With 2024 well underway, we discuss some of the industry and technology trends already taking shape that promise to change the way many organizations do business, meet customer needs, expand market reach, and protect digital and physical assets.

Contact me today to discuss how TCI’s products and services can help your organization get more out of its technology investments – now and in the future.

Tom Cornbrooks, President (703) 321-3030 cornbrookst@tcicomm.com

We expect the evolution of AI to be as earth-shaking as the creation of the semiconductor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. AI will change the way people work, learn, travel, get healthcare, and communicate with each other.

Evolving phone systems will be just one aspect of its far-reaching influence as AI revolutionizes industries and our society.

“2024 may well be the year of reckoning for AI. So far, the main application of Gen AI has been with chatbots and voice-enabled bots. The real value is transitioning from front-end chatbots to ones that can act based on their process inputs. The next step will be for customer support software to go beyond just answering questions and move toward enabling true end-to-end task automation.” - Martin Bitzinger, Mitel SVP, Product Management

Companies like Google, Qualcomm, and Apple are heavily investing in AI to evolve smartphones, with a focus on generative AI, which can create new content and provide personalized recommendations based on text and image inputs.

The use of AI in phone systems won’t be without its challenges. Scammers are already using AI to clone voices, making phone scams more sophisticated and believable.

Experts recommend adopting a "code word" system with your loved ones, always calling back to verify the situation, and setting social media accounts to private to prevent publicly available information from being used against individuals.

AI-enabled phone scams have raised concerns about the increasing threat of advanced phishing and targeted scams, prompting more calls to regulate the use of this powerful technology.

Let's explore new ways to leverage and safeguard the technology in your business. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.

There are dozens of creative ways to express customer appreciation, and a full-featured call center software suite can help get your message across with minimal fuss.

Small business owners and their teams can handle customer calls efficiently while indulging their VIPs with something extra — all without missing a beat.

Everyone wants to feel valued. When a customer calls in, you must give them your undivided attention. If your team is worried about finding contact records or scripts, they're not paying attention, leaving your customers feeling overlooked.

Keep the focus on the customer - not shuffling application windows - with screen prompts and automated workflows that flow seamlessly from your CRM to your contact center solution. An integrated contact center solution can empower CRM-based workflows with in-call screen pops and recommendations to help your team stay engaged with customers.

Do you know your customers well enough to finish their sentences? Knowing what your customers need, even before they do, can help them feel like you truly "get" them — the basis of a fruitful relationship. Look at your data and reporting to understand customer pain points, past purchases, and other behavior.

Consider reaching out to selected customers on "quiet" days to ensure a problem was resolved to their satisfaction or simply to thank them for their business. And if you're experiencing a service issue, contact them proactively and let them know you're working to resolve it.

Tailoring your interactions with your customers builds stronger relationships and a better customer experience. Take advantage of the capabilities of an integrated, multi-channel customer experience solution to create user profiles and make custom offer recommendations based on what your customers like. As always, meet your customers where they expect to find you, whether through email or web-based chat.

Today's shoppers are spending more on experiences for themselves and others.

If your business is rooted in products rather than experiences, consider partnering with others for a joint offer. Have these offers ready so any team member can easily share and give a great experience recommendation when they connect with a customer. Take that offer to the next level by delivering it in the method the customer prefers, email or chat, with a multi-channel call center solution.

With the right contact center solution and complementary partner, you'll spend less time managing your phone system and more time providing customers with an exceptional experience.

When it comes to improving your customer experience and contact center solutions, TCI experts can customize, deploy, and support your technology. Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.

TCI makes Mitel Access Control easy… Improve Your Building Security from Your Phone

Even more than a secure network, a secure facility provides peace of mind and protects customers and employees from bad actors who would do them harm. For that reason, security cameras have become standard equipment at schools, hospitals, hotels, and other businesses where the front and back doors represent a front line of defense.

There are dozens of security camera manufacturers today, ranging from inexpensive doorbell cameras to high-resolution surveillance cameras. While this freedom of choice gives businesses more flexibility, exterior cameras are often “outsiders” regarding business communications systems.

Specifically, organizations struggle to incorporate these video feeds into their broader unified communications (UC) platform, instead managing them as separate solutions. This can mean toggling back and forth between different screens and applications at a time when split-second decisions may be required.

