What most industry pundits, IT management, and business management have failed to understand is that the needs of an individual end user will vary depending upon their role in initiating or responding to a communications contact attempt. I use the word “attempt” because as most telephone users already know, they can only attempt to make a real time person-to-person contact, with little guarantee of success.

UC didn’t didin’t really help much until the mobile, multi-modal “smartphone” came on the consumer scene. This now allows the individual end user to both initiate a contact or respond to a contact in any way they wish. That is where UC will now take off for all forms of communications.

In a recent commentary by my UC Strategies colleague, Blair Pleasant, she describes “collaboration” as a means of people interacting together to produce a result. She rightfully says that “You can communicate without collaborating, but you can’t collaborate without communication.” The issue is what kind of communications and in what end user contact role?

End User Control of Communications Modality

Just because a contact is initiated in any particular modality (real-time, asynchronous messaging, text, voice etc.) doesn’t mean the recipient(s) have to respond with the same modality. With the flexibility of multi-modal devices, each end user can do, when they want to, easily and efficiently. If necessary, they can schedule a real-time voice or video conference, to insure availability of the participants. However, even then, some participants may not be able to do everything that others are doing (e.g., listen in but can’t talk, watch a transcription in text, etc).

Person-to-person contacts include individuals making direct contact with each other, as well as individuals making contact with various groups. The latter is exemplified these days with “social networking” where an end user publicizes their activities to anyone that “follows” them. Where UC can come into play is to escalate the contact to a more direct, real-time interaction like “click-to-call” or “click-to chat.” However, that will still be a decision for the individual end users involved.

Process-to-Person Contacts (CEBP)

Perhaps more important is the need to recognize that business process applications also have a need to make timely contact with a person. This is particularly important in health care, financial services, insurance claims, government services, etc. Again, the old telephone game never worked well, so the rapid adoption of consumer smartphones is going to bring in a wave of “mobile apps” that can work cost efficiently and effectively.

The big difference is that an automated application process, which can offer the efficiency and cost-savings of self-services, will not want to have a voice conversation or even a “text chat” with a person. It will be a link to an online application, along with options to make contact with “available” live assistance that will exploit “click-to-call/chat.” That is where traditional contact center logic will come into play, especially for consumers/customers who want faster service.

UC is not hardware, nor even premise-based software, but must service all end users in a business process

As described in Blair Pleasant’s article, enterprise organizations have to get off the “telephony dime” that has been so limited and restrictive. That won’t be so easy to do when IT tends to look at just cost reductions and protecting old telephony investments. Everyone is starting to recognize that what really counts are the individual end users, both inside and outside of a business organization that must control how they personally benefit from UC through their choice of mobile endpoint devices and dynamic mode of contact.

The Yankee Group has come up with it’s own label for what UC does, i.e., “The Connected Experience.” They basically acknowledge the expanded role of the individual end user in business communications from ”anywhere,” but it is a vague descriptor for the end result in business communications and doesn’t seem to include the ways it will evolve from current forms of contact.

Summary

UC can now expand its impact on individual end user communication needs because of multimodal, mobile end point devices that individual end users will choose for both business and personal contacts. Enterprise organizations will have to support such flexibility with both existing and new, cloud-based services. Wireless carriers will have to the same, although they are still trying to control user access to application services for a piece of the action. Regulatory issues will come into play to insure that anyone can benefit from UC regardless of device and their location (mobility).