Invest in unified communication systems, firms told

MANILA, Philippines - Business firms must invest in unified communications systems in order to better to respond to customer needs and grow their client base, officials of business collaboration and communications solutions provider, Avaya said.

Avaya country manager Edgar Doctolero told reporters in a roundtable discussion yesterday that to keep customers satisfied with a service or a product, firms need to work on integrating their communications systems to better respond to customers’ needs.

He said that even after the purchase of a product or a service, customers would still need the services of the firm, regarding how to operate the product for instance, which would require a unified communications system.

“The lifeline of business is the customer so you have to provide services to them even after they buy the product,” he said.

He said that for instance, while there are contact centers now which customers can call for their concerns regarding a product they purchased, it is not enough to have an agent to take the call.

“By integrating present services, you will need to have an expert [from the firm] which the agent can link to the customer to answer the questions,” he said.

Jojo Abundancia, solutions and product manager for unified communications for Asia Pacific in Avaya, said in the same event that as more and more customers become active in social media by recounting their experience with a particular service or product purchased, integrating communications systems becomes even more important for firms.

He said customers who call contact centers for a concern regarding a product and service but are not given a response, will be very unhappy and could post that in their blogs and social networking sites, which their contacts and friends will also be able to read.

Given the popularity of social networking sites, firms without unified communication systems can lose not just one customer but potential customers as well, he added.

“If you are not happy and you get an agent that does not make you happy, then you forget about that product. And in this time, you can tweet about that so it is very critical for enterprise to manage that,” he said.