Nowadays, effective and efficient communication, both with customers and internally, is vital for businesses that want to ensure continued success. And here, UCaaS and CCaaS are invaluable solutions that offer more flexibility Because UCaaS is mainly an internal communications tool with inbound, outbound, call routing, and collaboration features, it’s generally priced lower compared to CCaaS.
This is simply because CCaaS offers far more advanced features and has to be capable of dealing with higher call volumes due to constant customer communications. That being said, because CCaaS is a cloud-based solution, it is still capable of reducing a business’s communication and call center infrastructure costs.
About 86% of executives and employees believe that a lack of communication and collaboration is the number one cause of workplace failures.
But what is UCaaS and CCaaS? What are the differences between them and what benefits do they offer to businesses? In this post, we’ll look at these questions in more detail.
What is UCaaS?
Unified Communication as a Service or UCaaS is a cloud-based platform that allows businesses to integrate several communications channels into one platform. As such, these systems serve to streamline a business’s communications processes and improve collaboration, giving businesses access to voice communications, instant messaging, video calls, fax, SMS, file sharing, and more in one tool.
What is CCaaS?
Contact Center as a Service or CCaaS allows businesses to integrate their communication channels, migrate their contact center infrastructure to the cloud, and gives them access to contact center tools such as interactive voice response (IVR), analytics, and more, in a single tool. The major advantage of this is that businesses can save money while still having increased flexibility and scalability.
What’s the Difference Between UCaaS and CCaaS?
Now that we have a broad overview of UCaaS and CCaaS, it might seem as if UCaaS and CCaaS are quite similar. There are, however, several distinct differences between these two technologies that impact why you would choose one over the other. So, let’s look at the differences between these systems in more detail.
Purpose
The first major difference between these two tools is that UCaaS is designed to help businesses improve their internal collaboration and communication. For example, businesses might use UCaaS systems to replace their existing private branch exchange systems and use its different communication channels to facilitate better inter-organizational communication and remote working.
On the other hand, CCaaS helps businesses improve customer satisfaction and enhance their customer experience. Here, CCaaS has additional features like skills-based routing, analytics, IVR, call queuing, and more, that all aim to streamline and improve customer communications.
Features
As mentioned, UCaaS exists to help businesses improve their internal communications. As such, it typically offers features like VoIP calling, chat, email, SMS, social media messaging, video conferencing, and the like.
In contrast, CCaaS offer far more advanced features. These include everything from advanced analytics to call and queuing, interactive voice response, omnichannel capabilities, and more.
Advantages
Because UCaaS and CCaaS are both cloud-based platforms, they offer several advantages over on-premise solutions, including:
- No Hardware. Cloud-based means no on-site hardware or software. With both these tools, it’s as simple as registering online and having access to their features. This means there’s no need to pay for hardware and software, their installation, and their maintenance.
- Flexibility. Because UCaaS and CCaaS are used online, they can be used from anywhere as long as there is a reliable internet connection. This is especially helpful nowadays when remote working is becoming increasingly popular.
- Efficiency. Because both these tools integrate several tools into one platform, they’re not only easier and more intuitive to use, but they also increase employees’ efficiency and productivity.
- Integrations. Both these communications solutions integrate with most of the tools businesses are already using, such as their CRMs, helpdesk software, and automation platforms.
- Scalability. Unlike on-premise systems that require physical installation every time a new line is needed, these solutions only involve creating a new line online. As such, CCaaS and UCaaS are far more scalable compared to on-premise infrastructure.
Disadvantages
While both CCaaS and UCaaS offer several advantages for businesses, it’s important to remember that they do have some disadvantages. For one, when businesses switch over to cloud-based systems, their employees might be used to on-site solutions, which could make adoption slower. Also, because employees are used to other systems, the implementation of CCaaS and UCaaS might require some training.
Another challenge with CCaaS and UCaaS is that, while they offer integrations with other systems and platforms, they might be incompatible with legacy, on-premise solutions. As such, this could lead to the purchase and implementation of other compatible software.
Pricing
Because UCaaS is mainly an internal communications tool with inbound, outbound, call routing, and collaboration features, it’s generally priced lower compared to CCaaS. This is simply because CCaaS offers far more advanced features and has to be capable of dealing with higher call volumes due to constant customer communications. That being said, because CCaaS is a cloud-based solution, it is still capable of reducing a business’s communication and call center infrastructure costs.
Vendors
Leading UCaaS vendors include ULTATEL, Fuze, Nextiva, Ring Central, and Zoom. Avaya, Salesforce, and Talkdesk are well-known CCaaS vendors.
Businesses can improve their productivity by as much as 25% when they improve their internal communication.
Using Both UCaaS and CCaaS
So, UCaaS vs. CCaaS, which should businesses use? Sure, they could choose one or the other, but why not use both? When they do, they’ll enjoy several benefits:
- Enhanced collaboration. When businesses use both UCaaS and CCaaS, they’ll unify all the customer and internal communications. This eliminates any data silos and leads to improved collaboration and communications between all teams across the entire enterprise.
- Improved customer experiences. When teams collaborate and communicate better, they’ll be able to solve customers’ issues and answer their questions faster. As a result, businesses are then able to improve their customer experience even further.
- Better analytics. When businesses implement both UCaaS and CCaaS in their communications processes, they’ll have access to more data from across the entire business. In turn, this data gives them more insights into how the business operates and how efficient its teams are. They can then use these insights to understand where they’re performing well and where their processes might need improvement.
- Increased flexibility. Because UCaaS and CCaaS are cloud-based technologies, they allow businesses to serve their customers, communicate, and efficiency at a lower cost compared to on-site communications infrastructure.
Summary
When it comes to business communication, both with customers and internal between teams, UCaaS and CCaaS are invaluable tools that can make businesses more efficient, give them more flexibility, and help them serve their customers better. We hope that this post helped illustrate the difference between these technologies and what benefits businesses can gain by using them.
For businesses looking for these solutions, get in touch with ULTATEL. Our innovative solutions bring employee and customer experience together in a unified communications and contact center platform.
