Unified Communications as a Service has emerged as the must-have technology for the new generation, capable of empowering a new era of workers who no longer exist specifically within the office environment. Through UCaaS, companies can deliver cloud-based technology to staff members wherever they are and allow for true business continuity.
Of course, just like any investment, you can only know for certain which parts of your UCaaS stack are delivering results when you measure the right metrics. Examining the full outcomes of your UCaaS strategy through a consistent strategy for quality assurance and analytics will help you to leverage the full benefits of your tech.
So, what are the metrics you need to measure?
Quality of Service (QoS)
Quality of Service is probably the most obvious metric to consider in a UCaaS system, but that doesn’t make it any less important. In the past, the only thing you’d need to keep an eye on is your call quality. In other words, where you delivering enough high-quality audio and avoiding any dropped calls as much as possible?
Now that we’re in a new age of communication, voice is still a crucial consideration, but it’s only one aspect. If you want to track Quality of Service (QoS) completely, you’ll also need to track the performance of your video conferencing tools and anything else you use to connect with customers or bring your team members together.
How much is lag, jitter, and other issues making it difficult for people to connect with your business? How easy is it to set up an effective call?
Employee Adoption
Employee adoption levels are becoming an essential part of ensuring a good UCaaS experience. In a world where hybrid employment strategies are becoming more common, you need your in-office and remote workers to be working on the exact same technology. If your remote staff start to you other assets outside of the workplace, this could lead to a loss of information, and silos in your company.
If you notice that adoption levels aren’t as high as they should be, by checking the time your staff spends on a specific tool, you can offer help. Extra training and support could make it easier to align your team. Alternatively, you could ask your employees what they need to perform more effectively on the software you want them to use.
Employee Engagement
Engaged and satisfied employees lead to happier customers. Measuring employee engagement is much easier with today’s UCaaS solutions. You can see how engaged employees are by seeing how frequently they set their status to “active” on the messaging tools your company uses. You could also examine things like the number of meetings you have in a week, and how many people show up to those conversations.
With a more open UCaaS environment, you’ll also be able to integrate additional tools that allow you to track the engagement of your team. For instance, workforce management tools can give you the option to see how quickly employees are completing tasks. Some companies even decide to set up wallboards where their staff members can compare their performance to other leaders in the company and win awards for great outcomes.
Alerts and Problems
Whether you’re running a fully cloud-based UCaaS system or something more hybrid in nature, you need to have a constant overview of everything that’s happening for your teams. A full-service monitoring solution combined with your UCaaS offering will help you to keep track of any alerts or problems that might be harming your business operations.
You can see straight away if a tool in your UCaaS software isn’t working as it should, or if a data centre has gone down, reducing your ability to perform. Proactive alerting can immediately get the right information to the correct engineer to solve the problem.
Once you’re getting proactive alerts, measure how long it takes to respond to those issues.
Peak Times
With the right UCaaS solution, you can see when you’re using more bandwidth within your UCaaS system. This could help you to distribute resources more effectively. When are the times when your employees are most likely to be active on their collaboration tools, and when do they use VoIP calls more frequently? Are there groups that use one service more often than another?
Finding peak utilisation times will reduce the risk of various quality issues that might come from a service that’s stretched too thin, like latency or dropped calls.
You might also notice that productivity from your employees starts to drop during peak times if they don’t have enough support on-hand. This could indicate that you need extra talent onboard.
Compliance
How much are your employees committing to your compliance strategy? Is information always stored where it’s supposed to be? Are all of your calls and conversations encrypted, and are you storing the right data at the correct times? Checking compliance metrics will be essential to protecting the security and privacy of both your business and customers.
You may also need to keep an eye on employee behaviour to determine whether additional compliance measures are needed. For instance, if your team members are logging into their UCaaS solution more frequently from a mobile device than a laptop, do you need a mobile device management system in place?
Collaboration Time
Finally, today’s UCaaS systems aren’t just about connecting voice and video calls. The best solutions also come with technology that allows your teams to work more effectively together on projects. With the right services, your employees can join forces on a host of projects. You can often see things like the number of messages sent or meetings scheduled through your collaboration tools.
Alternatively, simply talk to your employees and ask them how easy it is for them to collaborate when they’re working in both an office and remote environment. Do they feel just as comfortable joining meetings from home, or is something missing?
