Summary: The difference between UCaaS and CCaaS is that UCaaS aims to help internal teams collaborate and communicate, while CCaaS software aims to help teams communicate with customers for support or sales efforts.
This comparison of UCaaS vs CCaaS will help you determine which business software solution is the ideal fit for your customers and team.
- Overview
- What is UCaaS?
- What is CCaaS?
- Differences
- Similarities
- UCaaS Benefits
- CCaaS Benefits
- When to Use UCaaS
- When to Use CCaaS
- FAQs
An Overview of UCaaS vs CCaaS
The below table offers a quick overview of UCaaS vs CCaaS.
UCaaS | CCaaS | |
Best For | Businesses seeking customer-facing and internal communication via phone, chat, and email | Businesses with a high volume of inbound and outbound external communication on various channels, that prioritize customer support and sales |
Available Communication Channels |
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Essential Features |
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Average Monthly Cost | $20 to $40 per month for each seat | $70 to $200 per month for each seat |
Top Benefits |
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What is UCaaS?
Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is a cloud-hosted software that combines several communication channels–VoIP calling, SMS texting, video conferencing, and team chat–into one interface. Users generally access the UCaaS app dashboard through an app on desktop or mobile.
UCaaS features generally center around a VoIP phone system with virtual phone numbers, call queueing, routing tools like IVR menus, voicemail, and analytics. Teams use chat for internal collaboration, and use the phone system and video for internal or customer-facing communication.
Common UCaaS features include:
- Team chats
- Video conferencing
- VoIP audio calls
- Screen sharing, whiteboards, and other in-meeting collaboration features
- Mobile applications
- Third-party integrations and APIs with CRM tools and project management software
What is CCaaS?
Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) is a cloud-based software application that provides a dashboard unifying multiple customer-facing communication channels: voice calling, SMS texting, email, messaging applications like WhatsApp, live chat, and social media. CCaaS platforms also included automated bots and menus, including IVR menus and intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) that automate customer interactions on voice and digital channels.
Contact center apps are often omnichannel, which means they enable customers to reach your company through multiple touchpoints, and agents can respond to tasks across channels from a single dashboard.
Compared to UCaaS, CCaaS platforms have more advanced features:
- Virtual agents and chatbots
- Workflow automations
- Ticketing and task assignment capabilities
- Workforce management tools with scheduling and forecasting
- Quality management and monitoring tools
- Advanced analytics, coaching, and performance tracking
Differences Between UCaaS and CCaaS
Here are the main differences between UCaaS and CCaaS:
Use Cases
UCaaS and CCaaS platforms have different intended use cases: unified communications typically focus on a phone system and internal collaboration, while contact centers typically focus on customer-facing support and sales.
Companies typically choose unified communications if they need a cloud-based business phone system with basic routing tools like IVR and call queues. UCaaS can work for customer support, but its limited automations and self-service options make it a better fit for team collaboration.
Channel Offerings
UCaaS and CCaaS offer some of the same channels, but generally, contact centers offer more communication channels than unified communications software.
UCaaS platforms typically offer VoIP calling, SMS texting, video meetings, and internal team chat.
Contact centers typically don’t have internal team chat or video meetings. They offer VoIP calling, SMS texting, email, customer-facing live chat, social media messaging, other messaging apps, and automated messaging services like chatbots.
Self-Service Support
CCaaS platforms offer a much more advanced suite of automations and customer self-service support.
UCaaS platforms typically offer IVR menus and sometimes skill-based routing, but CCaaS platforms typically offer dozens of advanced features: workflow automations that assign tasks and create tickets for queries, self-service virtual agents that interact with customers across channels, and workforce management automations for shift scheduling.
Call Routing
While UCaaS platforms have auto-attendants and basic routing capabilities, they can’t compare to the advanced omnichannel call routing you’d find with a dedicated CCaaS platform.
Most CCaaS solutions have visual call flow editors that make it easier to plan out your call routing strategy. These systems include skill-based routing that analyzes each inbound ticket’s details to navigate it to the optimal agent. CCaaS platforms use self-service to analyze each query’s needs, routing them and creating tasks for agents regardless of which channel the customer uses.
