Interviews

Two Minutes To Understand How Unified Communications and AI Support Hybrid Work

Many companies have introduced new working models to respond to the expectations of their staff. More and more employees are asking for a certain amount of flexibility in the way they organise their work and want to work remotely at least part of the time. But are businesses really ready for hybrid working?

Although cloud communications solutions allow the challenges of mobile working to be overcome more easily, other issues also need to be taken into account and the answer lies in state-of-the art solutions. In this video, Lauren Barber, Upmarket Expansion Manager, explains the role that AI can play in improving productivity and the employee and customer experience, while ensuring the quality and reliability of communications.

Employees are in favour of hybrid working

Studies in this area have shown that the world of work has changed and employees want greater flexibility. A study carried out by Ipsos less than a year ago on behalf of RingCentral among British workers highlights this fundamental shift. The majority of employees who are able to work remotely (64%) chose to work outside the office at least one day a week.

This new working model has a positive impact on employee satisfaction. The same study shows that most hybrid workers (58%) are satisfied with their working conditions. This means that more businesses need to develop their hybrid working models and introduce more effective tools to make remote collaboration and communications easier, if they want to retain their employees.

Cloud technology helps organisations overcome challenges

Unified communications in the cloud (also known as UCaaS or Unified Communications as a Service) have been introduced by a large number of companies and forecasts indicate that growth in this market will remain strong (+20% per year until 2030 according to analysts). UCaaS allows employees to access the company’s communications system wherever they are and from any device using an intuitive interface. It also brings together all the interaction channels that have become widely used in recent years: messaging, video and even webinars or push to talk, which adds more to the phone channel.

In a secure system such as RingCentral MVP, the channels are seamlessly integrated and allow users to switch from a phone call to a video meeting, for example, without interruption. In addition, the system complies with the strictest security standards to ensure that the communications remain confidential and personal data is protected.

The specific benefits of AI

Artificial intelligence is now an integral part of our everyday lives. Its most recent evolution is generative AI, with one example being ChatGPT. This has exploded in the media. However, it is important to realise that the algorithms and expert systems can already be found in many professional applications, where they make the lives of users easier, improve the quality of the interactions and monitor the security of the systems.

Employees, in particular those from the younger generation (aged 21 to 34), have understood the interest in AI. A recent Ipsos study shows that 49% of them believe that AI will have a positive impact on their work.

This is the case in the RingCentral platform, which has already been making use of AI on several levels for some time. These advanced features bring specific user experience benefits and help you save a lot of time. For example, if you cannot attend a video conference, the application will automatically transcribe and summarise the discussion with the associated keywords.This means you can see highlights and even action items without watching the entire recording.

In the same way, RingCentral also allows you to transcribe phone conversations in real time or get a summary and the main insights afterwards, which is convenient if you’re in a noisy place and not sure you’ll hear correctly or if you’re not a native English speaker. With RingCentral, you can also get a sentiment scoring or analysis of your phone conversation with a customer to detect emotional tone and identify potential misunderstandings, so that you can proactively clarify and resolve issues. All of this adds another layer of intelligence.

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Optimising the experience of customers and employees

Using the latest business communications solutions such as RingCentral, you can offer your customers intelligent, connected experiences:

Intelligent because it integrates AI at all levels of communications so that employees can be more productive and maximise their results by automating certain tasks or with advanced analytics.
Connected because it eliminates the silos within your organisation and ensures that your teams in the field are connected to the employees in the office. Tools your teams use on a daily basis are integrated and work together (these include productivity tools and CRM and ERP systems or even the contact centre solution).
Offer experiences because it adapts to the way people work and how customers want to be served.

We will be describing these advanced analytics in more detail in one of the next episodes of our series “How to optimise your business communications”.