We have come to expect very high standards in customer experience (CX) from everyday interactions with customer service platforms from big technology companies. With goods and services available from the single tap of a screen, often delivered in seconds, every company with a digital presence that interacts with its customers online must try and match that experience on all levels of that customer journey.

Thankfully, providing a tech giant-style customer experience at the point of contact need not necessarily cost tech giant budgets. Digitisation is a great leveller and democratiser, so even a startup outfit in its first stages of growth or multinational enterprise can play on the same level alongside those big names.

An important element of the customer experience we have come to expect is personalisation: we want our providers of goods and services in both the public and private sectors to be able to communicate with us on the channels we prefer. While some people may prefer to make a voice call to a business, others might like to send a message via social media. Depending on a customer’s demographic and geography, the interaction mode can be different. At the end of the day, it’s about choice.

But even companies that offer multiple communication channels between their contact centres and customers still must create an environment where every touchpoint is painless, simple, and effective. Without the right technology underpinning the contact centre or the unified communications hub, the CX is at risk of being second-rate. And in an age where a competitor is literally a screen tap away, failing at the simplest of tasks – communicating effectively – can lose customers very, very easily. Even putting the danger of brand damage to one side, no company or government organisation wants that to disappoint and lose any customer or service-user.

The same digital technology that can offer customers multiple communication channels also empowers the business and their contact centre staff with the tools they need to facilitate a modern hybrid workforce. In an industry where staff churn can be alarmingly high (with associated HR costs always a burden), offering work-from-home options to workers can be remarkably effective. (It’s also a good method of extending the hours of coverage a contact centre offers – it’s much more convenient for home-based workers to work outside of normal business hours.)

But whether it’s 100% on-premise or at home working patterns that are your company’s policy – or a hybrid workplace with a mix of both– the tech used in the technology-forward company’s contact centre empowers staff in the same way, regardless of where and when they work.

It’s important that workers anywhere have the same user experience; a place where the different channels of communication can come together coherently. In the same way customers now don’t expect to have to repeat themselves when switching from, say, voice to SMS, contact centre agents also expect a seamless employee experience (EX). The ability of an integrated UCaaS and CCaaS (Unified Communications-as-a-service and Contact Centre-as-a-service) platform to provide quality experiences to both sides of a conversation is primary among the reasons why companies are adopting this amazing cloud technology.

There are several further advantages to exploring why cloud-hosted services of this nature are so powerful. For growing companies, it’s particularly important to be able to add extra comms channels appropriate to new markets without disruption to the contact centre. Whether adding a geographically-specific messaging platform (LINE or WhatsApp, for example) into the mix or adding AI-powered sentiment analysis to back office capabilities, cloud technologies make it happen. Cloud platforms excel at scaling and an open integration ecosystem, providing services on tap when and where needed without costly development work, on-premise intervention and maintenance.

For years, the de facto leader in this sector has been RingCentral, a company with a history as long as digital VOIP technology. RingCentral has been the name to watch as the communication sector has grown in size and importance. Its modular and highly extensible services are built with standards of reliability that have become the industry benchmark, and it’s the recognized market leader in this sector (it’s been the Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader in both UCaaS and CCaaS – powered by NICE CXone – for the last eight years).

Adopting cloud technology for any business’s contact centre or support function makes good sense. Thanks to a broad range of modules and capabilities that can be added or altered as the company changes and grows, RingCentral’s customers only have to pay for what they use.

Grade-A customer experiences comprising the finest levels of security, reliability, and flexibility are available for startups, medium-sized companies, and of course, world-straddling multinationals.

Your company or organisation might not yet be a global behemoth, but with the right communications platform giving first-rate customer experiences at every touchpoint, there’s the surety of communications support guaranteed. To learn more about how RingCentral can empower your communications in many parts of your growing business, contact a local representative today.