Conferencing crescendo

Conferencing and collaboration solutions have helped trigger a remote workplace revolution. Comms Business looks at how to capture further sales.

The global pandemic has inspired a tidal wave of home working innovations and the impact on the conferencing market has been huge. But what comes next? And how can resellers continue to maximise sales momentum in an age where video, and not just audio, is the new king of conferencing?

Justin Hamilton-Martin, sales director UK, Enreach for Service Providers, feels that as video has accelerated, audio conferencing has ‘all but collapsed’ except to offer another route into a video call. He explained “What users want from conferencing is ease-of-use, especially the younger generation who as true digital natives, expect it to ‘just work’. For instance, WebRTC — where conferencing can be accessed via any web browser with no need to download an app — is proving appealing to all generations, young or mature.”

There is still a lot of room for differentiation according to Hamilton-Martin, who advised, “Look for solutions that offer granular options, such as different packages for two, ten, fifty or more users. The channel should be able to pick and choose the components they need within a conferencing service, as well as give users the features they need, not those for which they do not want to pay. We need to get away from a one-size-fits-all mentality, but simultaneously, make differentiation easy”.

Hamilton-Martin at Enreach for Service Providers, noted, “In our personal lives, we have become accustomed to intuitive user experiences, and that needs to extend to the workplace.

“We fully expect to see more customer-facing video conferencing, especially with the growth of cloud-based ‘casual’ contact centre functionality. Anyone customer-facing is in essence in a contact centre function and it’s vital to think about the entire journey, what inbound and outbound channels are being used (beyond voice, and email), especially as many people prefer to communicate via chat tools of any type versus using audio.”

Whilst Hamilton-Martin pointed out, “If thinking about conferencing externally, then integration with a customer relationship (CRM) system should be high on the list. This can become central point for all customer engagement channels, both inbound and outbound, across voice, email, chat, SMS, social media and various apps – rather than them being siloed. This more holistic approach supports a more consistent customer journey, better information tracking, reporting and analytics.”

Hamilton-Martin, said introducing more fun into communications and collaboration in general is certainly an area in which they are interested.

“After all, with more people living in a digital workplace, anything that lightens the day has to be a good thing. Giving people simple video games while they are waiting for a meeting to start is one example that can work well to lighten the mood if the host is running late!”

This article was posted on CommsBusiness