How Unified Communications can Improve the Purchasing Process for Customers

While there are obvious benefits for employees who have access to UC, it is also necessary to think about how it can affect the customer when dealing with a company.

First impressions are obviously important, so with UC you are endowed with a variety of ways to make initial contact and then foster relationships going forwards.

This digital business differs from other dealerships in that rather than relying on a bricks and mortar showroom to wow customers, it instead hosts everything online. This gives it the ability to sell to a global audience rather than wait for potential buyers to turn up in person and then try to secure a deal.

Because the company has to cater to an international market, UC gives it the ability to get in touch with customers even if they are not based domestically. It recently sold a van to an agriculturalist from Australia who was out tending to his crops when he spotted the vehicle he wanted on the company's site and decided there and then to put his money on the table.

Modern consumers are used to a degree of continuity in their purchasing, with mainstream services allowing them to carry out research on one device, add items to a digital shopping basket with another and then finalize the transaction on a third.

It is possible to replicate the same levels of convenience and cohesion at almost any level thanks to UC, which means that even small and medium sized enterprises will be in a good position to prove that their worth when under the scrutiny of potential customers.

The fact that Lewis's focuses entirely on a web-based business without the need for a bricks and mortar showroom means that access to fast, consistent and comprehensively powerful communications services are at the core of its continued survival.

UC is a broad market that comprises multiple different facets, which means in many cases it is possible to pick and choose the most appropriate services while leaving the unnecessary ones on the shelf.

At the core of any good UC setup is a fast business broadband connection. Even if you are going to be relying on externally hosted communications platforms based in the cloud, you will need plenty of bandwidth to handle the exchange of data between your local and remote devices and the provider's data centres.

You will then be able to combine one or all of a handful of other platforms into one easy-to-manage solution. This can include real time services like instant messaging and VoIP as well as other options such as email, text messaging and even traditional fax.

For companies that, like Lewis's, will need sales teams to be out and about rather than tethered to a desk, it may be sensible to also think about the type of mobile solutions available.

This needs to incorporate a consideration of both the handset hardware and the type of networking that it can access when the user is away from the office.