Engaging Users Here, There and Everywhere

Federal agencies face an obstacle today that is more complex, adaptive and ruthless than any they’ve faced in the past: millennials.

So says Matt Davidson, Senior Executive Briefer at Avaya Government Solutions.

Millennial mentality seems to dominate the workforce a little more each day, and the resulting communication behaviors present brand new challenges for government agencies.

Take the Internet of Things as an example. Life with a menagerie of devices is now standard, and citizens — federal agents and customers alike — expect their different channels of communication to connect.

“Agencies must be cognizant of a channel-agnostic approach,” Davidson says. Customer satisfaction sits at the center of government operations, and it’s becoming increasingly dependent on engagement at every touchpoint.

For agencies still running legacy systems, this means finding a way to meet users where they are, be it waiting on a phone line or fluctuating between social media, email and web chatting.

And Davidson says this is possible. Government can maintain traditional modes of communication — appeasing those wedded to telephony — while simultaneously nurturing a network of unified communications to serve the growing demands of connected users.

“The marketplace is changing the modality,” says Michael O’Brien, Sales Director for the Contact Center at Avaya.

And it’s not just client-side communications that are demanding more interoperation. Federal agents desire mobility too, and seeds of the bring-your-own-device philosophy are growing across government.

“Engaged agents are the gateway to a sound customer experience,” O’Brien says. Agencies who ensure their operants have a similar level of streamlined communications to their constituent base will see a satisfaction uptick in the latter.

In the way of internal optimization, agencies can address the ever-more-massive Internet of Things phenomenon by making it beneficial rather than threatening. With elevated communication, the ability to seamlessly transition from one medium to another, connected devices become a real advantage.

With applications like Avaya Communicator, for example, employees can work remotely on their laptops, tablets and smartphones, and communicate via text, voice, video and/or web collaboration when on the go, easily accessing the same stream of communication via a secure application. This diminishes the threat that disruptions — inclement weather, sickness or travel, to name a few — could pose to an agency’s productivity, Davidson says.

The core Avaya software has an open architecture, meaning developers inside and outside agencies can produce applications able to interoperate with Avaya solutions. Avaya provides its own toolbox for coders that it calls the Avaya Breeze™ Platform, Davidson says. And the Avaya Snapp Store provides modules that can help agencies arrive at a solution tailored to their needs.

Powering this technology is a type of networking called session initiation protocol (SIP), an application-based communication protocol. SIP is the natural next step in communications evolution, the heir to the IP, digital and analog before it.

“It’s not just adding new things to things we already had,” Davidson says. “it’s making them work differently and allowing communication — and elevated smart communication — as it is needed.”

Wherever and whenever federal employees need to access their work, these tools have the capacity to connect them.

“But these tools are means to the end, not the end itself,” O’Brien says. The end boils down to more efficient service that aligns with an agency’s mission.

And in terms of standing up secure networks of efficient devices to protect those missions, Davidson says Avaya is poised to protect against technical issues and provide maximum uptime.

“By proactively monitoring and predicting potential problems, we can fix issues before the customer even knows they’re happening,” Davidson says.

Suddenly, the millennial mindset toward communications seems a little less scary.

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