By Miles Davis, vice president of channel sales at Avaya Canada

In a world of choice, freedom, and flexibility communications is about much more than “just” voice. People are hopping from app to app, over mobile, tablets, desktops, and desk phones and they expect an effortless experience regardless of how their engagement takes place. Many businesses know their communications solutions could be better. These businesses utilize voice, email, video, texting, and multimedia messaging, many of which don’t work together, or across every device, yet they don’t want to risk the disruption involved in change. A modern Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) solution enables businesses to call, meet, and message in a simple, cloud-based all-in-one app creating unique new customer and employee experience opportunities without the need for new hardware or engineering. 

Businesses of all kinds are using our leading UCaaS solution, Avaya Cloud Office^TM, to improve their customer and employee experiences:  

• Curbside pickup: Endpoint devices that have Avaya Cloud Office are equipped to be put into a “curbside queue.” Retailers can conduct intelligent conversations with customers about the process for pick up, hours of operations, the status of an order, and more. They can also automate arrival and pickup times. SMS and outbound notification ensures timely responses and interaction via the customer’s preferred method of communication. 
• Remote learning: Education institutions are using Avaya Cloud Office for blended learning (an approach to education that combines opportunities for online education and interaction with traditional classroom methods) and to enable reliable communication between students, parents, and staff to minimize learning disruption. Staff can securely share documents and assign and track coursework regardless of where students or colleagues are located.
• Telehealth: Health systems are using cloud-based video conferencing enabled by Avaya Cloud Office to create patient rooms for virtual visits and remote diagnosis/care. Care team members, patients, and family and friends can enter the space, whether this be patient home visits or within the care facility, to share content (patient charts, medication details, care plan instructions, images) and use a number of tools to effortlessly collaborate and deliver the best patient care. 

An all-in-one UCaaS solution like Avaya Cloud Office represents the consumerization of business communications. It’s a communications platform offering calling, meetings, messaging, and more – with the ability to plug into hundreds of different business apps. Users can integrate capabilities like click-to-dial, analytics, call logging, and fax with hundreds of desktop apps, workflow automation, and CRM tools including Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, and more to customize the perfect solution for the way your business communicates. 

With core calling, meeting, messaging, and conferencing capabilities, UCaaS can replace your current communications sprawl to save significantly on costs. Or, employees can continue using the apps that work best for them (i.e. WebEx, Teams, G Suite) and integrate communications directly within them using APIs. 

UCaaS also transforms reachability – a critical component for today’s mobile workforce. It does the same thing for voice as we currently see with email. Just as you have one email address synchronized across all your different devices (laptop, mobile phone, tablet, smart watch) with seamless device handoff (being able to start typing an email on one device and pick it up later on a different device before sending), a modern UCaaS solution gives every user a single business phone number that is synchronized across all their devices. Incoming calls ring on all devices, and calls can be passed between devices without disruption. No matter where you are, what device you have, and what network it’s connected to, a single number connects you by voice, text, fax and video. Voicemails also go into one easily accessible voicemail box, and you can get instant notifications for voice and fax messages via email, SMS or through the UCaaS app. 

The workplace is changing rapidly, and businesses need to constantly adapt. UCaaS brings what employees use in their personal lives to the workplace for an easier, cleaner, and crisper user experience – whether you have a handful of users or thousands – to create better customer and business outcomes. Avaya Cloud Office provides a quick, easy path to get started or to transition from your current solution. Current Avaya customers also receive migration tools, re-use of certain devices, award-winning global services, and feature parity without having to worry about communications disruption.  

Learn more about Avaya Cloud Office here.