Similarities Between UCaaS and CCaaS
Here are some similarities that UCaaS and CCaaS share:
Cloud-Based Phone System
While they offer several distinct channels, UCaaS and CCaaS platforms both center around a cloud-based VoIP phone system. The VoIP system typically includes virtual phone numbers based around the globe, voicemail, and interactive voice response (IVR) menus or auto attendants.
Third-Party Integrations
UCaaS and CCaaS platforms often feature large third-party integration galleries, allowing you to use your existing business software in your SaaS solution interface. Both platforms especially favor integrations with CRM platforms like Salesforce and communication software like Slack.
Desktop and Mobile Access
One of the primary things that sets cloud-based CCaas and UCaaS apart from traditional business phone systems is that software-based platforms are accessible via desktop and mobile. Users can access their contact center or unified communications dashboards from any internet-connected device–desktop or mobile.
Per-Seat Subscriptions
The pricing structure tends to be rather similar for most UCaaS and CCaaS platforms. Per-seat subscription pricing is by far the most common but there are also solutions of both kinds that charge a fixed monthly rate with unlimited seats available.
CCaaS seats tend to cost $50 to $300 per month while UCaaS subscriptions tend to go for $360 to $480 per year. This means that, on average, UCaaS software tends to be cheaper than CCaaS software.
The Benefits of UCaaS
Below, we'll explore the main benefits of UCaaS:
- No hardware costs
- Better employee experience
- Cost-effectiveness
- Improved team collaboration
- Workforce optimization
- Mobility
No Hardware Costs
Unlike on-premises PBX systems or physical conference rooms, you won’t need any pricey hardware that would take time to set up and add expensive maintenance to your operating costs. All you need is a reliable Internet connection, smartphones, and (optionally) VoIP desk phones.
Better Employee Experience
Whether your employees work in an office or from the comfort of their own home, having a robust UCaaS platform will make it much easier for them to collaborate with other team members.
Cost-Effectiveness
In most cases, it will be cheaper to get a subscription for a UCaaS platform rather than individual subscriptions for every tool or feature your company might need.
For instance, RingCentral has video conferencing, project management, and analytics capabilities–all at a much lower cost than paying for these features individually.
You could get Zoom, Jira, and Mixpanel but, while you’d likely get more advanced features, the cumulative subscription cost will likely cost you more than most UCaaS platforms currently on the market.
Improved Team Collaboration
For both remote workspaces and physical offices, there will always be instances where employees work on their own instead of sharing tasks with other team members. This lack of collaboration can lead to slow turnaround times and a higher frequency of miscommunications.
However, implementing UCaaS software will help employees see what their colleagues are working on and open the door to more collaborations with features like shared editing or subtask creation.
Workforce Optimization
Whether you’re an administrator or a new recruit, a reliable UCaaS platform can make it easier to keep track of deadlines, assign tasks to team members, and get a clear idea of timelines and workflow responsibilities.
It also helps companies balance the workload across multiple team members to ensure that no employee ends up with an unscalable mountain of work on their plate.
Mobility
As most UCaaS solutions have mobile apps available, it’ll be a lot easier for your employees to stay productive while on the go — no matter where they live across the globe! It’s worth noting that some mobile apps are better than others when it comes to UCaaS solutions.
A notable example would be Ooma Office as their iOS app is ahead of most competitors while their Android app is quite subpar. Be sure to find a service provider with positive reviews on both app stores like Vonage or RingCentral.
The Benefits of CCaaS
Now, let's review a few of the top CCaaS benefits:
- Cost savings
- Better customer experience
- Scalability and reliability
- Stronger security
- Efficient communication
- Analytics and insights
- Increased revenue
Cost Savings
CCaaS platforms save money for contact centers in multiple ways. First of all, they reduce the amount of lost time due to agents switching between tabs or logging into different tools throughout the workday.
The cloud services nature of CCaaS solutions also means contact center agents will be able to use their smartphones instead of having to rely on expensive hardware at the office just to perform their duties.
