As a business phone system, there are a couple of questions we often get asked…

Do we do chat? 

Do we do video?

With more and more vendors jumping on the bandwagon of creating UC platforms, it may sound strange to say that here at VoiceIQ, it's a resounding NO to both. 

But we have our reasons. 

For a while now, other telecom vendors have been desperately seeking something new to offer the market. They started adding ancillary features like chat and video conferencing and coined the phrase “Unified Communications” which is really just a nice sound bite for their marketing departments. 

What customers really want to see is investment in better and deeper voice technology that improves sales, support, marketing and ops. 

Chat and video conferencing don't do this, they add two more channels for your call handlers and their product gets a 'unified comms' badge. 

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Here are four reasons why we think UC isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: 

1. Ancillary features will ALWAYS be compromised

When your core business is voice, any ancillary features outside of this will ALWAYS be compromised. They'll never have better video calling than Zoom, Hangouts or Teams because Microsoft, Zoom and Google invest millions into the best video compression algorithms, network carrier prioritisation agreements and more to ensure you get the best experience.

2. UC vendors will never have better text chat than Slack, Chatter, Yammer and others

Those platforms have had decades of person years of innovation, better APIs, slicker user experience, broader market support for integrations, more market awareness and familiarity, more maturity, better economies of scale, a product roadmap that is all about delivering the ultimate collaboration experience. No unified comms vendor is going to be able to compete with Slack, Chatter or Yammer both technically or commercially.

3. You risk alienating your customers

You lock yourself into one vendor to deliver features that they're not best placed to deliver. Imagine setting up a video conference with a customer and you say "hi, please could you join this [RANDOM VIDEO CONFERENCING SYSTEM YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF]", as opposed to "hi, please can you join this Zoom". It's an unnecessary side effect that you risk alienating your customers.

4. Costly and slow to deploy

'Unified Comms' platforms are for high volume call handlers. To maximise the power of chat and online collaboration, you'll need to give this unified comms tech to all of your employees (high cost, slow to deploy) and then force them to use an unfamiliar system when all their friends in other companies are busy loving Slack.

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At RocketPhone, rather than trying to recreate the best, we integrate with the best chat systems (Slack) or the best video conferencing platforms (Zoom, Teams).

Here's an example of how RocketPhone does this with Slack.

1. Agent is asked a difficult question, so they send it to be 'swarmed' in Slack

2. Users in slack can see the link to the call (so they can listen in or read the call details)

3. Slack channel members respond with helpful comments which the call handler can see in RocketPhone

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Similarly, RocketPhone can make Zoom a part of its platform. Just as RocketPhone monitors phone calls in real-time, RocketPhone can also find valuable insights in Zoom conferences. It can also consolidate all your phone calls, videoconferences into one activity list inside salesforce.com so there are no blindspots for managers wanting to track customer contact across all channels.

Book a live demo to see RocketPhone in action.

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