Imagine, for a moment, how much easier it would be if you could manage building admissions right from your phone. Live video could be displayed directly on your video phone when someone approached your doors, with a live audio feed to communicate with them, and a pop-up button on your phone could either lock or unlock doors and even send out a notification to employees, students, or local police/fire departments in the case of an emergency. Well, a solution like this is no longer limited to the realm of imagination — it’s a reality that Mitel MiVoice Business customers can enjoy today.

The Mitel Access Control solution was developed in response to a clear need from our customers to integrate security cameras with their UC platform and IP desk phones. Offered as a customized solution through TCI and Mitel Professional Services, the Access Control setup integrates any H.264-compatible phone that uses the real-time streaming protocol (RTSP) with Mitel 6900 IP Phone Series, MiVoice Business, and, optionally, Mitel Revolution mass notification system. Together, these components create a new solution to the age-old problem of guarding the gates against intruders.

Our solution improves communication between visitors and staff and assures the security of your employees, customers, and students. You can view, talk, and take action from your Mitel IP phone.

Mitel Access Control in Action

The Mitel Access Control solution is just one example of how TCI and Mitel Professional Services can combine different technologies to create a unique solution to a specific problem. In developing this solution, Mitel extended the functionality of its existing products by integrating them with third-party solutions and services.

On the Mitel portfolio side, MiVoice Business ties voice, video, and messaging together, the Mitel 6900 IP Phone Series supports real-time video feeds and touch-activated prompts, and Mitel Revolution supports text-based messaging for emergency and non-emergency situations.

Beyond those components are third-party products that TCI and Mitel Professional Services can bring into your UC environment, such as the video cameras, screen-capture software (e.g., VLC media player), SIP-enabled remote access control system, application server, and local alarm service (e.g., F24).

Contact your local TCI team to get started: (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.

We’ve all watched high-performance athletes lose a race by mere fractions of a second. It’s heartbreaking because whatever the margin, it meant the difference between winning and losing.

The business world isn’t much different. Competition is extremely tight in almost every industry. It’s too easy to be left behind by competitors who are faster to market, work more efficiently, and do more to keep their customers happy.

Your business systems are crucial to increasing your competitive edge and winning the race, no matter what industries or markets you serve. Every system you rely on must reliably operate at peak performance levels — especially your business communications system.

You can’t afford to let your communications systems fall behind for many reasons, but here are three important ones.

It takes unconstrained teamwork across every area of your organization to get new offerings to market faster. Every member of every team needs the ability to quickly and easily connect, collaborate, and share information from anywhere, at any time.

If your communications system isn’t up-to-date, your teams can’t leverage the latest features and functions available in the web, mobile, and desktop applications they rely on to stay connected. Like high-performance athletes, your teams need every advantage they can get. No matter how seemingly small that advantage is, it makes a difference – especially if you multiply the effects across your organization.

Keeping your communications system up to date means your teams always have the most recent voice, messaging, video conferencing, screen sharing, and file sharing capabilities at their fingertips.

A Grammarly Business survey of over 1,600 business leaders and knowledge workers found that 72% of the workweek is spent on communication and collaboration. When you add up the lost time, those inefficiencies cost more than $1.2 trillion, or $12,000 per employee annually.

But productivity losses aren’t only measured in dollars. Almost half of the survey respondents also said that inefficient communication and collaboration had created friction with co-workers and other departments. While those losses are more challenging to quantify, no business can afford them.

Communication technologies and systems that provide more features and functionality are crucial to making communications and collaboration more efficient. The capabilities that were cutting-edge just a short while ago are no longer at the forefront of what’s available.

Customers' communications with your organization are central to their experience, increasing revenue. The key is to ensure your customers have a great experience at every touchpoint across your organization. To do this, you need to look beyond your contact center technology and the service your contact center agents provide and take a holistic approach to the customer journey.

Every single person in a company plays a direct or indirect role in determining whether it provides consistently good or consistently bad human or digital interactions. Your business communications system plays a significant role in those human and digital interactions.

When evaluating the current state of your current communications system, think about how customers interact with your sales team and employees located at remote sites. Also consider how your internal teams connect and collaborate to deliver on customer requirements, especially when customized solutions are required, delivery dates change or supply chain issues slow down processes.

If your communications system doesn’t provide the capabilities needed to ensure customers have the best possible experience, they can become disillusioned. Worse, they may stop calling.

