Getting the most out of your collaboration strategy

Date:
Mon, 02 Nov 2026 10:41:24 +0000

Description:
How to effectively implement AI to improve communications and support
networks for customers and employees.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Collaboration platforms have become central to working life, with Microsoft Teams alone serving more than 320 million monthly active users worldwide. Everywhere you look, they are now part of workplace culture and have been a driving force for change in the use of voice services.

Part of their ongoing appeal is that they are extremely simple to deploy and their familiarity flattens the learning curve for many users almost entirely. For IT teams, one of the key benefits is that they sit within an established supplier environment and, as a result, can help make procurement more straightforward. Rodney Hassard Social Links Navigation

Head of Product, Applications Group at Vonage. Sounds great, but
communication infrastructure must also be able to adapt over time - for example, when a business expands or changes how it serves customers.
Depending on the platform, any functional limitations may only become clear when a business needs to connect communications with other systems or adapt services for new teams and locations. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here:

The point is that inflexibility can create complications that significantly increase the initial cost of a collaboration solution; something that businesses can easily overlook. The hidden cost of inflexibility But what do we mean by complications? Well, any given collaboration platform may work perfectly well for everyday internal calling, yet they all have the potential to become restrictive when communications need to support more specialized processes. You may like The more autonomous AI becomes, the more human strategy matters Unleashing the power of the team is our mission: Atlassian
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To break this down, everyday internal calls have relatively simple requirements because employees already know who to contact and how to reach them. However, in use cases such as customer-facing communications, employees may require calls to be directed based on factors such as location or the nature of the inquiry.

They may also need access to relevant customer information while the conversation is taking place, whether it is held in a CRM platform or another business application, including a bespoke system where technology integration is more challenging. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to
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This is where the level and quality of the integration becomes extremely important, as any limitations may force employees to switch between applications or search manually for information that should be readily available.

Get this wrong, and users may require a customer to repeat information, which can extend the interaction and cause frustration. Some businesses may also need more detailed insight into call activity when they are trying to
identify problems or improve customer service. For many, this is a central objective when building these systems and processes.

Adding workarounds, such as asking staff to look up customer records manually or using a separate connector to pass data between systems, is one option. However, these can make it harder for IT teams to manage the service consistently as requirements change. What to read next Why the next
technology conversation shouldn't start with AI UK businesses don't have a CX innovation problem. They have an operational readiness problem. Why
enterprise AI needs real-time conversations, not just documents Why AI
changes the equation (again) The issues are becoming even more consequential as businesses look to use AI to handle a greater share of customer communications, because these systems need access to the right information to respond usefully.

For an assistant to deal with an inquiry properly, it needs to draw on the same customer information that a human employee would use. But when an
inquiry cannot be resolved automatically, the conversation needs to reach the appropriate person without losing its context.

This is where any disconnect between the communications environment and core business systems can really limit what an AI assistant can do well. AI that cannot access the right information can create an additional layer of
friction for customers and employees.

Ideally, these compromises should be avoided entirely. A business should be able to retain the collaboration tools employees already know while adding communication and integration capabilities where needed.

In fact, seamless connectivity and interaction between the user, the AI tools being used, and the relevant customer and operational data should be a core objective rather than a nice-to-have. This means that the technology should
be able to accommodate changing requirements without creating a dependence on manual workarounds, so organizations have full control over the pace at which they adopt new technologies and processes.

Businesses planning to expand their use of AI, which is likely to include a great many of them, should consider whether their current communications infrastructure can support those connections. Granted, it is usually possible to retrofit systems to bridge functionality and service gaps, but if the objective is to use AI effectively across a growing number of customer interactions, flexibility needs to be built into the foundation from the outset. We've featured the best business intelligence platform. This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives , our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit



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