Unified Communications as a Service can help your dealership meet customer demands, boost productivity, and tap into new revenue streams.
Would any of your customers like their voice, text messages, emails, videos, and meetings all readily accessible using a single platform on a phone or computer? That’s the potential of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). If your customers aren’t asking about UCaaS now, they soon will be.
UCaaS Transforms Communications
Research by industry consulting firm Frost and Sullivan cites 2024 data showing customers like yours are adopting cloud-based communications solutions focusing on phones. Why? Because whether in a pocket or on a desk, phones are the core of modern communications. Doubt this? Consider how your cell phone has become a key communications device. Now suppose every call a customer makes or receives, every meeting and presentation, is captured for future use and available. That’s what your dealership can bring to the party.
Office technology dealers can offer such capabilities by adding UCaaS to your existing services. Not all customers need what Frost & Sullivan calls “full-stack” UCaaS that incorporates video conferencing and meetings, but you can probably find the right level of service for each customer. Their advantages include improved productivity by allowing employees to switch between different communication channels in a single application.
UCaaS Spans Verticals
Dealers of all sizes already take advantage of UCaaS with customers in many sectors. “Companies in education, healthcare, financial services, and legal are all taking advantage of UCaaS,” noted Noel O’Dwyer, strategic accounts manager at Intermedia Cloud Communications. “They all have meetings, conference calls, remote customers, and employees. Some organizations, such as financial services and healthcare, rely heavily on faxes, so UCaaS can support fax transmissions, a vital capability for these businesses.”
Suppose someone misses a meeting. With UCaaS they can obtain the slides and talk track of a meeting on their phone or computer shortly after the event. A doctor can review a patient’s records or x-rays when offsite. Meanwhile, the missing fax for a prescription can be recovered and sent to a pharmacist because the prescription is already in a customer’s UCaaS system. Enabling this, the copiers, MFPs, printers, and scanners you installed in customers’ offices are likely on those customer’s networks. UCaaS creates a single point of access to all communication formats.
Making all those calls, meetings, and presentations available is what your dealership can bring to the party. Dealers already offering UCaaS use it within their own businesses, providing customers with an example of how it works. Consider how unifying emails, texts, and voice messages among your technicians, parts, IT departments, and customers could enhance efficiency and improve the customer experience for your business. Could it even expand the geographical reach of your dealership?
Ephemeral Connections
Your customers probably already use tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom. These work well but can be ephemeral: Once the call is done, you may not have a record of what was said, who said it, or anything else. Recordings aren’t always made and may not be easily accessed. Furthermore, the connection to any of these is through proprietary interfaces. Calls outside of these applications are lost. Moreover, if a person leaves a company or loses their phone, most records of their communications, perhaps even phone numbers, vanish.
“Clients of office technology dealers may be underserved when it comes to communication solutions,” said O’Dwyer. “By diversifying into UCaaS, dealers can leverage their existing relationships to introduce a suite of new offerings. This helps them position themselves as a one-stop-shop for all office technology needs.” In addition, UCaaS solutions appeal to small, medium, and large businesses, allowing dealers to expand into new industries or verticals.
Talk Track
An excellent strategy for selling UCaaS is to ask how a client keeps track of what happens during phone calls with customers and on Zoom and Teams calls. Then, find out if they want to have voice calls, text messages, emails, and meetings readily accessible using a single platform. Chances are they may have some of this, perhaps within some applications, but not all of it on a single platform.
It works like this: Phone-centric to the core, UCaaS is unlike Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Slack, or Zoom, which captures things done in those unique interfaces. UCaaS captures everything done using a phone, including calls, meetings, videos, and more, placing it all in a secure cloud, readily accessible on a single interface. This is especially important in a working world that’s becoming increasingly remote. That call the CEO of your customer made to the company’s accountant while both were in their cars? Captured. The fax a customer sent to a prospect? Captured. The conference call with 19 people, 14 remote and on cell phones? Captured.
Some of this can be accomplished using cell phone apps, but they can be unwieldy and confusing. Furthermore, most phone apps can’t store calls, meetings, and documents for future reference. Although you record calls on Microsoft Teams or Zoom, these frequently lack the nuances of communication and may not include the PowerPoint slides finalized minutes before the meeting. UCaaS can help ensure customers can have a hybrid meeting with employees and customers with all relevant materials accessible. This could be five people on cell phones in remote locations and four in an office.
The notion of such hybrid meetings is backed up by a report from industry analyst firm Keypoint Intelligence, which notes that remote and hybrid mandates are driving UCaaS demand. Many employees may be in the office only two or three days a week, but they’re still on their phones and in meetings on other days. UCaaS gives employers a window into what those workers are doing, and business execs see the potential. According to Keypoint Intelligence, some 57% of small organizations will migrate to cloud-based infrastructures over the next two years, partly because they consider cloud development and deployment faster and more secure than software hosted on their own servers.
Short Money, High Value
UCaaS lets dealers move beyond traditional hardware-related products by embracing cloud-based or hybrid services that are easier to implement than multiple application-based alternatives. They support collaboration and communication across an organization while quickly increasing your topline revenue because dealers can set the monthly price for customers.
A Trend-Setting Diversification Opportunity
As businesses embrace digital transformation, their communication needs change. Remote and hybrid work environments and the increasing demand for collaborative tools have driven a shift away from traditional telephone systems.
We don’t yet have holograms that enable people to sit around a table looking like they’re really there. But UCaaS gets us closer to that table and changes the game for office technology. It enables your dealership to become a communications supplier and enabler. Unlike copiers, MFPs, scanners, paper, and toner—the physical parts of office technology—you can offer a business a future that starts now. And you can reap the benefits by getting in front of this growing trend now.
