Focus areas and service provider opportunities – an interview with Iain Sinnott on UC Advanced

Iain Sinnott, Head of International Carrier Sales, Enreach for Service Providers, was recently interviewed by UC Advanced about what he and the team are focusing on in 2023 and, in particular, opportunities for service providers and their business customers. In the spotlight were ‘mobile first’, enhancing the CX, successful hybrid working, and the channel owning the customer relationship. Here is a summary of the interview’s highlights.  

Business mobile is a massive focus for Enreach right now, with mobile phones increasingly people’s favourite device at work, providing more than just communications, but also productivity and collaboration too.

Iain pointed out that business mobility is a huge opportunity for channel organisations to adopt ‘mobile first’ strategies that enable customers to adopt fixed mobile convergence successfully. Benefits include bringing disparate workforces together across different job functions, with everything delivered from one centralised, unified environment. Iain advised starting with simple steps first.

Another focus area and trend in the region that Iain called out is the use of unified communications to enhance the customer experience (CX), enabling better engagement with external contact audiences faster, more easily and affordably. As a case in point, Iain highlighted what Enreach calls ‘casual contact centre’ features, blended within UC. This is a game-changer for many small businesses, removing the need to invest in full-scale contact centre solutions but still have access to enterprise-grade customer service technology. Team members can even interact with customers without leaving their current business app.

Iain also commented that Conversational AI is gaining a lot of momentum this year and is becoming available to SMBs, not just to larger enterprises. This is another technology that helps deliver a better CX by taking on much of the routine incoming customer queries so that human interaction can be prioritised where it is most needed.

With hybrid working very much the new norm, this was unsurprisingly another topic covered in the interview. Iain said that many businesses still need help to adopt new working models and that this is an area where the channel can help. He stressed the importance of looking beyond just offering a meeting and collaboration platform to look at the use cases and activities each type of home or remote worker might need. For example, inbound and outbound contact requirements may differ, such as voice and non-voice queues, message flows, record keeping, or CRM integration.

Plus, finding ways to add value on top of what hyper scalers are already offering is a real opportunity for the channel. However, what is critical is to eliminate technology siloes and instead have everything — devices, apps, platforms, networks — in one seamless environment. Beyond fixed voice, mobile, video, chat, email, SMS, and social channels, converged contact can also include CRM integration,  contact centre functionality, and marketing automation.

Giving users more control and flexibility over their working days in the modern world of work is another potential differentiator. One example is better management of individual reachability, such as diverting work-related incoming contact to someone else after 5 pm but still enabling personal calls to get through. Multiple personas can also live on the same device. In this way, work-life balance is supported while still delivering business productivity.

Other areas Iain touched on included helping service providers devise separate offerings for categories of business users and understanding that an SMB’s priorities are different to a large enterprise and hence, need solutions designed with them in mind.

Finally, Iain again emphasised his belief and Enreach for Service Providers’ commitment to the channel owning the customer relationship, including a wide range of white-label options, and helping them customise and differentiate their approach to the market.

The interview provided an excellent opportunity to discuss some of the biggest trends in today’s marketplace, and the opportunities those present to service providers in the region.

The full article can be viewed here