There are various features and applications that Unified Communications (UC) services provide as a means to support business productivity and growth. Yet, many businesses are not seeing the ROI they hoped to achieve after adding the latest and greatest UC technology to the mix.
This can be frustrating and embarrassing for the business leaders that vouched for investment in the new technology.
Why is this happening? How are some businesses seeing such success using UCaaS while others are not?
One critical reason is that additional end-user training to support the adoption of new UC software is seen as a nice added bonus rather than a necessity.
As COMMFusion president and UC analyst Blair Pleasant said in an interview last year, “You could have the best technology in the world, but it doesn’t matter if they’re not using it.”
Adequate end user training is critical to unlocking success with Unified Communications, and it can be bundled with UC sales offerings as a valuable part of the service to make the deal even sweeter.
Learn why training and support matter so much to UC product adoption – and why using training and support solutions in your sales pitch can help you close deals:
Why Training and Support Matters
While UCaaS, by nature, feels relatively intuitive, there are still a number of features that new end-users are completely unaware of, or confused about. They simply stick to the few tools they know how to use and don’t take advantage of the service’s full potential.
Business decision makers today may be aware of these gaps to success and thus, wary about investing in Unified Communications for their company. They know that if they want to maximize the ROI for this kind of addition, they’ll need comprehensive training to get everyone on board.
Without training and support solutions, users can feel frustrated with the new system and nostalgic for the legacy system of the past. When they encounter issues they don’t know how to resolve, they may ignore it all together or waste precious time trying to resolve it with limited IT knowledge.
Training – whether in-house, digital, or a mix of the two – seizes an opportunity to get end users excited about and familiarized with an entirely new system. Additionally, ongoing support resources help fill in the blanks when issues arise down the road, leading to faster resolution and continued understanding of the more enhanced UC features that may be new to them.
Challenges of Training
Even with the clarity that end user training is necessary for a smooth transition to a new UC system, businesses may still hesitate to commit to UC integration. That’s because training can unfortunately be costly and time consuming. It’s also partly because these companies don’t have the internal resources to provide the support users need.
Hiring a trainer to come to the office for a week of orientation and staff training can be expensive. It also pulls away employees from their normal schedules and can consume a large portion of the work week. Plus, what happens after the training session ends? With no internal resources available to support users in the weeks ahead, users can feel defeated when they run into a problem and have nowhere to turn.
These challenges of training may deter potential clients from making a shift to a new UC service provider.
Training As Part of Your Offering
Imagine if you were able to offer your potential clients an integrated, custom-branded training and support solution as part of your UCaaS offering.
Providing training as part of a service option removes a big “barrier to yes” and simplifies the process for the potential client. Knowing that they’ll have access to a robust training portal at any time, from anywhere, can alleviate some of the fears associated with new UC integration.
Not only would they be saving money on additional training costs, but they would also feel confident in the training materials since they are coming directly from their provider. With training sessions users can complete at their own pace, company hours can be better allocated with less time wasted. It would also remove the need for additional internal resources, as everything would be available in one central, digital place.
Remember that “imagined” training and support solution mentioned previously? It’s real, and it’s called Smart-Lynk.
Smart-Lynk is B-Lynk’s managed training portal that serves as a library of support content for medium to enterprise level businesses. It’s fully managed by the B-lynk team, but custom branded for you and constantly updated with the most recent product changes and latest information. From demos and training videos to webinars and monthly reporting, Smart-Lynk is the training hub and product adoption solution that maximizes the true potential of UC services.
Contact the B-Lynk team to learn more about how you can integrate Smart-Lynk into your UCaaS offering, sweeten the deal, and close more sales every day.