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product marketing at Unify Square.
“By not looking deeply enough into UC
system health and user satisfaction, IT
is acting as their own worst enemy. But
lucky for them, visibility is easily attain-
able and can fast-track UC ROI.”
Satisfaction levels are somewhat
surprising when looking at perceptions
versus realities in instances where there
are problems or issues with UC com-
ponents. IT departments, for instance,
believe that 85 percent of end users will
notify IT when they need assistance, and
just 10 percent will try to fix the problem
themselves. In actuality, only about half
of end users will turn to IT when they
need assistance, while nearly a third of
users will try to fix matters on their own.
What’s more, nearly a quarter of end
users will simply “give up” and turn to
alternate applications or devices at the
first sign of trouble, while, even worse,
21 percent will ignore the issue entirely
and not even try to fix it. Further compli-
cating matters, more than a quarter of
users admit to using other communica-
tions apps in combination with their UC
system more than half the time.
“This ‘dual use’ makes it easier
to give up on the UC system should
things not function as expected,”
concluded the study.
When assistance is requested,
and users are on the phone with IT
help desk, the disconnect continues,
shows the survey. IT executives sur-
veyed, for instance, believe that near-
ly half of help desk calls are resolved
within four hours or less, but only
about a quarter of end users claim
they experience such a quick reso-
lution. And nearly a third of users
“have no idea how long a resolution
takes,” said the Unify Square study.
The good news is, more than 40
percent of UC users say they never
encounter any issues that need to
be pushed up to IT troubleshooting.
It’s possible that rate could be
even lower if users took better advan-
tage of training resources, something
both users and IT departments believe
is directly related to healthy adoption.
Yet majorities of workers aren’t even
aware that various training opportuni-
ties exists, show Unify Square’s survey.
“The silver lining is most organiza-
tions do have a myriad of training op-
tions,” said the study, “so the process
of simply connecting users to training
is a fairly low bar for IT and could lead
to large returns.”
It’s also another area where partner
providers seemingly could quickly help.
Perhaps most surprising, IT is
underestimating the extent to which
certain UC tools are utilized. Both
video and desktop sharing are being
used at higher rates than IT believes,
while voice and conferencing are
used slightly less than assumed.
“This shows that increased visibil-
ity into how end users are using the
UC functionality could result in even
more dramatic usage and productivity
success,” concluded Unify Square.
Presented all together, Unify
Square’s findings should make IT de-
cision makers reconsider the allot-
ment of resources and investments
in UC. It also seems to suggest they
could use a good UC partner.
o
Realities
Training Availability Awareness for UC Systems
Option
End User
IT
Don’t Know
29%
3%
Nothing
23%
17%
Online videos
21%
23%
Reference materials
26%
44%
Online tutorials
36%
45%
Instructor led
15%
35%
Source: Unify Square
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January - February, 2017
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Channel
Vision