How to Choose the Right Cloud Communications Service

There are a wealth of benefits that a cloud communications service can offer your company, let’s help you ensure that you choose the right approach for your business.

      1. Determine your business needs

In order to choose the right cloud communications service, it’s vital to first of all understand exactly what your business needs in terms of internal and external communication. Only then, will you know which features are must-haves. A few examples are listed below

• Which key communications capabilities are required? - Voice, video, fax, SMS, messaging, file sharing, meetings, events and broadcasts

• How many users will require this capability? And where are they located: locally or internationally?

• Are there any specific features and security capabilities that are important to your business or industry?

• Which types of devices do you need to be compatible with? include meetings rooms.

• What integrations are important? for example Contact Centers, CRM apps, other collaborative tools like Teams, Slack, ServiceNow etc.

• What business resilience is required and should it augment an existing cloud service to provide a combined resilience?

• And of course how are you looking to take advantage of AI - Artificial Intelligence?

      2. Evaluate the most suitable cloud communications providers

After you’ve got a checklist of all the things you need from a cloud communications system, you should spend time assessing various cloud communications providers to see which ones offer the things you need—at a price that’s within your budget. A key consideration here is whether the service is all encompassing or requires additional hidden fees like SIP trunks, fax circuits or SMS addons.

It’s also important to factor in whether any cloud communications solution you’re considering can be integrated with your existing applications and make sure to allow for single sign-on (SSO) AND have capabilities to quickly decouple should a ransomware attack hit your SSO identity systems.

     3. Consider the scalability and resiliency of cloud communications solutions

It’s impossible to predict with 100% certainty how big—or small—your business will be in three, five, or ten years. So, it’s vital that you choose a leading service that can adapt as the size of your company changes. You don’t want to commit yourself to a service now that will be redundant in a few years because it isn’t able to grow with your business.

Its important to have BOTH a desktop and mobile app - with a mobile app that protects the identity of personal smartphones so corporate provided smartphones are no longer required AND also allows for corporate numbers to be re-assigned as employees change.

Five 9’s reliability means less downtown for your business especially when you’re putting “all your eggs” in one vendor basket. But also consider integrating 2 services for cross vendor resiliency should one go down. You continue to leverage the other while business continuity wise augmenting the downed ones, especially when we consider how important company communications is in times of disaster or cyber attack.

Check out the user experience for any service that you’re considering and their support capabilities. There’s no point in having a service with great features if your staff struggle to use it or it takes a long time to get used to. Are there lots of blogs and integrated training?

      4. Analyze cloud communications service implementation

Keeping a close eye on how your staff members are taking to the new service is important to ensure that your new cloud communication solution is working for your business. Collect service analytics and reviews from people within your organization who have first-hand experience of using the new service. Doing this will allow you to refine your processes in the long run by implementing changes according to the feedback you receive.

Cloud communications use cases

Businesses can put cloud communications software to use in various ways. Let’s explore a few of the use cases in more detail:

      1. Hybrid working

Where would remote workers be without cloud communication software? They need it to communicate with their colleagues both in real time (voice and video - especially mobile video for sharing front line activities) and asynchronously (corporate messaging that doesn’t get mixed up in texting or whatsapp etc. Not only that but they also need it to facilitate communicating on the go. 

      2. Customer service

Anyone working in any type of role that involves customer service knows the importance of having access to top-notch services that can help provide an excellent customer experience that makes people want to return. A cloud communications system with AI means that customer service agents have access to features that help them do their jobs better than their own abilities.

      3. Employee training

Need to train new hires to get them up to speed as soon as possible or upskill existing employees? Setting up online training sessions via a cloud communications platform may be the way to go. You’ll be able to train numerous staff members at once in a virtual classroom where everyone can see each other and share vital training resources that can be saved for future reference.

      4. Business collaboration

Instead of having to spend time and money traveling to meet business associates, you can accomplish everything you need to do via a cloud communication solution. Conduct online meetings, manage projects, and have multiple staff members working on one document at the same time. Mobile video can be leveraged by front line workers to have senior technicians assist others in live problem solving.

To highlight, the numerous benefits of switching to cloud communications include flexibility, scalability, and potential cost savings. It’s flexible not just because you can generally customize these solutions however you want, but also because they’re perfect for hybrid or remote teams. Scalable, because you can quickly add or delete accounts as necessary, and most importantly, because you don’t have to patch and maintain expensive on-site communications infrastructure or test them annually for disaster recovery scenarios, you’ll save time and money too.