To maintain your edge to beat the competition, schedule your Business Communications planning session today. Contact TCI at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.

Not long ago, DC area banks and community-based financial organizations, such as credit unions, were almost exclusively brick-and-mortar establishments. Then, in 2020, the pandemic came along. Suddenly, digital communications and digital banking services were essential for every financial organization.

This unexpected and urgent need for digitalization only accelerated the inevitable. Banks and credit unions were already facing stiff competition from new and nimble market entrants that use modern financial technology — or fintech — to serve customers more quickly, efficiently, and flexibly.

These seismic shifts are permanent, and they mean banks and credit unions can’t afford to stand still. To deliver the experiences and services today’s customers are looking for and effectively compete in a digital world, every financial organization must adopt today’s communications technologies and reinvent themselves.

The monolithic, closed IT stacks and disconnected systems most banks and credit unions have historically relied on limit agility and innovation. Systems don’t communicate with one another, manual processes duplicate efforts, and valuable business insights are trapped in silos.

These legacy technologies represent “vertical” thinking. In 2024, financial IT teams need to think “horizontally” and focus on open interfaces and APIs that make it easy and efficient to integrate advanced technologies from strategic partners.

Internet crime losses and banking fraud have skyrocketed in recent years. While many financial organizations already use artificial intelligence (AI) to pinpoint potentially fraudulent activities, the follow-up steps with customers are often manual.

Integrating fraud detection and notification into an automated communications workflow accelerates the process, reduces the burden on staff, and shows customers you take their protection very seriously. These technologies include biometric recognition systems that use voice, facial, and fingerprint features to authenticate customers, as well as multi-factor authentication to protect their online information and assets.

Using AI to analyze information and generate new content helps you work more strategically and increases agility to scale your operations faster and more efficiently. Here are two examples of what’s possible across the organization:

In addition to analyzing information and generating new content, AI can introduce automation that improves outbound campaigns, quality assurance, and customer self-service.

Advanced predictive dialing solutions include AI innovations that automate routine tasks and intelligently guide agents through complex business rules to increase success rates in outbound campaigns. These innovations:

To improve quality assurance in contact centers, AI can analyze customer call recordings to quickly identify which agents and approaches are most successful and which agents could benefit from additional training. The technology frees quality management staff to focus on improvement initiatives and eliminates the human bias that inevitably creeps into manual call monitoring.

To enhance customer self-service, AI-powered chatbots and voice bots can capture customer information, validate customer identity, and capture customer requests. The intelligent bots can provide relevant answers to most customer questions so agents can spend time on more complex and potentially lucrative requests.

Every source of friction between financial organizations and their customers has the potential to damage the relationship.

Today's technologies help you remove friction at each touch point along the holistic customer journey and deliver a more human and welcoming experience. If you’re starting to think these same technologies are critical to your success in multiple ways, you’re right:

Moving IT systems and information to the cloud is not a new topic for financial organizations. However, implementing the right balance of private and public cloud deployments has never been more critical from compliance and cybersecurity perspectives.

Public cloud services are the right choice for some applications. However, multi-tenant environments and shared resources are typically not the right choice for sensitive customer and operational data. In most cases, this information should remain protected behind corporate firewalls.

Choose technology providers that offer public and private cloud solutions with in-house expertise to solve deployment challenges in secure, strategic, and sustainable ways that meet operational requirements. Their highly skilled and experienced technology experts specialize in the unique needs of financial organizations and can develop the customized, fully compliant applications and workflows you need.

It can be tempting to leave legacy technologies in place. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right? That’s not the case when it comes to communications technologies. These outdated systems have stopped banks and credit unions from taking advantage of business-critical advances over the last several years.

Even a phone system is no longer just a phone system. With the right unified communications system behind it, desktop phones can have secure, automated processes built into them to become empowering connections between staff and customers.

The benefits go beyond phone sets. The centralized platform provides advanced communications and collaboration capabilities available on all employee devices, no matter where they’re working, what their role is, or what technology is delivering the communications.

Historically, data has been a by-product of business activities at financial organizations. Today, data is a mission-critical asset that enables real-time, insight-driven decisions, a far more profound understanding of customers, and new opportunities to personalize products and services so they’re more appealing.

To turn raw details about customer interactions into actionable insights, choose customer experience solutions with integrated analytics. These solutions include:

Ready to align your communications technology with your efforts to attract, retain, and safeguard your customers? Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.