I caught up with Sarita Fernandes, VP of Product Management, Vonage, in a recent interview. We touched on several topics, including Vonage’s extensive portfolio of integrations with third-party platforms. Third-party integrations oftentimes foster more enhanced customer experiences and could lead to increased employee productivity, too.
There are plenty of other implications and known benefits of integrating a cloud communications system with CRMs, collaboration, and productivity apps under the umbrella of a unified platform. Customers reap the benefits of advanced features for contact management and call handling, control, as well as real-time logging, which can provide a real boost to a company’s bottom line if leveraged with care.
Fernandes further elaborated, adding, thanks to the sheer amount of apps that exist, toggling from one app to another can get complicated, which is why an integrated approach to communications is so necessary. And accessing all that data can get tricky, too. “Data silos have emerged as a result,” making unified access to data coming from multiple sources another critical element of having solid workplace communications.
Ensuring this unified experience comes with its challenges, however, Fernandes said. Vonage does tailor each of its solutions to fit the workflows of individuals and specific departments within enterprises, though, a clever workaround, an approach that many companies now realize they should put into practice. “The companies that thrive today focus on customer experience and making it seamless.”
Integrations with business applications are also a big differentiator for Vonage and its network of channel partners, helping them to drive customer productivity and success for their customers. Back in June, Vonage announced a new partnership with leading IPaaS provider Zapier. Since the release, Vonage unified communications customers and Vonage Platform API services customers have gained access to more than 2,000 of the world’s leading business applications and productivity tools.
In May, Vonage said it would partner with digital workflow management company, ServiceNow. The relationship, set to deliver a unified, contextual employee and customer experience, is based on data as well as workflows. It makes integrating with CRM systems and other systems across the enterprise, simpler. There are embedded call controls accessible via the platform’s contact pad – ensuring users never have to leave the solution.
Vonage seems to be in the business of making the customer experience less painful for everyone, which is a great position to be in during the COVID-19 era. Empowering businesses to accelerate their digital transformation during this challenging time, Vonage is enabling the type of business continuity, remote work, and remote delivery of services that is so critical in today’s environment.
Extending the use of APIs and for packaged and custom integrations to the systems customers use every day, is key, according to Fernandes. She shared – this is what Vonage customers have demanded during a time where more than 50 percent of the U.S. workforce now works from home, according to Vice News. Pre-pandemic, that number was a mere 15 percent.
This means that providing the best of breed technologies could lead to home-based workers providing customers with the best possible service constitutes as another yet equal half of the equation called customer and employee satisfaction. Fernandes closed by telling me, Vonage continues to add to its list of over 2,000 integrations. Eventually, she added, Vonage wants to integrate across the entire enterprise and support the various modes of operations that continue to emerge.
