Do companies need both a unified communications (UC)/unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) system and a contact center infrastructure/contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) platform? UC/UCaaS solutions include voice, video, and collaboration capabilities, and they target non-customer-facing employees. Contact center infrastructure/CCaaS platforms enable and productively improve communications with customers. Although their purposes and traditional uses differ, there is substantial functional overlap between these two major system categories.
DMG's vision to address the UC/UCaaS and contact center infrastructure/CCaaS systems overlap is conceptually simple but practically and politically challenging. The objective is to have a single unified communications and collaboration platform for all employees, regardless of their department. This means when employees join a company or change roles, they should receive access to communications and collaboration features that enable them to optimize job performance. This approach also provides a more inclusive and complete view of the customer journey, as the unified platform can track and analyze all customer touch points. This greatly simplifies the operating environment, and if done right, it should substantially reduce expense as it eliminates redundant systems.
When new agents joins contact center, they are equipped with the necessary functionality to perform their primary job of interacting with customers. CCaaS solutions come with hundreds of features, many of which are helpful when communicating and collaborating with other employees (e.g., intelligent routing, on-demand recording, workforce management, and quality management). However, many organizations today also assign agents a UCaaS license to enable them to interact with other employees without impacting contact center statistics, e.g., service level agreements (SLAs), average handle time, or number of outbound interactions. A unified communications and collaboration platform would eliminate the need for the second license.
The opposite situation also occurs in a growing number of companies. For the past 15 years, DMG has seen the expansion of basic contact center seats. In this case, employees are assigned a CCaaS seat license that is expected to be used on a limited basis, possibly as few at five to 20 days per year. They are given access to the CCaaS solution so they can be integrated into the contact center workflow and benefit from its productivity and tracking capabilities during peak demand. While the cost of this seat is typically very low and the company might be charged on a consumption-based billing model, it's one of the ways that CCaaS vendors have expanded their reach into the broader market.
The fight for the communications and collaboration desktop has gone on too long and to the detriment of companies. There are few good reasons to have both a UC/UCaaS and contact center infrastructure/CCaaS solution in companies, because the functionality overlap is large and growing. DMG understands this is the way it's been done for five decades and realizes why companies don't want to change something that works, but the two-system approach adds complexity, overhead, and costs. Companies could greatly benefit from redeploying their resources elsewhere.
Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting, is an expert on contact centers, analytics, and back-office technology. She has 30 years of experience helping organizations build contact centers and back-office operating environments and assisting vendors to deliver competitive solutions. She can be reached at Donna.Fluss@dmgconsult.com.