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For many years’ businesses have been migrating to an infrastructure light architecture. Virtualisation, centralised Data Centres and Cloud Services have made this possible but historically the quidproquo was that the network had to be sufficient speed to meet the demands of centralised applications. However, cheaper internet bandwidth, increasing Cloud applications and Software Defined Networks now allow this to become a reality. Pay for what you use and utilise the network based on application requirements. This has allowed businesses to realise the savings that have been discussed for years. For more information on how Soniza can help with your network strategy contact us now.

Many companies are now selling Internet calls as part of a solution for businesses. Companies selling this claim that voice quality is 'as good' or 'even better' than traditional methods. There are however a few things to bear in mind before taking this leap. First things first, the internet does not support Quality of Service. Therefore you can not guarantee quality when sending a voice packet over the Internet. There are emerging codecs which state that they allow for this latency and therefore call quality is not compromised, but be cautious about these claims. The speed at which is Internet operates has many dependencies and just because it worked in tests on a Sunday afternoon, doesn't mean you get the same service as a Monday morning when 5,000 customers are trying to get through and everyone across the country logs onto their computer at work to download the emails from the weekend and check Facebook. The second point is user experience, while I.T. and services may not mind a bit of jitter on the line or to have to reconnect when the call drops, wider staff won't tolerate this, and they shouldn't either. Then there are customers. We all know how hard it is getting them in the first place, applying sub standard call quality may push them onto your competitors. So while the claims to move your calls to the Internet will save £££. Understand the risks, get independent advice and test, test, test it thoroughly with a worst case scenario. For more information please contact us.

The cost of existing customer engagement is high for most organisations. To have a contact centre is expensive. So what’s the best way to cut down on mundane customer interactions. Proactive Engagement! Don't wait for your customers to contact you, contact them before they even know they have a requirement. As an example, take the airline industry. Airlines will remind customers of their trip two weeks before they leave, then again a week before they go away and then again the day before they travel. This has two purposes, 1. To try and sell customers additional services, 2. To try and make sure they don't turn up at the airport not having completed all the formalities which they can do yourself on-line beforehand. Technology allows customers to check in on-line, allocate their seats, choose what meal they want, look at the films they want to watch, book a taxi to the airport, organise travel at their destination, book a hotel, to name just a few options from their proactive engagement. This is all great customer engagement but many airlines are also missing a trick. What if customers were also able to provide feedback in real-time on individuals, while they are checking in, while they are in the lounge, while they are in the air and when they've left the airport. Often the consumers choice is to give feedback via social media but this is a dangerous medium to get feedback from. The point here is that by proactivly providing customers with an outlet for feedback will provide a better service for customers, reduce your overheads of feedback management and provide a better essential data with which to improve your service. For more information about proactive customer engagement, please contact Soniza.

One to one customer service is expensive. To have one agent speaking with one customer can cost a lot of money. The technology needed, the physical infrastructure, staff time and management are all costs to serve the customer service function. Customers are often simply looking for an update on an existing issue or wanting to find out about a product, maybe get an account balance etc. Employing staff to fulfil these tasks is inefficient and pricey. This means that companies are looking at other ways to cater for these tasks. One way is to have an IVR system that allows customers to enter an account code or can recognise a phone number and tell the customer the information before getting through to an agent. Another way is to put the information on a web portal or provide automated answers to common questions, leaving agents to interact with customers only when it's needed. Some of the biggest companies in the world have revolutionised the customer experience by not providing a voice option at all. Try and find a phone number for eBay or Google and you’ll be hard pressed. So why is it the accepted practice for online companies but not the rest of the market? Partly this is due to how a company is set up, give customers the option to phone eBay or google to make a complaint and they will, but don't give customers the option and they are forced to find other ways. It is also true that most issues are common and by sharing complaints publically information is available for the next customer with the same problem so these companies are fulfilling a need before it arises. One thing is for sure, with organisations expecting cost reductions year on year we are likely to be seeing more and more self-service contact centres in the future.

Back in October 2015 an EU ruling took place that by next month (April 2016) there will be a cap on mobile roaming charges while travelling in the EU. Additionally by June 2017 roaming charges while in the EU should be dropped altogether. This is great news and long overdue, however, it is still unclear how mobile operators are going to make up the shortfall in revenue which they used to get from expensive roaming rates. Some have suggested that this will mean that general rates to everyone will increase for travellers and domestic users alike in order to comply with the directive, others say that this will create volatility in the market through acquisitions and increased competition while network providers scramble for the ever elusive increased market share. One thing is for sure, mobile networks won't go down without a fight and they will be trying to claw back that revenue one way or another. Watch the next year with caution especially when it comes to selecting the right mobile provider.

