What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Cisco UCM is primarily for enterprise customers and managed services customers across all sectors, from public sector to corporate to food and manufacturing, banks, and essentially everywhere.
Cisco UCM, or Cisco Unified Communications Manager, acts as the core building block of a communications platform for a company, enabling all voice communications such as calling in, calling out, Unified Comms features, IM, presence, voicemail, and now CX, which is a combined platform with bot, chat, and everything. The industry is using all of that.
Companies basically use Cisco UCM as a primary point of collaboration, setting up the system whether it is on-premises or within the cloud with Cisco's various offerings, and then they integrate the internal and external systems with it. This communications tool assists businesses in conducting their day-to-day operations.
How has it helped my organization?
Cisco UCM has impacted my organization positively in many ways. We use the whole Cisco UCM solution for all our communications. It serves as a single point of contact for all of our customers, and it is an omnichannel solution. Whatever the channel may be, the customer can reach us, whether it is via phone, email, WhatsApp message, vlog, or any social media contact. Cisco has provided us an omnichannel experience for our customers to come to us, and it really has made a significant impact.
We do monitor our stats, and while we normally do a quarterly CSAT survey with our customers, they have really appreciated the overall experience that they are seeing and the way they can contact us. There is less waiting time because there used to be a lot of waiting time, so now it is almost reduced to a very bare minimum. The general feedback is that customers come to us and tell us that it really has made a difference.
What is most valuable?
Cisco has generally been a leader in the Unified Comms field, and one of the best features they have are traditional features like calling, call park, dial-in, dial-out, voicemail, and presence. Other features they offer include analytics, call recording, the ability to manipulate headers and the flexibility of integration, along with assisted dialing, assisted transfer, conference calls, and other specific secondary features.
The main reason people use Cisco UCM is because it is an enterprise-grade solution, which is really robust. It gives them the flexibility to integrate with all of the existing infrastructure that people have, whether it is cloud or their internal IT system. The flexibility of integration and robustness of the enterprise-grade solution provides the most value to my customers.
What needs improvement?
Cisco UCM is almost at the top-notch of what we see within the industry, and they have an omnichannel experience and all of that. One of the things that they could improve is the GUI itself. The user interface may be a little bit outdated; it used to be state-of-the-art at the time they launched it, but now it is not as competitive as what the other leading vendors have, so perhaps a little bit more work on that would be beneficial. Additionally, the flexibility of cloud-based solutions, easy toggle, easy use, and all of those aspects might also need attention. The main work needed is on the user interface part so that all different users who do not come from a tech background can integrate these solutions. Perhaps a bit more on the AI front would be beneficial. Cisco is doing a little bit, but perhaps a lot more could be done. Some of the leading brands that we see are doing a lot on the AI side.
Cisco UCM needs to align with the industry expectations. There is a lot of data available which could facilitate more informed decisions in terms of when the communications medium is started. Depending on where the customer is reaching us, the ability to do a reference check, the ability to find out the context of the customer, predictive analysis, and intelligent routing are all areas for possible improvement. While Cisco has a lot of these features, enhancing those scales would really be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco UCM for around eighteen to nineteen years, and out of those eighteen to nineteen years, mainly fourteen to fifteen years I worked directly for Cisco.
What other advice do I have?
One of the main pieces of advice I would give to others looking into using Cisco UCM is that they cannot go wrong when they go with Cisco. Cisco is an international brand and one of the leaders in the Unified Comms industry, with enterprise-grade solutions. When selecting a vendor, one of the things that they really need to focus on is the legacy that they have, the enterprise-grade solution, the features, and the security. Cisco, among the key others like Microsoft and a few others, is on top. They just need to find out what exactly is the business outcome they want to achieve and how these solutions really solve it. The majority of these key vendors' feature capabilities are almost the same. It is just about the ecosystem that they want to put their solution in, the northbound and the southbound interfaces that the solution would work with, and what other legacy systems they have. That is where they will select a solution that really works for them.
I rate Cisco UCM at eight out of ten. I chose eight out of ten for Cisco UCM based on the feedback I gave. I would say it is a higher eight, between eight and nine. For some of the new feature sets, I would really want to see Cisco improve in the UI feature, a cloud-native experience, and an AI-native experience, basically GenAI and Agentic AI integrated into the overall solution.
The governance of Cisco UCM is there and it is pretty good. Cisco is one of the companies that have really taken AI to the next level in terms of the overall roadmap and building the guardrails around exactly what data resides where and how to access it. They have done their part; it is just the user interface side of things. How we expose the AI technology to day-to-day workflows is a little bit that needs work, but in terms of overall security, Cisco has done a top-notch job.
Regarding Cisco UCM's AI capabilities, in terms of the models that they use in the background and the predictive analysis and all of that, Cisco is really using the technology to their advantage. Some of the things that you would really see from an enterprise-grade solution are impressive, particularly how they massage the data and use it for business-related outcomes. I am very impressed.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Cisco UCM is deployed in my organization as a public cloud solution.
