Did you ever anticipate a situation where your role would move to a 100% remote? And all meetings and decision making would be virtual?
The digital workplace will never be the same again. Not only is technology having an increasing impact on how we live and work, but our socio-economic fabric has also been attacked by the global COVID-19 pandemic. As economies are recovering from the pandemic, evolving beyond its imminent threat, enterprises are learning and adapting to the new normal. One of the defining responses to this life-changing onset of the pandemic has been the instantaneous move to remote working. A paradigm shift in how we work. The questions though that business leaders are asking as they organise themselves in this new world are:
Can remote working solutions enable:
- A truly seamless and secure workplace?
- Digital-first safe collaboration and digital customer experiences?
- Safe and seamless connectivity to applications?
The collaborative enterprise in the digital-first era
Work from home has become the new normal. And with that, the move to cloud applications and Unified Communications is fast becoming a standard for enterprises targeting business continuity, global collaboration, and productivity. There is an increasing demand for flexibility and choice in the communications landscape with customers, employees, partners choosing to communicate through diverse platforms and devices. The future will see a change as people may or may not return to offices, leading to an evolution of the working models. Models that will require secure access to enterprise applications and collaboration tools blending in both the in-office and off-premise environments.
The enterprise of today is quickly moving from traditional PBXs to collaborative UC platforms offering the integration of video, cloud calling, meetings, messaging and instant team collaboration. With a choice of solutions available in the market, there is also an increasing trend of enterprises partnering with a managed service provider for seamless migration from legacy, change management, adoption and consolidation of disparate solutions from a variety of vendors.
Tata Communications has been successfully working with many enterprises on this transformation journey offering collaboration solutions based on Microsoft or Cisco services or a combination of the two. The collaboration services are powered by Tata Communications’ leading industry voice and network supported by an end-to-end service wrap that provides consistent performance, customer experience and seamless migration to the cloud from legacy.
Symrise, a global flavours and fragrances firm serving 6000 customers across 160 countries was grappling with a mixed bag of legacy tools making it difficult for the company to keep its operations in step around the world, especially in countries where Internet performance was a concern. Strategy meetings and quick decision making were among the worst affected. A fully managed Cisco-powered integrated Hosted Calling and Webex Meeting solution from Tata Communications riding on their MPLS based Global VPN to overcome local Internet access problems is yielding great benefits especially in the COVID-19 times. The result – seamless collaboration globally and cost savings of 15% across several countries.
Digital Customer Experience with a rich omni-channel ecosystem
Like all other business operations, Contact Centres are experiencing a similar dramatic shake-up. The shifting consumer demands and changes in technology consumption is giving rise to enabling agents to work from home and an emerging omni-channel ecosystem to help meet the personalised customer demands. Eureka Forbes, a consumer goods company has seamlessly transitioned its contact centre agents to WFH, keeping the IVR updated during this period of constant change with help from Tata Communications.
We are now in a world where customer footfalls are decreasing in physical stores and enterprises are all set to redefine their omni-channel customer experience across touchpoints in this digital-first era. The Tata Communications Digital Customer Experience Platform offers this unified ecosystem to help you scale your digital experiences with tailored solutions; secure, video-enabled collaboration and commerce; and seamless access to connected applications. As a retail business, you can easily build virtual agents and a robust web-based customer engagement model. As an Automotive dealer you can personalise integrated CRM experiences with AI-assist. As a financial institution you can scale your omni-channel services with secure video augmented ID verification and AI assisted regulatory customer onboarding.
To keep up with a dynamic, fast-paced business landscape and up its game in this era of customer centricity, Personiv was looking to adopt new-age technologies that would enable it to continue maintaining its position of being a premium outsourcing provider. With Tata Communications’ Contact Center solution, they could build a stronger customer trust and loyalty with 10% rise in first call resolution and 15-20% improvement in agent efficiency.
Improving customer experiences with APIs
As an enterprise, you have no choice but to interact with your customers on their preferred channel and on their terms. Their ask is simple – satisfy me! APIs and Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) offer a way of accessing and integrating engagement channels. SMS, social, e-mail and complete solutions including AI, IoT, contact centre and business continuity help improve agility in business. For instance, with AI analytics, organisations can use predictive analytics and assess sentiments in a customer conversation. Using API-driven services and developer enablement resources, app developers and enterprises are participating in this experience economy to add communication features into your apps and business processes that connect directly with consumers and create more personalised experiences.
Tata Communications is well poised to help enterprises accelerate their transformation journey.
“By putting an API wrapper around our portfolio, we make it more accessible and easier to integrate to address specific use cases and tailored work flows…”
“Nowadays a lot of voice and messaging is being consumed by companies not traditionally in the communication space. All sorts of digital apps and services – from delivery companies and ride hailing to financial services – are adding voice to enhance their customer experience portfolio through our APIs.” says Peter Quinlan, Vice President, Business Collaboration at Tata Communications, in the 2020 UC Today Market Guide.
With voice and messaging as two core components of Tata Communications’ offerings, they can be integrated with APIs into solutions for calling, multifactor authentication, number masking, programmable voice and numbers and other conferencing and collaboration services. The new quick way for businesses to enhance efficiencies.
Trying times are not over yet. And the future holds more fluidity. As the choice and complexity of solutions and hybrid UC environments increase, it is all about choosing the best solution that fits your business need. A solution that not only takes you closer to the office of the future, which will be as versatile as the solutions driving it, but also to the combination of flexibility, performance and efficiency that enterprises need to deliver customer service excellence to the widest possible base of clients. Tata Communications’ leading network, voice and collaboration capabilities will enable organisations to embrace whatever the future holds.
Guest Blog by Smita Dave, Director of Product Marketing at Tata Communications
Smita Dave is responsible for shaping and driving key value propositions, messaging, and marketing strategy for Business Collaboration and Network Services at Tata Communications. With over two decades of experience in marketing, storytelling, and curating experiences that delight customers through a 360 degree marketing mix, Smita is passionate about bringing product, solution, and digital transformation storylines to the fore enabling customer collaboration and engagement.
Smita brings rich expertise from her earlier roles at Cisco, Ixia, Symantec and Hughes Software Systems in Enterprise marketing, Product/solutions marketing, Industry/vertical marketing, and Integrated marketing communications. She continues to author several articles, bylines, book reviews and blogs in various magazines, industry portals and social platforms.