With Unified Communications now the norm for new telephony deployments, manufacturers have turned their attention to the Contact Centre as an increasing point of differentiation. This has meant two things, 1) R&D in contact centres has sky rocketed over recent years, 2) traditional PBX suppliers are now going head to head with the mainstream contact centre suppliers. The products is the market vary wildly on architecture, integration, features, media channels, applications such as call recording, work force management, quality scoring, speech analytics to name a few is vastly different between products. This is exciting news for techies and the industry alike and the next few years looks to be filled with new possibilities. If you would like to find out more information, please feel free to contact Soniza via the contact section on our web page.

With increasing pressure to sweat assets and drive efficiencies, is the reign of the MPLS coming to an end? Certainly the networks would like to continue providing their MPLS for you. It is a huge revenue stream for them, but these same network providers have been convincing you to move all your services to the Cloud, so what do we need our MPLS network for? The answer is: Voice, Video, (Critical) time sensitive Applications. We are moving into a world where Cloud applications will be the bulk of services we use. Voice and Video over the Internet can be challenging and using Skype can still be far from perfect over the Internet. There are now however policies and codecs which exist claiming they have resolved the quality issues with voice/video over the Internet. Products such as the Opus codec (https://www.opus-codec.org/) claims to have superior quality over internet traffic. However, and this is the problem, while I.T staff, technicians and consumers at home calling their auntie in Australia put up with bad quality and interrupted calls while using voice over the Internet, it is simply just not acceptable to the majority of staff and why should it be. We've had good quality voice for over 100 years and then I.T. put a new network in place where calls drop and quality is poor and they tell staff it's better because it goes over the internet. It doesn't make sense. So although we have no doubt that we will all be using the internet to make calls in the relatively near future, as of today, for real-time applications such as video and voice we would advise to proceed with caution when looking to get rid of your MPLS network.

With Unified Communications (UC) now the norm for a new telephony deployments, does it really matter which one I choose? There are the main contenders, Microsoft, Cisco, Mitel. These products have subtle differences and are leading the market but what if you don't want or have no reason to align yourself with these players. There are many other options and almost all modern systems come with a form of UC, but be warmed UC means different things to different people and the products on offer provide a vastly different set of features in some cases. Some of the smaller players see UC as a presences and instant messaging engine while the main stream manufacturers would argue that this is a very basic form of UC and their platforms can provide vastly more than this. So although many products provide 'UC' you need to understand what the market can provide, what your requirements are and what you want to integrate your UC platform with. For more information on how we can help you with your UC strategy please contact Soniza now.

Reducing mobile costs has for years gone in cycles. Staff are issued with mobiles, an initiative is put in place to reduce costs and then technology or functionality is released into the market which drives costs back up. There are however a few ways to bear in mind to keep costs under control. Network Providers - The network providers are very slowly starting to provide some proactive cost control measures. This has however been long over due and still has a long way to go but their online portals now have some tools to help. MDM - An MDM solution can reduce costs significantly but is an additional cost on top of the network subscription charge. It also needs proactive management in most cases and maintenance updates each time a new software release is put onto the market by Apple or Samsung etc. Outsourced Service Provider - It is more and more common to use a management company who proactively manage costs, make recommendations to reduce costs and can in some cases cover clients with insurance against high costs. Unfortunately to reduce costs is still largely an area of telecoms that needs to be managed rather than automatically happens. For more information on saving costs on your mobiles please contact Soniza.

There are many advantages to enabling real-time video in the contact centre. For a maintenance company it can allow agents to see faults with a product or for an advice service (doctors, mortgage advisor etc.), it can provide a personal experience, allowing information or visual images to be to shared. But outside of these environments customers are hesitant to make the leap to a full real-time video experience. This is partly due we suspect to technical limitations and partly due to self-consciousness of customers, but a big part of the objection is ‘why should I let my bank, mobile provider or even mortgage advisor see me when there is no obvious need, what benefit do I (the customer) get?' When considering video into a customer service or sales environment, the key question to ask is, 'What value does it add to me and what value does it add to the customer'. Adding video as a gimmick or just because you can, needs to be treated very carefully. That said, it can be a very useful tool when used in the right environment.