For most multi-site retailers, yes: one provider for store phones and the contact centre pays off when calls move between stores and customer service, because transfers, reporting and support all sit on one platform. It's less compelling for a large contact centre already built on a specialist platform.
UCaaS (unified communications as a service) is a cloud platform for an organisation's internal calls, messaging, and meetings, including store phones, head office desk phones, and mobile apps. CCaaS (contact centre as a service) is the cloud platform for customer contact: queues, routing, IVR, recording, reporting and agent tools.
In retail, the two meet constantly. A customer rings a store about a delivery, the store transfers to customer service, customer service needs the store manager, and the store manager is in a meeting. If those four hops cross two platforms and two suppliers, each one is a place where the call can drop or the context can be lost.
"Fully managed" adds a third element. The provider designs, runs, monitors and supports both, with one contract and one support desk.
Four patterns make a combined platform worth it for a retailer. The more of them apply, the stronger the case.
Calls move between stores and customer service every day. Transfers within a single platform retain the caller's details and history. Transfers between platforms can arrive as a new, anonymous call.
Head office wants one set of numbers. With separate systems, store call volumes sit in one report and contact centre volumes in another, and neither shows the calls that bounced between them. A combined platform reports on both from the same data.
The IT team is small. Two suppliers mean two contracts, two support desks and two sets of changes. When a fault involves both, the retailer's own IT team often ends up coordinating between them.
Stores open, close and move. On one platform, a new store gets its numbers, phones and routing from the same template, and appears in the contact centre's routing on the same day.
Cian Maher, who leads DigitalWell's Intelligent Communications team, describes the point of having both on one network:
"You exist on our network for more than just your SIP trunk. You exist on our network for your hosted communications platform." Cian Maher, Intelligent Communications, DigitalWell
Some retailers are better off with separate platforms, and it's worth being clear about when.
A large contact centre with hundreds of agents, heavy workforce management and a mature Genesys Cloud CX deployment may not gain much from moving store phones onto the same system. Genesys is built for that scale, and the priority there is integration rather than consolidation.
A retailer already committed to Microsoft Teams for internal calling can keep Teams for store and office users. DigitalWell supports Microsoft Teams Direct Routing, which connects Teams to its SIP network, while the contact centre runs on its own platform.
And a retailer with only a handful of stores and no real contact centre may just need good store phones and a few hunt groups. A full CCaaS platform is more than that operation needs.
The cost case for one provider rarely comes from a single line. It comes from several smaller ones adding up. The table compares where costs sit with separate suppliers and with one.
|
Cost line |
Separate UCaaS and CCaaS suppliers |
One managed provider |
|---|---|---|
|
Platform licences |
Two sets, often with overlapping features such as recording and reporting |
One set, with shared features licensed once |
|
Carrier lines and numbers |
Often a third supplier, or split between two |
Carrier voice and numbering in the same contract |
|
Support and managed service |
Two contracts, two service desks, two escalation paths |
One service desk and one escalation path |
|
Integration |
Transfers and reporting between platforms need building and maintaining |
Native, because both run on one system |
|
Internal IT time |
Coordinating faults and changes across suppliers |
Raising one request with one provider |
|
Store changes |
New store set up on each platform separately |
One template for phones, numbers and routing |
The size of the saving depends on the estate. Ask any provider to price both scenarios against your actual store count, agent count, and current contracts.
DigitalWell offers three routes, depending on the retailer's size and existing tools.
DigitalWell 360. DigitalWell's own fully managed platform combines UCaaS and CCaaS in its private cloud. The contact centre supports up to 200 agents across voice, email, chat, WhatsApp, SMS, and Facebook, with intelligent routing, supervisor dashboards, and outbound dialling. It includes call recording, customisable reporting and native integrations with CRM platforms such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics and Zendesk. Support comes directly from the team that develops the platform.
Zoom Workplace with Zoom Contact Center. For retailers whose people already work in Zoom meetings and chat, DigitalWell delivers Zoom Workplace, including phone, and can add Zoom Contact Center on the same platform as the operation grows.
A specialist contact centre alongside store phones. Larger operations can run Genesys Cloud CX or Amazon Connect for customer service, with store phones on DigitalWell 360, Zoom or Teams, and DigitalWell's SIP network underneath both.
The Smart Workplace page covers DigitalWell 360 and Zoom, and the Customer Experience page covers the contact centre platforms. KennCo Insurance's move to DigitalWell 360 is a worked example of the combined model: 80+ contact centre agents and office users on one system, migrated in six weeks, with one support relationship. The KennCo case study has the details.
The move usually starts with the numbers, because everything else hangs off them. Every store number, head office line, and customer service number is listed and then ported to the new provider's network. DigitalWell is a licensed operator in Ireland with its own number ranges and direct porting, so numbers move without a gap in service, as its Numbering page explains.
Routing comes next. This is the point to decide how store calls should behave: ring the store first, then overflow to customer service after a set number of rings, or go to an AI Voice Agent out of hours. On one platform, those rules are in one place, so changing them for Black Friday is a single change.
Then the people move. Store staff get the app or handset, contact centre agents get their desktop, and supervisors get dashboards that show both sides. Reporting is rebuilt around the questions head office actually asks, such as which stores miss the most calls and how many callers end up transferred.
Underneath it all is the voice network. DigitalWell carries over 100 million minutes of voice traffic on its own network and reports no network downtime in 2025 or in 2026 so far. Store connections sit on the same managed Intelligent Network, so call quality has one owner from the shop floor to the carrier.
Answer these six questions. Four or more "yes" answers suggest a combined platform is worth pricing.
It concentrates the relationship, so check the exit terms, number porting rights and support levels. It also removes the gaps between suppliers, which is often where faults take longest to resolve.
Yes. Both DigitalWell 360 and Zoom offer desktop and mobile apps, so staff can take calls on the shop floor, in the stockroom or between stores on the same number.
No. Retailers often move the contact centre or a group of stores first, then the rest. Numbers can be ported in stages.
AI Voice Agents on DigitalWell's AI Voice Network can answer routine calls, such as order status, returns, and store hours, before they reach a store or an agent. They work with a combined platform or separate ones.
Want both options priced against your store estate? Get in touch with DigitalWell's retail team with your store count and current suppliers.