Running and managing a communications platform is no simple feat. You must constantly update and reinvent your products and services to stay ahead of the competition. Also, you need a robust strategy to acquire new clients and retain a loyal and happy customer base.
This, in turn, highlights the need to focus on improving the customer experience. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple, cost-effective way to enhance your product with new features and functionalities?
Things become slightly complicated when you’re using a platform like Cisco BroadWorks. The good news is there are various product management best practices to help make the most of your investment in BroadWorks.
COMMON CHALLENGES WITH PRODUCT MANAGEMENT IN BROADWORKS
BroadWorks is a deeply established and globally used platform for developing VoIP and voice communications solutions. While the platform has been widely used for decades, it still comes with a few challenges, including:
LACK OF CUSTOMIZATION AND CONTROL
Adding new features to your platform can be difficult and time consuming, but your customers’ ever-changing demands create a need to quickly adapt with new products and services. It’s just as challenging to quickly provision new customers.
SILOED SYSTEMS
You’re likely dealing with multiple systems that work in isolation. Provisioning, translating, and managing all these touchpoints and systems is painstakingly difficult. How many screens should you need to have open at the same time to do one task?
UNBILLED SERVICES
When you’re working with siloed systems, you also have to deal with lost earnings due to unbilled services and licenses. Tracking and identifying these unbilled services may not be feasible with your existing infrastructure. Is there revenue you could capture that’s escaping from your bottom line?
HIGHER COSTS
Orphaned licenses could result in insurmountable losses. On top of that, there’s no easy way to predict the cost associated with acquiring and provisioning new users. Manually performing routine tasks further diminishes efficiency, and ultimately takes a toll on your company’s bottom line.
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES FOR BROADWORKS
Fortunately for you and your team, there are available solutions. Building and maintaining your communication platform using BroadWorks comes with hurdles, but you can reduce customer churn and maximize revenue by using the following product management best practices:
- LEVERAGE AUTOMATION
An automation platform comes in handy at various steps of deploying your BroadWorks-based solution. It’s particularly useful for automating routine tasks, thus letting you focus further on what’s most important – improving the customer experience.A good automation platform will automatically livestream billing information to third-party apps, so you no longer have to worry about losing revenue due to unbilled services.
- JUDICIOUSLY USE ADMIN TOOLS
It’s essential to find a solution that’ll let you easily make changes to your BroadWorks-based communications platform.Whether you want to change the interface layout or add new features, you should be able to do it in just a few clicks. That makes it easy to cater to increasingly complex customer demands and to deliver a superior user experience.
- ENHANCE SELF-SERVICE FUNCTIONALITIES
The ultimate goal of every product manager is to improve the customer experience with breakthrough features and top-notch support. While we all want our customers to have immediate access to that support, overwhelming your customer service reps with too many calls and tickets is problematic.Whenever possible, you should focus on implementing self-service functionalities on your customer portal. Whether a customer wants to change their account settings or modify call forwarding routes, make sure they can accomplish it without contacting support.
- LEARN TO DELEGATE
Apart from using automation, you can further minimize your workload by delegating various tasks to your team. Save your time and effort so you can focus on the most mission-critical processes.
TAKE YOUR COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM TO GREATER HEIGHTS
Utilizing automation, self-service functionalities, and delegation is crucial for staying ahead of other communications service providers. One of the most important product management best practices is to find an automation platform that simplifies BroadWorks and lets you easily make on-demand changes to your product. The right platform will help you attract and retain customers, boost profits, and offer a best-in-class user experience.