Sell UM for Customer Retention

Telecomweb writes about how enterprises are using technology mainly for customer retention.

Results of a new survey say hosted communications services, video, unified messaging, and voice over IP deployments are on the rise in the enterprise and contact-center environments. "What's particularly interesting is that, among those who had not yet deployed unified messaging, the primary reason listed was 'no perceived benefit.' Clearly, vendors must do a better job of showing customers measurable ROI, which we think is possible if unified-messaging applications are offered as part of a broader, 'all-in-one' unified communications architecture." "Our survey results showed that the increasing need to improve customer loyalty was the main trend impacting businesses over the past year," Staples concludes. "This is in line with other aspects of our survey showing the uptake of relatively new technologies, such as video, to both personalize and make more convenient the customer experience. This means companies are demanding more flexible, highly customizable applications -- the kind that can be created and modified in-house. Business-communications solutions that use open standards, are software-based, and can be easily managed and customized are the ones that will fit this bill moving forward."