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CLOUD COMMUNICATIONS MAKES SPORTS ORGANIZATIONS CHEER

Digital Transformation

Sports organizations thrive on loyal fans. Without them, not only is the cheering section subdued, but revenues fall across the board. This is one reason sports venues and teams put fan experience in the spotlight.

But in order to cultivate fan loyalty, sports organizations need to call in a special teams unit: the contact center, with experts who have the unique ability to turn everyday spectators into passionate fans.

But to do that, they need the right tools. Cloud communications upgrades the fan experience in many ways, and with it, contact centers can deliver using emerging trends, such as omnichannel support, digital transformation and a strong social media presence.

For sports organizations, making the shift to cloud communications improves performance, leading to better relationships with fans and more merchandise and ticket sales. Consider these eight examples of how cloud communications technology can increase sports profits.

8 Ways Cloud Communications Drive Profit

1. Personalization
Integration with your CRM application enables customer service representatives to create a more personalized fan experience. Caller details are immediately presented to agents, including information on how often they attend games and whether they have season tickets.

This creates the basis for a more engaging conversation and allows agents to answer questions more quickly. Sports venues using cloud communications have received improved customer satisfaction scores on surveys, demonstrating how cloud technology creates a more positive fan experience. Remember: loyal fans buy more tickets.

2. Omnichannel support
Fans want to communicate via voice, text, emails, web chat and even social media. A contact center built on cloud communications supports all modes of communication and lets fans choose the channel they prefer.

With cloud communications, agents have a comprehensive view of the customer’s interactions in all channels – from a single screen. With access to the customer’s entire history of interaction with the company, they can get to the point faster and focus on what the customer needs resolved now. They do a better job of answering questions, and avoid spending time addressing old issues that have been answered already.

3. Improved workflow
Call routing directs requests to the right person and reduces idle time among agents. Call prioritization for season ticket holders increases loyalty.

CRM integration enables agents to complete calls more quickly, reducing overall wait times and order processing times. More sales can be completed in a day.

4. Call analytics
The data captured from contact center calls can be analyzed and used to improve operations. Busy times can be identified and staffing adjusted to reduce the wait time during peak hours.

Agents that take longer to resolve issues can be identified for additional training to improve their productivity and sales.

5. Scalability and flexibility
Because the off-season is an important time for teams to regroup, the same level of venue resources often isn’t required.

Cloud communications enables contact centers to scale up or down, thus avoiding unnecessary costs.

6. Improved training for new representatives
Customer calls can be recorded and used to train new sales and customer service agents.

Training is more effective, and agents become more productive in a shorter period of time.

7. Reduced costs and lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Cloud communications reduces maintenance costs and requires less IT support from your internal staff. One sports organization estimated savings on managed services costs of at least $25,000 per year.

Other research shows TCO can be reduced by approximately 50%.

8. More successful campaigns
To be effective, campaigns must reach the right people at the right time, through the right channels.

List segmentation, automated data imports and managed list quotas are just some of the tools that can create more successful campaigns.

The technology behind the cloud contact center

Despite the critical role contact centers play in driving profit for sports organizations, venues are not contact centers. Thus, the technology needs to be simple. Fortunately, making the shift to cloud communications doesn’t have to be complex.

For a robust cloud solution that’s easy to install and maintain, here are some features to look for:

Customizable with the ability to add new features and apps with minimal effort as your business grows and needs change.
User friendly management tools such as visual interfaces that provide drag-and-drop tools for quick and easy campaign management from anywhere and simple deployment of call scripting allows non-technical staff to use the system to its full potential.
Seamless integration with external systems and databases, such as CRM systems.
Multiple deployment options that allow you to adopt new capabilities and move to the cloud at your own pace.
Easy employee training that rarely requires repeat sessions.

Cloud communications gives sports contact centers a new level of capability when it comes to increasing sales and profit. An investment in the cloud has a high return – one that gives fans what they want, makes your team more productive and generates more revenue while saving money on costs.

Source:Mitel

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NEXT-GEN TECHNOLOGY: THE SECRET TO BUSINESS AGILITY

Digital Transformation

Business agility: It’s a fundamental characteristic of successful companies. They seize opportunities and quickly pivot to new product lines and markets. But it doesn’t just happen. Today, agility requires digital transformation, which is why IT teams must be forward-looking, always ready to embrace next-generation technology.

Many of them are. According to Nemertes Research, 44 percent of organizations say “improved agility for IT” is the top driver in their adoption of cloud communications. That’s up from 29 percent a year ago.