Lastly, CCaaS software tends to reduce employee churn, which lowers hiring costs.
Better Customer Experience
By giving customers more communication channel choices and by implementing self-service alternatives, you’ll make it a lot easier for them to solve problems themselves or connect to an agent who can resolve the issue for them.
In short? You'll be able to offer a better overall customer experience.
Portability features like hot-desking and mobile apps also reduce the average resolution time since agents will be able to work on support tickets even when they’re out of the office.
Finally, CCaaS advanced routing protocols ensure customers reach the right agent immediately.
Scalability and Reliability
In the past, companies would have to worry about the quality and reliability of their customer support reducing as they scaled up. This might be due to physical PBX systems getting overloaded, agents accidentally working on the same ticket, or a general lack of coordination.
However, companies that have CCaaS infrastructure rarely have to deal with such issues since smart dashboards assign agents to tickets automatically, don’t require additional hardware during scaling, and offer insightful analytics that help you pinpoint problems early on.
Stronger Security
CCaaS platforms tend to emphasize security since they cover external communications and thus come into contact with sensitive customer data. End-to-end encryption and two-factor authentication are a must when choosing any CCaaS software.
Of course, leading UCaaS providers like RingCentral do have incredible track records. That said, there are still quite a few UCaaS platforms that are lagging behind on the security front with key features like 2FA not even being standardized across the whole industry yet.
Efficient Communication
Communicating with customers is more efficient across the board when you’re using a CCaaS platform. One of the reasons that it’s so much more efficient is the ability to retain and sync customer communications and other information across all your channels.
This omnichannel conversation syncing ensures that customers will never have to repeat themselves even if they’re talking to a new agent on a different channel. All the CRM integrations for CCaaS solutions further unify customer data for your company.
Analytics and Insights
Instead of relying on loosely connected third-party tools to collect analytics on your customers, having a single CCaaS platform that tracks everything from agent KPIs to other call center metrics will streamline the collection of insights for your target audience.
A few call center metrics you could track with CCaaS software include:
- First call resolution (FCR)
- Cost per call (CPC)
- Average speed of answer (ASA)
- Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
- Net promoter score (NPS)
- Customer effort score (CES)
- Average handle time (AHT)
Increased Revenue
The efficiency and satisfaction ROI of CCaaS is already worthwhile in itself, but there are also financial returns to consider. Being able to communicate efficiently, automate repetitive tasks, and create more opportunities for sales teams with chatbots and live chat will undoubtedly help you scale revenue.
Lastly, upselling or cross-selling to customers will generally be more successful when your business has a presence across multiple platforms. They might not convert when you first tweet out the announcement but seeing the news for the second time on Facebook could change that.
When to Use UCaaS
If most of your software needs center around collaborating with team members and communicating internally, then a UCaaS solution will likely be the best option for your business.
Key factors to consider when choosing your UCaaS solution include:
- Pricing and your budget
- The reasons your customers contact you
- Collaboration features
- Third-party integrations
- Video conferencing capacity
- How it fits in with (or replaces) your existing collaboration tool stack
When to Use CCaaS
If most of your software needs focus on improving customer satisfaction and streamlining the support experience, then you’ll be best served by a CCaaS solution.
A few things to consider when choosing your CCaaS solution include:
- Pricing
- The types of analytics you need
- The complexity of your phone system and call monitoring needs
- If your customers need self-service
- Which channels your customers use
- Third-party integrations
- Phone system calling costs/rates
- How long it will take to train new agents until they fully adopt the software
What To Look For in Business Communication Tools
When choosing communications systems for your company, there are seemingly endless factors that you should consider. However, making an educated buying decision comes down to narrowing down the criteria that matter most to you, your employees, and your customers.
The most common variables to consider include pricing, feature set, supported integrations, and the quality of their customer service team. This applies to both UCaaS and CCaaS platforms, albeit in varying degrees.
Frequently Asked Questions
Below, we’ve answered common UCaaS vs CCaaS FAQs.