How to Meet Changing Customer Needs with UCaaS

Companies come in all shapes and sizes—no two are exactly alike. The same can be said about their business requirements for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). Whether they’re looking for better ways to connect a remote workforce or cost-saving opportunities, your ability to provide customized solutions that meet your customers' unique and ongoing communication needs is critical. On top of that, your customers’ needs change over time—what they need today isn’t necessarily what they’ll need six months or a year from now.

Recommending the right mix of UCaaS to your customers—both now and in the future—starts with having the right service offerings available for your customers. And that means partnering with the right UCaaS service provider that offers the solutions your customers want.

Changing Customer Needs Are Driving the Demand for UCaaS

Market research shows that the global UCaaS market is expected to reach more than $37 billion by 2022.

Businesses—large and small—are increasingly aware of the transformative benefits of cloud communications, including the cost benefits of switching from CapEx to OpEx, enhanced efficiencies, and more. Market research shows that the global UCaaS market is expected to reach more than $37 billion by 2022.

Additionally, the need for mobility and collaboration in business is growing, especially among millennials, who are increasingly making up more of the workforce. If you need proof, consider this study by Dell, which yielded some important insights into how the growing number of remote workers affects businesses’ communication and collaboration needs.

The study noted that 91 percent of the businesses support employees who work from remote locations or their homes, and 83 percent expect the number of remote workers in their organizations to increase in the coming year. So businesses are looking for highly personalized solutions to meet the growing communication and collaboration needs of their workforces.

This trend has forced managed service providers (MSPs) and value-added resellers (VARs) to make a somewhat difficult decision: Venture down a new path by adding UCaaS solutions to keep customers happy and take advantage of new business opportunities. Or continue without the desired UCaaS solutions and risk losing current and prospective customers.

UCaaS Helps You Address Customers’ Changing Needs

Because you work with customers who have very diverse and changing needs, gaining an in-depth understanding of UCaaS solutions and how they map to their needs can help you address them in the following ways:

 UCaaS is fully customizable.

Offering a variety of solutions that can be mixed, matched and customized to meet the very diverse, changing needs of customers and prospects can make all the difference when servicing your customers and attracting new ones.

 UCaaS is scalable.

Let’s say you have a customer with a large remote workforce, but they have seasonal ups and downs. Scalability of potential solutions would be essential for them. UCaaS would enable you to customize their offering based on their continually changing needs.

 UCaaS plays well with other solutions.

UCaaS can work in tandem with other solutions already in place. For example, let’s say you have a customer with a strong desire to go with a cloud-based solution, but they just made a significant investment in on-premise infrastructure. UCaaS would allow you to create a hybrid solution that provides them the benefits of UCaaS and works with their existing infrastructure.

 UCaaS is mobile friendly.

Finally, UCaaS enables you to meet the growing mobile needs of your customers and their employees. If you have customers with a large-scale, mobile-first environment, you would be able to provide a UCaaS solution that would work with a variety of mobile devices.

Given the variety of scenarios you’re likely to encounter with your customers and potential customers, picking a provider that allows you to build customized UCaaS solutions is critical.

How to Pick the Right UCaaS Provider

Unified communications (UC), particularly cloud-based UC, is new territory for many MSPs and VARs. That makes understanding which UC partner, platform and services to go with a bit daunting.

Providing UCaaS solutions requires a personalized approach to meet your customers’ unique and changing communication and collaboration needs.

There are many options out there when picking a UCaaS provider, whether you decide to go the white label route or with some other type of partner program. Here are a few things to consider when choosing a UCaaS provider and the UCaaS solutions to offer.

Go with a provider that:

• Stays at the forefront of the industry and continually offers new or enhanced services
• Allows you to offer a suite of UCaaS solutions as well as individual services like Hosted PBX, VoIP and SIP Trunking
• Provides in-depth training and support
• Has a proven track record in helping its partners achieve success as well as a strong reputation for high-quality products and services

Go with solutions that:

• Offer your customers choices that make sense for their businesses and how they work
• Are scalable
• Can be integrated into hybrid strategies
• Provide for customized, high-quality customer experiences

Providing UCaaS solutions in today’s market requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach. Rather, it requires a more personalized approach to meet your customers’ unique and changing communication and collaboration needs.

Learn how UCaaS can meet and exceed the needs and expectations of your customers and prospects today. Click here to download our How to Become a One-Stop-Shop for Your Customers by Offering UCaaS.