Of course, there are obstacles to face. One is that it’s not always easy to move every service a business requires to the cloud. Some, for example, need access to databases and proprietary systems. Often, an organization must keep some services on its existing infrastructure, while moving only a few key applications online.

One of the cloud’s most important benefits is that it allows for the easy addition of new apps, services and licenses, both fostering agility and spurring innovation. While today some customer-focused cloud apps aren’t as flexible as businesses need them to be, the next-generation of cloud communications technology promises to expand their capabilities.

Those more agile and open systems will enable businesses to quickly deploy innovative communications apps, tap into developer resources and create a wide range of custom solutions.

When evaluating next-gen cloud platforms, here’s what IT teams should require.

Off-the-shelf apps. Every business uses a range of communications services every day, including collaboration and workflow tools. To adapt to each organization’s needs, most will require only modest changes. Once they’re in place, users should be able to easily download these apps and put them to work for themselves and for their customers. Ideally, a cloud platform should offer a marketplace that makes hundreds of services available on demand to any employee in the organization, opening the door for more productivity and new machine-to-machine and machine-to-people interactions.. And your IT department shouldn’t have to spend time managing licenses or supporting the software.

Accessibility. Apple’s App Store is a prime example of why there’s so much to be gained from a platform that’s available to both developers and users. Everyone can benefit from the work and creativity of the developer community, from streamlining workflows to transforming the customer experience, and more.

Custom apps. One-size-fits-all is a bad recipe for business differentiation. To create exceptional value for their customers, businesses must be able to build apps that fit the specific needs of their employees, individual market segments and internal workflows.

Quick to market. Intensely competitive markets necessitate significantly shorter product development cycles. Product teams want a platform that can enable them to develop an idea, validate the concept and deliver it to market in as little as a few weeks.

Scalability. From the beginning, the ability to scale up and down has been a key benefit of cloud communications. Next-generation platforms should expand on that promise by acting as a gateway to other systems. Such platforms will bridge the gap between existing infrastructure and the cloud.

Vertical apps. Communications needs vary by industry or customer group. A physician’s office might need an appointment reminder service to notify nurses and doctors as well as patients. Meanwhile, a hotel might tailor its mobile app to provide more perks to the elite members of its awards program. The next-gen platform should allow IT developers to modify existing apps and deploy them with little effort.

These are just a few of the requirements IT teams should demand in a next-generation technology platform. More flexible cloud communications will ensure their businesses can innovate, differentiate and monetize products and services – all with less risk and at a lower cost.

Source:Mitel

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HOW THE CLOUD IS REINVENTING COMMUNICATIONS

Digital Transformation

Door-to-door salespeople vanished into history years ago, as the telephone allowed them to reach prospects without leaving their desks, thus saving their company both time and money. Today, salespeople can take advantage of even more ways to connect, using text and email, for example, in addition to the phone. Increasingly, customers and colleagues aren’t down the hall or even in the same city anymore. So, salespeople conduct more meetings across time zones and geographic borders – often while working remotely themselves.

This ease of collaboration is the future of work, made possible by cloud communications. These systems allow organizations to integrate tools such as voice, video, messaging and email with essential business applications. By enabling businesses to collaborate more easily in real-time with customers and partners, the cloud is reinventing the way we communicate and improving the customer experience.

The Cloud Is The Future Of Communications

The cloud now enables customization and personalization that was inconceivable just a short while ago. “What once was static is now dynamic,” notes Joshua Haslett, Mitel’s vice president of Strategic Innovations. With the push of a software update, businesses gain access to new features over time, “so your perceived value of the investment you made increases, not decreases,” he says.

More than a convenient and low-cost conduit for voice and email, the cloud allows diverse applications and devices to communicate. Using open source code, businesses and/or cloud vendors can develop APIs to connect a range of devices and platforms. Using apps and websites, both internal and external stakeholders can communicate quickly and effectively.
For example, with the increasing use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in manufacturing, rich, real-time data flows from equipment via the cloud to internal process experts. And as software develops, this will move from one-way communications to a more interactive process with IoT devices.

Greater Flexibility Means Faster Decision-Making

Remember our salesperson? To deliver a deal, they may need to negotiate while in an airport using their mobile device, share contracts via email and hash out product details with colleagues in a video call.

With mobility now ubiquitous, more tasks are performed using smartphones. A mobile device untethers workers from their desks, while cloud communications puts the utility of traditional desktop computers at their fingertips, wherever they are. This improves decision-making because employees – from the salesperson to the CEO – can access key data from wherever they happen to be at that moment.

Another advantage: As business needs evolve, so can the tools they require to collaborate efficiently. New applications can be deployed with minimal IT involvement.

