The detail is in the data.

Whether it’s voice calls, chats, SMS, online video meetings, emails, or data that flows within various other communications channels, the rich content contained within has a new and high value.

There was once a time when all customer or employee communication history was seen as just that: historical information, conversation, and sentiment which simply evaporated into the ether the moment an interaction ended.

Not today, of course. Today, brands, organisations and enterprises not only understand the critical nature of communicative data, they now have the technological means to capture, curate, analyse and archive it for a myriad different purposes; both contemporaneously and in the future, and all nicely integrated with their UCaaS solution.

Business intelligence, regulatory compliance, dispute resolution, workforce continuity and training, even as a revenue-generating sales aid; that archived data is capable of delivering a significant return on multiple fronts.

Enabling and supporting the automated smarts that make it all happen are the latest must-have components of any modern communications stack.

Pick the right provider, and the benefits are everywhere.

“Regarding archiving, businesses fall into one of two categories. There are the ‘must haves’ and the ‘should haves’ – the former need data archiving to comply with industry regulations, such as in the  healthcare or legal sector; the latter is any organisation that wants to leverage data to enhance service levels or to ensure business continuity,” says Deepan Hari, UC Archiving Business Director at global cloud communications provider Intermedia, whose powerful, all-in-one voice, video, chat, file sharing, and contact center platform, Intermedia Unite®, makes smart automated archiving available for its business users.

“Every communication has value over and above what it was originally intended to achieve. Leveraging that value via an organised, intuitive and fully automatic set of processes has the potential to positively transform the way any organisation does business.”

In Intermedia’s case in particular, the benefits are three-fold.

First, its customers’ and employees’ data is retained in context; meaning voice calls and online meetings are stored as voice and video files and can be played back, and emails and messages are archived in full thread form so they can be re-read in the same way they were originally written.

Second, superior speed and scalability enables archived data of any age to be searched quickly and easily: no reindexing of old ‘cold storage’ files required, and instant access to millions of documents if necessary.

And third, clever identity mapping gives anyone reviewing data a 360-degree holistic view of all communications linked to a particular customer or user ID, email address or number: providing a full picture of all conversations regardless of the channel.

But what precise value is there in that kind of automatic omnichannel data archiving?

Well, some types of enterprises are increasingly compelled by regulations to retain certain categories of communication data across channels. Financial Services firms, for example, must comply with myriad such regulations and face significant sanctions if they fail to do so. Where once those communications were almost always in paper or email format, the industry now also communicates with clients and partners via their preferred channels, such as SMS and chat messaging applications.

Then there is the ability for customer service agent and sales team supervisors to review communications and provide relevant feedback and coaching to help improve performance or resolve disputes.

Finally, archived communication data can assist HR departments in times of turnover to support the seamless transfer of institutional knowledge to new employees, or in response to contentious employee claims, often helping to avert expensive litigation.

“As well as the actual content of archived communications, there is also huge value to be derived by harnessing the power of analytics and AI to help simplify analysis of the data; things such as word clouds and topic views that can be used to identify key themes within conversations,” says Hari.

“We are laying the groundwork to help organizations understand what is most important to their customers as well as what initiatives or approaches are stimulating customer activity most effectively.

“Then there is sentiment analysis too. Being able to understand the tone of customer interactions can be equally as valuable as, say, knowing why so many people make contact at a particular time or for a particular reason. The power of that kind of wide-ranging customer knowledge and business intelligence cannot be over-stated. It helps organisations make informed business decisions that can have a significant impact on efficiency, productivity, security, compliance and, ultimately, profitability.”

In addition to protecting an organisation’s valuable business information in one central, secure, easy to search and retrieve location, securely storing business-critical information through digital archiving is the first step in creating a rich knowledge repository that, when layered with Generative AI, will allow users to better tap into the collective intelligence of the organisation.

It seems well-curated data really does have the potential to punch above its weight.

And that’s a thought worth holding onto…



from UC Today https://ift.tt/8ES4Hga