AI and the future of customer engagement

When it comes to communications, many organizations still maintain separate tools for calling, meetings, messaging, and customer service. These disparate systems can create silos and poor visibility, leading to an unpleasant customer experience. To improve that experience, organizations are seeking cloud communication solutions that combine unified communications as a service (UCaaS), contact center as a service (CCaaS), and the power of conversational AI. 

By bringing calling, messaging, meetings, and contact centers together, customers can engage with organizations across all channels — voice, web chat, SMS, social, and email.

Traditionally, UCaaS and CCaaS have been deployed separately, leading to management difficulties and inconsistent user experiences. Bringing contact center agents and other employees into a shared environment can promote seamless information flow between all employees whenever needed. It also seamlessly provides a more complete picture of the customer.

But what happens when you can add AI into the mix? Those solutions with built‑in AI can drive measurable outcomes using automated transcripts, sentiment analysis, summaries, coaching insights, and post‑interaction analytics. These capabilities speed resolutions, improve contact center employee performance, and deliver consistent, personalized experiences. 

The goal is to promote seamless collaboration among employees and efficient customer interactions across an organization. UCaaS is focused on employees, delivering telephony, messaging, and meeting services to staffers. CCaaS delivers customer interactions through voice, chat, email, and social media channels. By combining these two services, advanced solutions can eliminate the silos between contact center agents and other staffers to enhance the communication and collaboration experience for both customers and internal stakeholders.  

Some analysts are signaling that such combined solutions are shaping the future of contact centers and that it can enhance your organization’s Return on Investment (ROI) in communications.

Having one platform for all your communications services helps provide a consistent experience for internal teams and customer-facing agents. Agents can reach a subject matter expert without leaving the customer's call. This functionality is critical when teams are more widely dispersed and working on a remote or hybrid schedule.

Recently, 72% of business leaders said they wish their business had better communication tools. They noted that when communication is effective, employee confidence, customer satisfaction, and productivity all increase. Business efficiency relies on the ability of staff to communicate anytime, anywhere with clients and colleagues. Customer service teams need to seamlessly tap into real-time call queue monitoring or call center analytics from distributed locations. Keeping employees connected over the cloud, across platforms and devices, regardless of location, is a vital element of business success.

Unified Customer Experience 

Unified Customer Experience (CX) solutions can lower the costs and complexity of managing multiple communication platforms while increasing the workflow flexibility and scalability of the cloud-based solution. Simply put, such solutions allow organizations to reduce the number of technology partners they work with and enhance customer engagement.

Proponents of Unified Customer Experience say that by employing the technology they have increased efficiency, improved customer experience, and reduced operational expenses. In a study investigating companies adopting integrated UCaaS and CCaaS platforms, Metrigy reported that businesses that take such an approach decreased their operational costs by 18%, and increased revenue by 22.6%. 

Forrester reports that managed services can help reduce IT costs by 30% and increase operational efficiency by 50%. Organizations that opt for managed services will not be receiving the arrows in the back that those on the bleeding edge often suffer, as KPMG reports that about 70% of companies used managed services to streamline IT in 2025. 

“Organizations with lean IT teams need service providers that can combine cloud communications and contact center platforms with managed network services, 24x7 support, and enterprise-grade SLAs all within an appropriately priced services wrap. Spectrum Business exemplifies this approach with its nationwide network, professional services for CX and AI deployments, and a strong focus on network reliability and implementation experience, making it an excellent choice for organizations moving mission-critical communications and contact center workloads to the cloud,” explains Brent Kelly, Principal Analyst, Omdia.

By streamlining workflows and communication between the front and back office, better customer and employee experience can be achieved. And there are cost savings found in the inherent benefits of using a single vendor platform. An added benefit of choosing one partner for your Unified Customer Experience is consolidating the apps your various teams rely on daily. The Digital Communications Governance Report found that 82% of workplaces use four or more unified communications and collaboration tools.

Your goals are our priority. Let’s talk. 

Make it easy for your customers to connect to you with an AI-driven, omnichannel solution that merges unified communications, sales intelligence, and seamless, consistent customer experiences across channels into one cohesive, data-driven solution. Unified CX (UCX) with RingCentral brings calling, messaging, video conferencing, and contact-center capabilities into one secure, cloud-based workspace, building on the Unified Communications with RingCentral solution from Spectrum Business.

Spectrum Business delivers an end-to-end service wrap that includes dedicated project management, professional installation, advanced number porting, fiber connectivity, managed networking equipment and 24x7 nationwide support. This comprehensive approach eliminates the complexity of coordinating multiple vendors. The 100% uptime SLA guarantee on Dedicated Fiber and four-hour mean time to restore set a market-leading benchmark.

Looking forward to seeing you at Enterprise Connect 2026

Taking place March 10-12, 2026, in Las Vegas, Enterprise Connect brings together IT leaders, architects, and practitioners from government, education, SMEs, and large enterprises to learn, evaluate, compare, and plan across their technology landscape. Stop by Booth 705 to see a demo of UCX with RingCentral. We look forward to hearing about your goals and objectives and exploring how UCX with RingCentral with AI can help you achieve them.