The customer experience (CX) is changing, and the use of digital services is rising astronomically. As a result of this changing experience, businesses must position themselves to offer customers an outstanding CX or risk losing their businesses. To offer your customers the best experience, keep these points in mind:
Increasingly, a customer’s interaction with a business occurs via digital media. Text, web chat, and social media are the growing interaction channels. Social media usage is on the rise. Even people over 65 years old report that 10 percent of their communications is via social channels. Dimension Data’s 2017 “Global Customer Experience Benchmarking” study reports that the use of mobile applications for CX has grown to become a top three choice for everyone under the age of 55. Even with digital channel use exploding, phone-based support remains crucial. Dimension Data reports for people over 35 years old, the phone remains the most preferred communications channel for ..

Once long ago, hotels, motels and other hospitality businesses occupied a fairly simple space in people’s lives—they were a place for guests to lay their heads away from home. But anyone who’s spent time in the hospitality industry in the last several years knows that the role of technology in hospitality businesses has drastically expanded.
In many cases, they’re becoming hubs of activity unto themselves. Most of this activity relies directly or indirectly on technology, making IT more important to hotel operations and the guest experience than ever before.
So we’re here to share ten of the top communication technology trends in hospitality today. Check them out. Think about which ones make sense for your business. And if you see an opportunity, you can get out in front and begin planning accordingly. After all, in hospitality, every advantage counts.
1. Mobile device as door key It’s fascinating that a function as simple as a door key could undergo so much evolution. But the tool ..

When Avaya Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection in the United States earlier this year, it was a wake-up call to companies that may have taken their legacy communications system for granted. The writing, however, had been on the wall for some time for Avaya users, beginning with Avaya’s acquisition of Nortel back in 2009—a move that saddled Avaya with significant debt and outmoded technology at a time when the company should have been investing in the future (i.e., the cloud).
With Avaya facing possible bankruptcy, their users are faced with some hard choices: Do nothing (and deal with the potential consequences of inaction), change everything (and rip out expensive equipment that still works) or migrate selectively from Avaya to a platform with a better future.
How to move If you’re an Avaya user, our advice on how to move forward is this: keep calm and carry over what you can. Don’t let anyone convince you that you need to rip and replace your existing Avaya platform in favor of an..

There are few places that the customer experience (the guest experience) is more important than hotels and hospitality businesses. We’re happy to present visions of the future, but today thought you’d like something a little more immediate and actionable. So here are six concrete examples of real-life hotels and hospitality businesses that have used communications and collaboration technology to make tangible improvements to their guest experiences and operations.
Hyatt Hotels Hyatt Hotels was in a need of a way to communicate with that fit the speed and mobility required to be a world-class hospitality brand. The needed to make sure it was easy-to-use, highly reliable, enhanced employee mobility and reachability—and do it all while keeping costs in line.
Watch Hyatt explain how they enhanced operations across a continent > Firmdale Hotels Firmdale Hotels needed a management and monitoring tool that would assist the IT department in maintaining round the clock reliability to compleme..

Avaya has announced the end of support for the CS1000M is coming in June 2018. Nortel PBXs were very popular for a wide range of medical facilities, so the end of support for the CS1000M is quite significant. Without support for the CS1000 range, these systems can fall out of service, which can threaten your accreditation with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Who does the end of support for the CS1000 impact? First things first: who does the end of support actually impact?
Hospitals Clinics Doctor groups Outpatient medical facilities Laboratories In addition to these standard players, smaller facilities who have deployed the CS1000s in conjunction with discontinued BCM groups will need to plan accordingly as well. The BCM is currently scheduled for end of support in October 2018.
When do I need to replace my CS1000? The CS1000M is scheduled for end of life in 2018, while a firm date for the CS1000E hasn’t been established yet. However, with the Avaya bankruptcy and..

Senators Sports & Entertainment owns and operates the Ottawa Senators, a team in the National Hockey League (NHL), as well as the Canadian Tire Centre, a 20,000-seat sports and entertainment venue.

The arena hosts the Senators’ home games throughout the season and playoffs, and major events that come to Canada’s capital city, including concerts, family shows and other entertainment acts.
The Senators are a high-performance team that made a deep playoff run in 2017, counting on the reliability of a defensive-minded system and star goalie. With regular season games and such incredible playoff success, the Senators organization needs to be confident it has a reliable system to back up its operations, too.
From office space to sellout crowds From its 220-person office to its sold-out arena events to many sites throughout the region, the Senators have the needs of a high-performance business. And the Senators need to be able to scale for many events and situations.
“In any given week w..

In this video blog post Terry McCabe explains why hybrid cloud can be a powerful choice for businesses.