Organizations that aim to improve collaboration, productivity and decision-making may want to consider deploying cloud communications. The following questions can help you decide.

Getting Ready

In order to reap the benefits of cloud communications, you must first assess your needs and define how the cloud can improve productivity and reduce costs.

Growth. Is your organization expanding? Moving across international boundaries and time zones? Can the cloud make communications easier by connecting disparate software and hardware?

Collaboration bottlenecks. Identify how and where your employees – and external partners – need to better communicate and share data. What are the current bottlenecks in decision-making? Can you integrate business applications with your current communications technology?

Know your users. Choose collaboration tools that support how your business actually works. “Start by having an honest conversation with employees about their needs,” advises Jon Brinton, president of Mitel’s Cloud Division. “Once you understand how and why employees use collaboration tools, you’ll have an easier time making decisions about which tools to keep and which to cut.” Brinton also recommends choosing platform-agnostic tools that allow you to customize collaboration solutions for both the individual department and the individual employee.

Flexibility. Choose a vendor that focuses on applications and functionality, not hardware and boxes. Find a partner that can help you get to the next level, as befits your organization’s needs, budget and strategy.

Source:Mitel

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SEAMLESS COLLABORATION IS THE FUTURE OF RETAIL SUPPLY CHAINS

Today’s consumer wants a retail shopping experience that’s fast, easy, flexible and on their own terms. For instance, some want to shop online and pick up their purchase in a store. Others expect items to be delivered on the day and time that’s most convenient for them. And many consumers like to research products at home before buying them in person.

Ideally, consumers want retailers to deliver a unified shopping experience. “Customers don’t think in channels anymore,” Mike Griswold, research vice president of Gartner’s Consumer Value Chain team, said at the Retail Industry Leaders Association conference last month.

This shift in expectations means retailers are dealing with more complexity, just as the industry is facing strong headwinds. Toys “R” Us, for example, is folding because heavy debt prevented it from executing changes that would have made it more competitive, including improving the shopping experience, both online and in-store.

Meeting customer expectations, such as viewing inventory online and shipping purchases according to their wishes, can only happen when the retail supply chain is structured the right way. To ensure customer satisfaction, both you and your suppliers must be on the same page, which means adopting collaboration technology.

But collaboration is a challenge. The typical retailer supply chain is large and complex, often extending across state and international borders. Getting a product from Supplier A’s warehouse to the customer’s doorstep also involves numerous distribution partners.

Everyone along the chain must be able to connect and collaborate seamlessly. To power these connections, retailers need communications and collaboration tools that work anywhere, on any device and in all channels. Cloud communications makes that happen with collaboration tools that connect people in different locations, time zones and organizations with a single click.

Here’s a few of the collaboration technologies retailers should consider integrating into their supply chain workflow.

Interoperability

To meet the real-time demands of consumers, retailers have to expand beyond a handful of warehouses. They need stores and distribution facilities in or close to every major metropolitan area, but the difficulty of collaboration increases with every new phone system that’s added. Be sure to work with a vendor that offers flexible phones that can connect with a range of third-party platforms.

Audio, Web And Video Conferencing

Whether based at headquarters or in a warehouse, everyone along the supply chain is on the move, making mobile communications a requirement. With embedded communications, you can quickly snap messaging, voice calling, video calling, presence and location directly into your business productivity mobile app. Critical information is always available right when you need it, and employees have a consistent communications experience in and out of the office.

Mobility

Although meetings are a fact of life in every industry, joining virtual conferences can be frustrating. Attendees often have to open multiple apps to obtain the right passcode and then dial into the call. But with unified communications, one app and one click save time and vastly improve the ability to collaborate and share information.

The Internet Of Things

Retailers don’t just need their human employees to collaborate with each other. They also need humans to connect with smart robots at warehouses. By integrating communications with IoT, retailers can access key data insights early, enabling them to optimize prices, reroute deliveries and bring goods to the consumer faster.

API Integration

Information silos create some of the most significant breakdowns in the supply chain. They can cause delays in learning about critical production and delivery issues, which lead to unhappy customers. Eliminate these headaches by using APIs to integrate supply chain applications and communications, so your team will know instantly if there are problems.

A streamlined supply chain that makes it easy for retailers to connect and collaborate with their partners and vendors allows you to meet ever-increasing consumer expectations. In turn, it makes retailers more competitive and less susceptible to the brutal dynamics in the market.

As Retail Dive notes: “The big takeaway is, improving one’s supply chain while differentiating oneself from other companies is critical for retailers seeking to avoid bankruptcy. In 2017, about 40 retailers filed for bankruptcy, and it remains to be seen how 2018 will shape up.”

Source:Mitel