How does your company communicate?
In the new age of UC, there’s more to think about than just call quality. You need to ensure that you have an end-to-end solution that provides your employees, business, and customers with the experiences that they need.
From state of the art contact centre solutions to simple but immersive collaboration tools, a true UC suite is crucial to the modern workforce.
Fortunately, there are plenty of vendors investing in the growth of their UC solutions. RingCentral and Nextiva offer a range of excellent products and services to empower the modern business. The question is, which one should you choose?
Nextiva vs. RingCentral: User Experience
Employees can’t make the most of your new unified communications software if it’s too difficult for them to use. Adoption is one of the most common issues that businesses face when implementing new tools; that’s why user experience should always be a critical consideration for a UC 3.0 platform.
Nextiva brings your communication strategy together through their NextOS platform – a system that combines all of your team and customer communication services in the same place. The environment works seamlessly with your existing toolset, and there are plenty of advanced integrations available so that you can customise your experience. From customer journey mapping to integrated Wikis, notifications, and automation, everything you need exists on the same pane of glass.
Additionally, Nextiva supports seamless global communication on any device, allowing companies to transition their old-fashioned PBX systems into robust cloud-based solutions. Features for exceptional user experience from Nextiva include:
- Global calling for distributed teams
- Combined customer and team communication apps in the same environment
- Hosted voice on the cloud
- Advanced contact centre solutions and call routing
- Interoperability with your favourite tools
- UC clients for all devices
RingCentral’s flagship UC product is the RingCentral Office, an environment which combines video, meetings, phone communication, and more into a simple solution. The environment is easy to use, and companies can import their existing phone numbers, which means that you don’t have to start building your market presence again from scratch. Through RingCentral Office, companies can access simple, cutting-edge technology that allows them to collaborate and communicate anywhere.
RingCentral Office includes more than 50 UC features to choose from, including collaboration tools and video conferencing. There’s a single administration portal, which makes it easier to remotely manage new extensions and lines. Additionally, with Global Office from RingCentral, there’s no need to worry about aligning your users around the world. Employees located anywhere can connect over the same unified network across more than 100 countries.
All international calls are free for your organisation, and you can reduce the expense associated with on-premises PBX hardware in a snap. Features for amazing user experience from RingCentral include:
- Global office across 100 countries
- Cloud-based communication
- Single pane of glass UC environment
- Single administration portal
- Easy number provisioning (keep your old number)
- Interoperability with a range of tools
- Advanced contact centre and team communication features
Nextiva vs. RingCentral: Team Experience
Recently, we’ve seen a massive explosion in the importance of team collaboration within the workforce. If you want to get ahead of the competition, then you need to make sure that your employees can work seamlessly together.
Nextiva supports the team experience through their “beta” Cospace collaboration app. Designed to help groups communicate more efficiently via file sharing tools, video conferencing, and task management, the Cospace environment brings everything you need for real-time collaboration into one environment. Companies can easily track projects and productivity, and calls and conversations are logged in an easy-to-search space.
Team collaboration options like video and audio conferencing or instant messaging are available one-on-one or in group settings. Features for team experience from Nextiva include:
- Video and audio conferencing
- Persistent chat and presence
- Easy search and task management
- Assign and track projects
- File sharing and storage
RingCentral combines the functionality of RingCentral office with their “Glip” collaboration system for teams. Intended to improve the efficiency of the business workplace, RingCentral Glip is a unified communication software that enables quick and simple instant messaging, video chat, and file sharing in the same seamless environment.
Company users can IM their team members for a quick conversation or launch a video conference within seconds. It’s also possible to share and collaborate on files that are saved to the same unified knowledgebase on the cloud. Like Nextiva, RingCentral Glip also helps with the management and creation of tasks. You can assign specific projects to workers based on their skills, and even align tasks with your employees’ calendars.
