What is Real-Time Communication?
Instant exchange of information between a business and its customers is known as real-time communication.
Unlike blogs and emails, this interaction occurs in the present moment and the information is sent and received within the span of a few seconds. Real-time communication is usually a continuous process where buyers can ask follow-up questions and receive immediate responses to their concerns.
Some examples of such communication include instant messaging, video calling, and phone-based conversation.
The Importance of Real-Time Communication
The pandemic has greatly expedited the world’s digital and technological evolution. The options that let people communicate and interact with each other in real-time are only increasing.
Today, when consumers get in touch with a brand where they have invested their time and money, they expect an immediate response and resolution.
If your business keeps consumers in long waiting queues on calls and chats, then the chances of them not coming back, in the long run, go up.
This is the age when real-time communication is immensely crucial to a company’s growth than ever before.
How does Real-Time Communication add to a Business’ growth and fortunes?
Communication channels that were traditionally used by most offices are rapidly becoming less relevant. With the onset of the pandemic and the spread of the WFH model, many older methods of business-buyer interaction have become obsolete.
Full-time jobs now offer employees a much greater amount of flexibility in terms of work hours and locations. With the help of newer and digitally advanced channels of interaction, agents can now help consumers in real-time, while working from home or even from remote locations.
Investing in real-time communication tools can significantly enhance the customer experience your business delivers and overall development in the bigger picture.
Some ways in which an ideal real-time communications system can help your business flourish are:
Cost-Effectiveness
As opposed to traditional systems, cloud-based real-time communication cuts down on expenses.
Installing hardware, like landline calling devices, routers, etc., induces a heavy capital expenditure. These methods are also geographically bound and demand an IT team for maintenance.
Cloud communication, on the other hand, eliminates the need for upfront infrastructural expenses and offers easy access to data, anytime and anywhere.
Employees can be trained to timely update their systems, saving businesses money that would otherwise be used on a large IT team.
Seamless Connectivity
Using siloed solutions often leads to laggy connections, causing a drop in call quality.
And if a company’s customer experience is not at its best, buyers will switch to a different brand in a second.
The only thing cloud communication requires is a stable Internet connection.
If your company’s employees can ensure they have reliable Internet, irrespective of where they choose to work from, your real-time communications are bound to offer you great benefits.
Hiring Globally
Gone are the days when prospective candidates had to relocate every time they switched jobs. Today, companies can build a robust customer support team by hiring the best workforce from all across the globe.
Being able to build a support team virtually helps reduce the time and money spent in running an offline center. Getting the best of employees on-board virtually is faster. And it also allows managers to seek eligible employees from all over the world.
A report from Upwork claims that by 2028, 73% of all departments will employ remote workers in some of the other capacities. This only proves that the era of remote work is here to stay.
Greater Flexibility
Real-time communications using cloud-reliant systems is not only beneficial to customers and the business, but it also lends agents a much higher level of flexibility and comfort while working.
Cloud-based contact centers enable agents to use their own mobile devices while giving them quick access to all necessary customer data. Agents can also be trained to ensure all information is kept safe and their devices are updated regularly.
Unified Communication
Cloud telephony, in addition to easing business-buyer communication, also streamlines different channels of information exchange.
Storing all customer conversations on a single, easy-to-navigate dashboard allows for quick access to past interactions. This helps businesses deliver considerate and contextual service.
Support agents can also access individual customer data right before a one-on-one interaction to make the customer feel important.
Wrapping Up
Investing the right amount of money, time, and energy in cloud telephony and unified communications is the need of the hour in this fast-paced market.
It is important to upgrade your business to the latest technologies if you want to remain competitive. Today, a reliable Internet connection is all that is needed to offer a superior customer experience to your audiences.
The right kind of cloud-based solutions will help you save up, ensuring a happier and healthier working environment for your employees. As all of your communication channels are brought to the same level of comfort and dependability, your customer retention will also automatically shoot up!
Kritik Verma is a marketing enthusiast with a specialization in digital marketing. He is currently working at Servetel, a leading cloud telephony provider offering cloud services like IVR Solutions, Toll Free Number, Virtual number system and many more to boost business success. He enjoys reading about the latest digital marketing trends.