From the Video So, hybrid cloud is interesting. Recently I've been on some panels, sat and watched some of the activities at Enterprise Connect, and it's very clear that the pure play cloud providers, you know, they like to denigrate hybrid cloud. They like to say, you know, it's what you have if you haven't really worked out what cloud can do for you.
Well, in truth, cloud moves at different speeds, and is driven by different things depending on your business needs. Hybrid cloud gives you the ability to leverage assets you've already got, on-premises assets, and combine them with the best of the cloud. Too many people, you know, talk about the cloud as if it's a simple transition. There's complexity and there are different drivers for different people, and to say that one size fits all I think is quite arrogant in a way. We don't know everyo..

Intro: Jon Brinton, EVP and President of the Mitel Cloud Division spoke with Telecom Reseller at Enterprise Connect week about how we help enterprises with digital transformation to the cloud. Be sure to check out the podcast here.
Doug Green/Telecom Reseller: This is Doug Green and I’m the publisher of Telecom Reseller and we are at Enterprise Connect 2017 and I’m with Jon Brinton who is the EVP and President of Cloud Division for Mitel. Jon, thank you for joining me.
Jon Brinton/Mitel: Thanks for having me Doug.
Green: So I’m, I’m excited to be able to not only interview Mitel but interview someone at Mitel who’s connected to cloud. So your division deals specifically I guess with cloud migration?
Brinton: Yeah, I’m responsible for the cloud globally at Mitel and, you know, one of the great transformations that Mitel has made over the last few years is we’ve been a significant enabler of unified communications moving to the cloud—either powered by us or powered by our global chan..

Intro: Jon Brinton, EVP and President of the Mitel Cloud Division spoke with Telecom Reseller at Enterprise Connect week about how we help enterprises with digital transformation to the cloud. Be sure to check out the podcast here.
Doug Green/Telecom Reseller: This is Doug Green and I’m the publisher of Telecom Reseller and we are at Enterprise Connect 2017 and I’m with Jon Brinton who is the EVP and President of Cloud Division for Mitel. Jon, thank you for joining me.
Jon Brinton/Mitel: Thanks for having me Doug.
Green: So I’m, I’m excited to be able to not only interview Mitel but interview someone at Mitel who’s connected to cloud. So your division deals specifically I guess with cloud migration?
Brinton: Yeah, I’m responsible for the cloud globally at Mitel and, you know, one of the great transformations that Mitel has made over the last few years is we’ve been a significant enabler of unified communications moving to the cloud—either powered by us or powered by our global chan..

Pacers Sports & Entertainment, the parent company of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, has been around for 50 years and employs hundreds of full-time employees and thousands of part-time employees.

The organization also oversees Bankers Life Fieldhouse, an arena that hosts many different events throughout the year: at least 41 NBA games, 17 WNBA games, NCAA events and a litany of non-sports events.
With a couple of successful sports franchises — the Pacers have reached the playoffs in six of the last seven years and the Fever have been a playoff team since 2005 and won a championship in 2012 — Pacers Sports and Entertainment has a history of success.
But the on-court product is only one part of the business. Behind the scenes, Pacers Sports & Entertainment relies on a network of support staff to provide the ultimate experience for its fans. This includes ticket sales and development, a branch with more than 50 employees that, by interacting directly with fans, s..

Matthew Clare, Product Manager for Contact Center Solutions, invites you to join us at Call Center Week 2017 to learn about key ways to leverage digital transformation in your contact center. Attendees will receive a complimentary copy of the newly updated Customer Experience for Dummies, Second Edition, written by customer experience industry analyst Sheila McGee-Smith.

Video Transcript “My name is Matthew Clare and I’m a Product Manager for Mitel’s Contact Center Solutions.
Today’s customer has not only a phone in their pocket, but the power of the entire internet at their fingertips. This means that they’re more intelligent than they’ve ever been in the past, they’re also more demanding than they’ve ever been in the past and, not only that, they have access to hundreds – if not thousands – of friends via social media platforms. And the impact on your business is more crucial than ever before.
For example, if you get an experience right, they are more likely to share that experien..

In this audio interview, Daryl Reva speaks with ITinCanadaOnline’s Nestor Arellana about unified collaboration etiquette and the rules employees should follow to respect a coworker’s presence.
Audio Transcript Nestor Arellana / IT in Canada Online: Over the last few years, enterprise collaboration apps and video conferencing apps have been skyrocketing in use in almost any sector. However, there still remain a few challenges for the people who use them, especially in the area of etiquette rules and best practices about how to use these tools. Today we have Daryl Reva, who is Vice President of Cloud Services for Mitel, and with his long experience in the use of collaboration and conferencing tools, he’s here to provide us with some tips and tricks on how to better use the tools we have in our offices these days.
Arellana: Hello Daryl.
Daryl Reva / Mitel: Hi, it’s good to be here. Looking forward to the conversation.
Arellana: Well, right now, we’re both on audio conferencing tool th..