Tailoring your communications with a Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) strategy

Learn how BYOC and communications workflow automation can empower business continuity and improve customer experience.

Bring You Own Carrier (BYOC) is becoming increasingly popular as organizations of all sizes move to the cloud. While BYOC is not a new concept, innovation in the communications industry is building upon the capabilities of BYOC, allowing organizations to tailor their communications strategy so that they can transform flexibly in the cloud.

Learn about the many ways BYOC can offer flexible, protective, cost efficient, and consistent communications in this overview of a recent discussion between Tom Brannen, OnConvergence Sr. Analyst, and IntelePeer’s Solution Engineer, Pete Neal. To view the entire discussion, click here.

What is BYOC?

BYOC, or “Bring Your Own Carrier,” allows organizations that have a hosted UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) and/or contact center solution to use their preferred voice carrier, as opposed to the carrier that their provider bundles with their communications platforms. With BYOC, organizations can select the carrier that meets their unique needs, with the features, cost, reliability, and service that they require. For added value, organizations can layer on communications workflow automation, creating the ability to streamline operations and communications quickly and easily.

In general, there are three key reasons an organization may want to explore a BYOC strategy:

1. Communications are critical – Bundling voice with hosted UCaaS and/or contact center solutions from a single provider can put an organization at risk. If the provider experiences service issues or an unexpected disruption in the area (due to weather, construction, etc.), the organization will lose both its voice capabilities in addition to its hosted UCaaS and/or contact center capabilities. Using a BYOC strategy creates business continuity; if the organization’s hosted UCaaS and/or contact center provider experiences a failure, they can still rely on voice. BYOC offers a flexible way to redirect inbound voice calls to other locations or options, so that their communications can stay up and running.
2. Customer experience is a priority – BYOC allows organizations to layer communications workflow automation on top of its voice and hosted UCaaS and/or contact center solutions. This network-based overlay creates the ability to automate customer communications, helping to deliver a best-in-class, multi-channel communications experience, while simultaneously streamlining operations so that agents and staff can focus on high-priority customers and tasks.
3. Cost-effective solutions are necessary – BYOC ensures that organizations can select the voice carrier that best fits their budget. Instead of paying for features that are bundled with their communications platforms, the organization can bring a voice package that includes only the features they need- nothing more, nothing less. Additionally, utilizing BYOC allows the comparison of prices across vendors, delivering additional control over cost.

Strengthen business continuity with BYOC and communications workflow automation

In short, combining BYOC and communications workflow automation allows organizations to:

• Keep communications up and running if hosted service is impacted.
  As mentioned above, a BYOC strategy allows organizations to utilize a variety of different failover scenarios if their hosted UCaaS and/or contact center provider experiences issues that impact the ability to complete voice calls. Options include backup SIP trunk paths to alternate locations, Cloud based IVR’s that allow for self-service and call redirection choices, network- based audio messaging, and routing of calls to user’s smart phones. Once the hosted provider has resolved service on its end, the original routing to the provider can be dynamically restored.
• Automate communications to easily interact with customers when an issue occurs.
  Using communications workflow automation, organizations can create a variety of call handling options to ensure business can continue even when the unexpected occurs. The no-code / low-code solutions can be implemented without or with minimal developer resources. A no-code example could be a simple network-based announcement when a caller reaches out, alerting the caller that there is an outage affecting service, then prompting the caller to try again later. A low-code option could provide the same outage announcement, while simultaneously capturing the caller’s phone number for a call back once services are restored.

How to improve customer experience with BYOC and communications workflow automation

Layering communications workflow automation with a BYOC strategy allows organizations to automate communications across multiple channels. This improves customer experience in two ways:

1. Automating communications across multiple channels allowing organizations to send notifications, appointment reminders, payment requests and more to their customer on the device they prefer. These communications are self-service, allowing customers to engage quickly and on their own schedule. A good example is automating the ability for customers to access historical information about their account via voice or SMS text. Customers are happy because they can access the details they need, without waiting on the phone for a live agent.
2. Automating communications allows organizations to route calls to the best location or person. This can help prioritize certain calls as well as offer self-service options for calls that do not necessarily require an agent to fulfil. This automation frees agents to focus on high priority calls. As an example, an insurance benefits company recently used communications workflow automation to modernize their card activation process. Their customers can dial in and activate their card or access account information without talking to an agent. Now their agents can deal with issues that require human intervention, while simultaneously streamlining card activation for card users.

To listen to Tom and Pete’s complete discussion on BYOC and communications workflow automation, view the full session here.

Are you ready to explore BYOC and communications workflow automation? Contact us to get started today.