Bell Business Insights newsletter

What are the distinct advantages that set mobile unified communications apart from regular UC? We caught up with Palma Petrilli, Associate Director of Unified Communications at Bell, to talk about the real benefits of mobile UC and how it's helping people to work wherever they are most productive, reducing latency and improving service for customers.

Bell Business Insights: Palma, let's start by clarifying the meaning of mobile UC. We know that Unified Communications improves collaboration both internally and with customers. How is mobile UC different?

PP: With regular UC, an employee can play an active role in pushing half a dozen projects along without filling their days with meetings and conference calls. Instant messaging, desktop video, presence management, active directories and collaboration tools all help to keep team members connected and information organized while reducing latency in communication.

Mobile UC gives people the flexibility to work the way they want to work, in the space that's most productive, at a time that works best for them. The ability to access business applications and to collaborate from wherever they happen to be gives people the option of eliminating latency in communication and in working. This is critical for national and international organizations. Mobile UC gives employees simultaneous access to desktop applications as well as communications and collaboration tools in many forms and on many devices.

BI: Don't email, online video and instant messaging applications provide mobile professionals with most of this functionality already?

PP: UC clients typically include tools like presence management, active directories and more robust video apps that really make a difference. But it's more of a question of devices, motion and latency than applications. Mobile professionals typically find Internet access wherever they happen to be and connect to their corporate network using laptops as opposed to thin-client handheld devices. That's fine if you're in a fixed location with Internet access, but for information professionals constantly on the move from one location to another, motion represents latency if you don't have access to all of the tools you rely on. For sales reps or project managers working on a customer's premises, having instant access to colleagues, support teams and applications takes the latency out of communication and gives them the ability to answer more client questions in real time and enhance the customer experience.

BI: Does mobile UC extend this location independence to the customer as well?

PP: Absolutely. One of the biggest ways this can happen is by bringing the office, the presentation center or the bank to the customer rather than obliging the customer to come see you. Think of mortgage brokers, who often travel to a customer's home or place of business to present options. With mobile UC, a broker could show a customer an instructional video on their smart phone or tablet PC, for example, and consult with a colleague via instant message (IM) to find specific information. The agent could escalate the IM chat to a voice call or a video session involving the customer and a colleague, or even move the conversation to an online meeting session to answer the customer's questions in real time. The result is more business getting closed faster, with happier clients and less need for repeat meetings and calls.

When the customer is ready to buy, the agent could also perform a transaction in real time through secure Mobile UC capabilities. This is particularly important, since shortening the time between sales pitch and transaction has been proven to help agents close more business.

BI: What does the future of mobile UC look like?

PP: I think the greatest inroads still to be made are on the consumer side. Think about something you do that causes delay or inconvenience. What if your bank came to you? You would still need to drop by an instant teller to recharge your wallet from time to time, but even that is growing less important than it once was, considering the prevalence of credit and debit card use.

The branch of the future should be accessible via smart phone, tablet PC or other device. You could securely connect to a teller or other specialist using IM or a videoconferencing client, and perform transactions in real time. You could even continue interacting with financial professionals with whom you've developed a rapport.

BI: So there would be less need for bricks and mortar.

PP: Exactly. It would save cost for the banks and time for customer, who could federate into banks' UC environment using a UC client instead of travelling to branch locations. Today, banks have branch managers and a call centre. In the future, the two could be fused. The obvious advantage of this scenario is less physical infrastructure, but a more valuable advantage is the added flexibility that this would bring to human resources provisioning. The ratio of customers requiring face-to-face interactions would drop, and the bank could dynamically move employees from task to task internally, as demand for customer IM, video, chat or voice sessions builds or ebbs. This has the potential to reshape the workforce to be much more agile.

Talk to Bell

Bell has significant experience in designing and implementing mobile unified communications solutions. Our experts can guide you through initial system analysis and roadmapping, as well as managing or consulting on implementations and provide you with ongoing support. To find out how Bell can help you harness the benefits of mobile UC, contact your Bell representative.

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Enhancing customer experience with converging communications, Webinar, February 2011

Delivering the promise of remote work: Expert Q&A with Susan Garms on addressing human elements of change, October 2010