Knocking Out Obstacles: SMBs Use UCaaS to Outfox Competitors
Lack of focus in a meeting — that's a problem that can hit a company of any size, but especially a small or medium-sized business (SMB).
To Be Fair, There Are Reasons for It
Certain unfortunate assumptions that enable it.
Like the assumption that everyone on the call has the agenda email open.
Like the assumption that they even know that the agenda email exists.
What If These Assumptions Mix With On-Premises PBX?
You know, that dinosaur that never managed to integrate a deskphone and a laptop and a PC with a voicemail and an email and an instant message?
Then this happens.
BAM!
Great employees turn into distracted daydreamers. Mere attendees instead of active collaborators who have the agenda, via a variety of communications channels, top of mind ahead of the meeting.
Can Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) Make the Difference?
Absolutely.
A collaboration using UCaaS is a focused collaboration.
Consider — just one of many possible use cases — a broadcast message (rather than just another email) sent via a single app to all the members of a team, on-site and remote, that gives an audio preview of the meeting agenda from the presenter herself. A message that:
the team can access via a virtual voicemail inbox on a mobile app
is automatically attached to an email as an MP3 file and delivered to the team’s inboxes
- arrives via an integration with a favorite productivity tool, like Slack, or like Microsoft Teams, that the team spends their day working in
These Tiny Details Are Missing From the Competitor’s On-Premises PBX
Details that put the upcoming meeting agenda — and the presenter’s vocal enthusiasm about it — again, top of mind.
For driving focus, few things free up employees to be present for a meeting like an AI virtual assistant that fields customer calls with quick answers. (Except maybe a virtual receptionist that asks them to call back in an hour. Or a Do Not Disturb feature that tells non-attending colleagues that their teammates are busy.)
Only UCaaS can do this and more — such as:
integrate video collaboration and messaging into a single experience, so the agenda, live video of all the participants, and real-time chat notes all appear on one screen
empower the meeting owner to record HD video of the entire collaboration with a click of a single button
With this recording feature alone, the SMB with UCaaS one-ups its on-premises-PBX-using competitor, creating a downloadable MP4 file for later review.
To ensure each item and team member received appropriate attention.
Or to show a new hire months from now exactly how her team came to a decision that affects the new hire herself.
Then There’s All the Ways Employees Can Take This Meeting
Desktop? Web browser? Smartphone? Tablet? All work marvelously, in or out of the office.
But should the SMB with UCaaS sing the praises in public of how much UCaaS thwarts distractions?
There are probably upsides and downsides to that.
Armed with the knowledge of all that UCaaS brings to the SMB’s collaborations, the competitor will dump their on-premises PBX.
In Turn, They’ll Collaborate Better and Achieve a Lot More
That’s the downside for the SMB.
The upside on the other hand — the talent that the UCaaS-using SMB will inevitably whisk away from the late-to-the-UCaaS-game competitor will arrive primed for a culture of focused, efficient collaboration.
So, freshly recruited to the SMB team, they’ll hit the ground running.
Read the next article in this series, Integrating Communications Into Apps: SMBs Engage UCaaS to Outsmart Competitors, now!
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