprise Connect we polled 400 IT professionals to understand their perspective.
We found that 89% of IT believe communications tools are disjointed. They see employees having to toggle between applications to get work done, and the negative impact this has on workflow and job expectations. In addition, 88% say disjointed communications technology impacts frontline employees’ ability to serve customers .
Those polled also overwhelmingly agreed that a seamless communications and collaboration platform would make it easier for frontline employees to solve customer issues (97%). And, 95% saw a direct link between this and business profitability.
In summary, IT leaders agree that the right communications platform will drive greater employee and customer engagement. And as they say, happy employees make happy customers.
Originally published Mar 29, 2019, updated Jan 30, 2023
