The Value of the User Experience

There are many important features required for end user adoption of Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) tools and solutions, but chief among them is a good user experience. Many vendors have begun to realize just that, and are making adjustments accordingly.

While the UCC industry has been encountering some difficulty in end user adoption lately, vendors are combating that by trying to provide an intuitive and simple user experience, designed to make the solutions easier and more enjoyable to use. It doesn't matter how well a solution works if it frustrates the users while they're trying to make it work, so UCC vendors are making their solutions not only work for the user, but work with the user.

For example, Avaya has been focusing on contextual awareness, in order to present the end user with the most relevant items in the client interface, while Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise's OpenTouch is designed to let users move between devices seamlessly and view a timeline of the conversation without interrupting the call at all. Other companies are working on using their existing solutions to improve the user experience, such as IBM combining social networking with Sametime UCC tools in IBM Connections, and Microsoft integrating Lync communication tools into its Outlook and Office applications.

Hosted providers have also increased the focus on the user experience. For example, all Fonality users receive the desktop Heads Up Display (HUD) UC client, which connects the users' phones, desktop and important business applications into a single interface. Users can send IM's, view employee's presence status, access drag-and-drop call management features and call control capabilities, and can set their status from a simple user interface. Users can view someone's contact card and click on an icon to send an email, IM/chat, or an SMS.

8x8's Virtual Office Desktop softphone application integrates a business softphone, and provides quick access to a personal and corporate directory, soft phone, online meetings and faxes, and provides a searchable archive of call logs, chats, meeting info, recordings and social media feeds.

Users have different requirements, depending on the kind of work they do and how they do it, so a mobile employee working for a technology company will have vastly different needs than a health insurance employee who works behind a desk. As such, vendors must supply a variety of solutions to meet individual needs, or at least one that can be easily customized to each user's preferences.

Dimension Data is well aware of this, having surveyed businesses to determine what they feel their customers need. A surprising 21 percent of large enterprises believe that their users all have the same requirements, in spite of varying circumstances or industries. Only 38 percent profile their users to make sure they're providing the proper services. Businesses should take note of Dimension Data's warning that a lack of user awareness will make it difficult to successfully deploy Unified Communications and Collaboration solutions.

The user experience is key, and vendors that focus on bells and whistles rather than an intuitive, user-friendly experience will fall behind.