All of RingCentral’s collaboration tools also work alongside your favourite apps so that you can get the most out of your team’s workflow. Team experience features include:
- Video and audio conferencing
- Presence and real-time chat
- Easy search functions and task management
- Task assigning and project management
- File sharing and storage
- Integrations with apps
Nextiva vs. RingCentral: Customer Experience
As crucial as it is to keep your teams on the right track, it’s also essential to make sure that you’re delivering the right experiences to your target customers too. Today’s UC apps need to integrate with state-of-the-art contact centre solutions to combine front and back-end communication.
With Nextiva, you can manage customer and sales support through a single CRM workspace that integrates with your UC environment. Tracking and analysing the customer journey is easy, with analytics that give you an insight into the full lifecycle. You can score your leads, get an insight into sentiment with artificial intelligence, and even access real-time suggestions on how to help customers during interactions.
Automation options are available through the NextSTEP Rules engine that allow employees to identify happy and unhappy customers and automate actions to help move them along the sales funnel. You can also route and escalate issues based on customer behaviours and context. Customer experience features include:
- Omni-channel contact centre management
- Call analytics and reporting
- AI insights and sentiment analysis
- Automated actions based on customer behaviour
- Lead scoring and call routing
RingCentral also helps businesses to transform their customer engagement strategy with state-of-the-art omni-channel contact centre technology. You can connect with your customer on the channel they like most, routing them to the agent that’s best-equipped to answer their questions. All the while, real-time analytics are available to provide insights into the behaviours of your target audience.
Because RingCentral integrates with your existing CRM systems, you can draw contextual information from apps like Salesforce to provide employees with more details when they’re asking customer queries. What’s more, the RingCentral contact centre offers a range of inbound and outbound call centre options, so you can build an environment that suits you.
With the RingCentral Workforce Optimisation Tools, it’s also possible for business leaders to guide their agents through customer conversations, and keep staff working as efficiently as possible. Features for customer experience include:
- Omni-channel contact centre
- AI analytics and insights
- WFO (Workforce Optimisation) software included
- Integrations with your favourite tools
- In-depth routing abilities
Nextiva vs. RingCentral: Business Experience
Finally, all companies need a UC solution that they can rely on to give them exceptional service every day. Both RingCentral and Nextiva are committed to providing global resiliency and dependability for their target audience.
Nextiva offers 8 points of presence, a guaranteed 99.999% uptime, and carrier-grade data centres to give users peace of mind. You can access real-time network status updates and get support from the award-winning in-house service team if you need extra help. In terms of security, Nextiva excels with ISO 20071 certifications, biometric checkpoints and more.
The Nextiva tools are protected with TLS and SRTP encryption between all endpoints to keep your privacy safeguarded. Additionally, Nextiva’s communication solutions are HIPAA and SOC 2 compliant. For companies that need extra support, there are also professional services available to guide you through making the most of your new UC system. What’s more, the pricing is simple and transparent, starting at $20 per month per user. Business experience features include:
- 99.999% guaranteed uptime
- 8 points of presence across carrier-grade data centres
- ISO 27001 certification
- TLS and SRTP encryption
- HIPAA and SOC 2 compliant
- Professional services available
- Transparent pricing
RingCentral has designed a highly open and flexible UC solution so that companies can use the applications they need out-of-the-box or adjust them to suit their needs. The RingCentral Connect platform offers a family of RESTful APIs so that you can adapt your communication strategy to suit your specific needs.
For those who need support making the most of the RingCentral portfolio, there are plenty of professional services available, including planning, implementation, and project management. What’s more, the cloud-based technology offered by RingCentral was designed from the ground up to provide users with the carrier-grade reliability that they need. Like Nextiva, RingCentral offers 99.999% uptime as a guarantee and offers full 24/7 monitoring of their services.
When it comes to privacy and security, RingCentral goes above and beyond with ISO 27001 standards, PCI-DSS level 3 compliance, and SSAE 16 standards. Communications are fully encrypted, and automated fraud detection is built into the core of the technology to give businesses complete peace of mind. Business experience features include:
- Automatic fraud detection
- 99.999% uptime guarantee
- ISO 27001 certification
- SSAE 16 and PCI-DSS level 3 compliance
- Full encryption for communications
- Various professional services available
Will you choose Nextiva or RingCentral for your UC strategy? Let us know in the comments below.
