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August 13, 2013

Disruptive Communications Technologies Mean Successful Companies are Changing Companies

By Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor

While it’s no secret that mobile technology, cloud computing and social media are three of the most disruptive technologies to hit the enterprise, it’s interesting to examine, at the company level, how enterprises are coping with these concepts.



According to Andy Abramson (News - Alert), CEO of marketing communications agency Comunicano, Inc., companies have a number of challenges ahead when it comes to not only touching on these technologies, but embracing them and integrating them fully into operations. On the customer support front, social media has been perhaps the biggest challenge, essentially changing the way contact centers, marketing departments, sales departments, help desks and others do business.

“The time factor has shortened from days, to hours to minutes,” Abramson recently told TMCnet. “You can no longer be passive when it comes to customer service, as anything can go viral in a nanosecond.”

Many companies have discovered this the hard way, failing to appreciate how super-users of social media can turn their personal customer support woes into major issues that influence hundreds or even thousands of potential customers. Social media today needs to be woven into the very framework of how a company does business: not only monitoring it for mentions of companies and their competitors, but actively using it to reach out to customers and prospects, and building two-way customer engagement programs with existing customers.

Another area that is challenging businesses, particularly the departments that are customer facing, will be WebRTC, the standard that will allow for cross-browser communications, video conferencing and other newer channels. The standard will begin to give rise to more innovative services, says Abramson, while reducing the dependency on fully configured apps.

“The communications industry will see a wave of new services, and new ways to deliver old services made better,” he says. “We’re seeing that already with iotum updating Calliflower to WebRTC vs. using Skype (News - Alert) as an access mode, and the same with UberConference. APIs will also play a big part in this.”

Couple this will the increased use of mobile technology, both inside companies (giving rise to the concept of “BYOD,” or “bring your own device”) and among their customers, and it seems clear that if enterprise IT departments aren’t currently pulling their hair out to find ways to bring these new disruptive technologies into the fold, they’re not doing their jobs.

While trying to piece together a customer and sales support and marketing program with legacy technology was never a great idea, this year and in the years to come, it will become even more critical for companies to find ways to service their customers in newer channels. Customers are already and expanding these channels: failing to do so will simply drive them into the arms of competitors.

During the upcoming ITEXPO Las Vegas August 26 to 29, Abramson will moderate sessions on the topics of enterprise video and the mobile workforce.




Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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