Doug Allen Blog: UC 2.0? Social Media Integration Looms

For those partners and providers who are already trying to get their heads around unified communications (UC), I bear ominous news; the whole space is about to get more complicated. More profitable and “stickier for customers,” probably, but definitely more complicated.

I’m talking about yet another example of convergence, this time between social media/networking tools and the usual toolbox of communications services and business applications that make up UC in ever-differing combinations. It’s no secret that social networking has caught on big-time both for personal and corporate use — the growing success of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in the business world is proof of that. And while businesses vary widely in their embrace of such tools, most organizations realize they have to come to grips with social media to maximize their internal and customer-facing operations, as well as to provide another channel for partners and prospects to interact.

No surprise there. But the idea of integrating these tools with business apps, particularly in customer service, call centers and service assurance is just starting to catch on. Just when unified communications vendors and pundits seemed to be starting to agree on some baseline functionality (voice/video messaging, conference and collaboration, unified messaging, presence, some integration with select business apps), there’s now a whole new set of technologies and plug-ins to incorporate into the overall unified communications system.

It’s more than using social media to distribute marketing collateral or sign up event attendees. Ideally, these tools can be used to stay abreast or even one step ahead of customer and market attitudes, allowing businesses to predict, react and get out in front of the curve more easily. Many businesses already use blogs, microblogs, and video sharing to better communicate internally or with customers. But that’s where the disconnect hits. The vast majority of these tools are not linked in any functional way to the business’ communications systems, including voice, e-mail or IM. Interactions that begin over one set of applications have no way of being carried through to the other. For instance, a customer complaint lodged over, say, Facebook, is not automatically routed to a call center, where the problem might best be resolved.

At least, not for the most part. Forward-thinking vendors say they’re already tackling the problem, integrating social media interfaces into their UC platforms. The usual UC vendor suspects – Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Siemens Enterprise Communications and Interactive Intelligence – are all incorporating such functionality into their UC platform(s).

For instance, Siemens is adding a social media portal of sorts to make these messages viewable from the UC  or agent interface, so that Twitter feeds pop up within their OpenScape UC and Contact Center clients; all “feeds” are handled by existing customer equipment. Cisco has announced a partially revamped contact center system, with an optional social media-only interface called Quad. And to return to my earlier example, Avaya has announced Facephone, a Facebook profile page click-to-call that enables a customer to speak to a sales or service representative without exiting that Web page.

Some of these leading UC vendors are taking a strategic attitude to social media integration, in effect treating social messaging as part of the contact center’s overall workflow, developing purpose-built devices that scan social media sites for keywords, evaluate these posts for possible action, and then prioritize them into a workflow response sequence.

Brian Riggs, research director at Current Analysis, has been tracking this space closely, but isn’t convinced customer demand will really materialize to drive the market anytime soon. Speaking of some of the afore-mentioned systems, he believes some of these are integration prototypes suitable for specific customers, but not developed enough for general release.

“The reason for this is partially the newness of social media technology. But it also has to do with a market for such integrations being not yet fully developed. It remains unclear how widespread the demand will be for business communications solutions tightly integrated with social media software and services. Until a critical mass of enterprises demand tight integration between the two this will remain a niche market with limited impact to the overall business communications solutions industry.”

I take Brian’s point, but I have to take the long view; social media networking is here to stay, and as businesses find ever more ingenious and specific ways to channel their capabilities – or just as likely, as customers increasingly demand that companies re-engineer their businesses for social media to improve response time, link to wider user communities, or just enhance the overall communications experience – the need for fully integrated unified communications will hit the tipping point.

And that’s when the channel partners, agents and VARs for these solutions will truly be tested.  It’ll be some time before vendor solutions are fully mature, with open standards, interoperability, and programmable APIs that allow the customer or partner to refine multiple communications streams into a customized, optimized workflow. In that gap, the channel will have a golden opportunity to provide critical design, consulting, implementation, management and support as these integrated systems are deployed.

It’s a steep learning curve for many a partner, who’s already struggling to keep up with the deluge of UC offerings available, to take on another whole communications stream at the same time. But the rewards could be great, both in terms of establishing closer customer ties by offering a “stickier” service, as well as the potential for recurring revenues for managed or hosted services. Maybe, for the channel, social media and UC integration represents something closer to the English translation of the Chinese word for "crisis": a dangerous opportunity.