While this economic crisis cycle will scale back the communications industry in general, UC may well persist and even thrive during the restructuring and recovery processes. We will see, in just a few years, whether this economic trouble is a catalyst for UC or whether it postpones its emergence. Based on past examples, I wouldn’t count UC out.

It’s important to keep in mind that the UC market is in the early phases of its evolution, and that until we educate C-level and line-of-business executives, and get the analysts and consultants to use the same terms in the same way, this market will not mature as quickly as it should.

There are lots of reasons why UC ought to have a bright future in contact centers. As customer-centric thinking and “first-call resolution” becomes more critical, IM and other UC tools help deliver fast access to the right information or expert, whether the resource is found inside or outside the center. To date, however, UC has had a slow take-up rate within contact centers. Many call center managers don’t want to relinquish control over external calls, nor are they eager to add routing complexity or to mess with their performance metrics. In fairness, it’s also true that in many instances, the other departments don’t want their staff be “on call” for handling random customer queries.