What's an End-User Experience Anyway?

At the end of my previous post in this channel-focused series, I stated my view that in time, you'll really be in the user experience business. So, what does that really mean, and how much should you care?

Let's start with EUE - end-user experience - yet another term that can be so subjective it has little meaning for driving business decisions. This is a bit tricky for the channel, since your economic buyer is not the ultimate consumer. Furthermore, the ultimate consumer doesn't pay for UC, and the concept is typically vague at best for them. Whether you call them end users or employees - and there could well be politics around this with your clients, this audience needs to be part of the thought process and the value chain around UC.

At face value, the end-user experience seems simple; the task of making or taking calls is intuitive and friction-free. This is non-starter for legacy PBX, but for clients that are new to VoIP, the transition to IP PBX may not be 100% seamless. Dial plans, extensions, programmed key setting, calling features, etc. will likely not change with the same vendor, but there could be issues going to a new telephony vendor. Even something as nuanced as the audio quality might be a factor, especially if it's a step down.

So far, I'm just talking about the most basic end-user experience scenario, and even here your clients may have some unexpected adjustments to make. As long as the experience is on par or better, they'll adapt; but when switching vendors, it's not unusual to concede ground in a couple of places even though most of the changes are positive.

I'm starting at this level since IP PBX/VoIP is a prerequisite for UC, and you may have clients doing both at the same time. If you're having end-user experience problems here, UC will not fly unless you become very hands-on with the client both prior and during deployment. Just sticking with voice, the EUE with UC extends to both the mobile space and the desktop with softphones. These modes are far more challenging and temperamental than IP PBX, so good planning is needed. Without a solid voice EUE, the rest of UC will languish.

Presuming you can master voice, multimedia is the real test for a great UC EUE. This adds another layer of complexity, and I'm sure you know what that experience needs to look and feel like. That said, understanding this from a networking or IT perspective is one thing, but the end user is something else. What it takes to deliver this over the network is a great discussion with IT, but both of you must be equally cognizant of how that translates for employees.

I'm not saying this to sound simplistic. If you only thought about end users wearing their employee hats, the EUE is pretty manageable, and generally, end users take what's given. However, most end users have higher expectations, especially if the applications they use at home are cooler, more fun, intuitive, etc. compared to what's available at work. For this audience, it wouldn't take much to underestimate their sophistication, and if that happens, UC could fall flat.

My main takeaway here is that the EUE is complex, and needs to be understood from the end user's perspective for UC to thrive. Leaving this as an afterthought will be too late, as you only get to make one first impression. Your value to IT will really come through by helping create and deliver an EUE that comes in at the right level. If it's too basic, employees won't use it much, and IT won't get much in return. Conversely, if it's overly complex, nobody will adopt UC, and IT will have buyer's remorse for all the extra work with nothing to show management. This is a delicate balance to achieve, but if you can bring that, UC should pay off nicely for everyone.