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In part one of my public sector series, I talked about the ‘trinity of challenges facing the public sector. Local councils, government departments, NHS Trusts, and other organisations tasked with meeting citizen needs and providing universally accessible critical services are driven to digitally transform, improve the citizen experience, and bring their workforce along to support those changes.
The public sector organisations we support need specialist guidance and input from our transformation teams here at Mitel and through our partners. We help meet those needs by delivering a unified, integrated platform for communication. But what exactly is a unified communications solution?
Unified Communications Explained
Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) solutions bring together every modern form of communication and interaction an organisation currently has – or aspires to have –in one easy-to-manage digital platform.
Say goodbye to clunky phone systems, separate messaging apps, email and video tools that refuse to speak to any other tech in the office, and employees who rely on many devices and can’t securely share or transfer any details.
With a modern UC&C solution, every communication and collaboration tool you need to run your public sector organisation is nicely linked up in one place. It can even become the central technology provider for all your digital or in-person interactions.
Successful uptake of digital activity, efficiencies, and better overall outcomes are all intimately linked to this integrated communication technology – and the seamless comms and collaboration it enables.
You can expect a hugely improved user experience, which means employees spend less time scratching heads and shouting at unresponsive screens, more time sharing and evaluating information, and using the inherent initiative and talent that got you to employ them in the first place.
It doesn’t take a massive leap of imagination to determine who is a happy, well-connected employee. They collaborate with the right colleagues and access timely, accurate information that translates to better public services, smoother communication, and, ultimately, better-served citizens.
Good communication is central to an optimised citizen experience. Every engagement – whether a call, click, text, chat, or email – needs to be fast and intelligent. Today’s fundamental to public organisations is the ability to bring remote, hybrid, and on-site workers together. You need to foster interactions, connectivity, and joined-up thinking across the board, no matter where your people work and move or what apps and tech tools they need to use and access as part of their role.
This is crucial for delivering higher standards of work and greater efficiencies and delivering on your promise of outstanding citizen services. UC&C solutions provide a consistent, securely accessible record of every citizen interaction. For the citizen, it means not having to go through the whole painful story a dozen times with different call handlers.
For the employee, it offers a much more accessible, seamless process to resolve citizen issues and show them what they need when they need it. No more hours wasted chasing a lost document or contact because teams don’t speak to each other or can’t share information. Everything is available to the right eyes at the right time.
Then there’s the critical question of people being free to choose precisely how they want to communicate. After all, we’re told 80% of citizens now consider the experience of connecting to a service provider is as crucial as the service itself.
UC&C solutions enable better human connections, faster response times, and a more straightforward customer journey across technologies and applications. At Mitel, feedback from our public sector clients suggests that employees trust each other more when communication improves, and their overall happiness and fulfilment at work increases.
Teams have a system that makes it easy to communicate and work together, share expertise, and improve their overall output without needing to sit around one table or even be in the same office.
It’s reported that 67% of businesses found their mobile workers were more productive and able to resolve problems more quickly once they switched to UC.
Get in touch to learn more about the benefits of working in a seamless, unified communications environment – and how it could transform your modernisation needs, citizen experience, and employee outcomes.
