Managers in contact centers focus on providing the best customer experience possible and are looking to the cloud to provide it. In Deloitte’s most recent Global Contact Center Survey, they found that 55% of contact center leaders have moved to the cloud or will be doing so within the next two years. Many of the organizations that don’t have plans to move to the cloud are waiting until their investments in on premise systems are fully depreciated.
If your contact center isn’t based in the cloud, you may struggle to keep up with the latest technology. Often, your system infrastructure is costly and updating it is a challenge. You may not have the capabilities that you need to meet your customers’ expectations and maintain your competitive edge. Migrating to the cloud will help you solve those problems.
What is a Cloud Contact Center?
A cloud contact center is an internet-based system that uses software for storing and retrieving your data. In most cases, this allows your agents to use a single piece of software to manage dialing, CRM integration, SMS, email, and voice communications.
What are the Benefits of a Cloud Contact Center?
Cloud contact centers help managers meet their most critical goals. They can reduce costs, provide better customer experiences, improve the efficiency of your agents, and more. Here are the most important benefits of migrating to a cloud contact center.
1. Reducing costs
On premise contact center systems require significant capital outlays. It’s also necessary to establish staffing to maintain the systems and update the software. One major advantage of a cloud contact center is that it offers flat rate billing that you pay every month for the service. You aren’t responsible for maintaining hardware or updating software.
2. Improved scalability
The workload for many contact centers changes throughout the year. Some businesses have slow periods, and many businesses have volume peaks around the holidays. Responding to those changes is difficult with an on-premise contact center. It’s not possible to quickly reduce the size of your hardware during slow periods, and you can’t easily add capacity during peak times.
A cloud contact center requires little hardware on-site. Since most of the hardware and software is resident in the cloud, you have the flexibility of adding new phone lines or call routing instructions as needed. For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, cloud-based contact centers could easily accommodate agents working from home with little disruption.
3. Improved agent management
Managers analyze funnel metrics to understand the effectiveness of their operations and spot opportunities for improvement. It can be a challenge for managers who have an on-premise contact center because consolidating data from different channels isn’t always easy.
Using cloud-based services, all channels are administered in the same system. It’s much easier for managers to track customer data, needs, and previous interactions. In addition, managers need to leverage the skills of their agents. If an agent’s skills are better suited to a particular channel, a cloud contact center makes it easy for the manager to make the best assignment.
4. Ease of use
From your employees’ perspective, the main benefit of a cloud-based software is the ease of use. Typically, everything an agent needs is all in one system. And, with centralized data, agents can access the full range of customer information quickly and efficiently.
Legacy systems often have limited capabilities, which cause agents to pick up costly and inefficient overlap work. And agents often need to learn different tools to handle different channels of communication.
5. Data visualization
Data visualization is another benefit for your employees that can help grow your business. Managers can use data visualization to quickly absorb data that can identify problem areas or opportunities.
The more data an agent has, the better job they will do of closing a sale or assisting a customer. When agents are actively engaged with a customer, they don’t have time to browse through a spreadsheet to get the information they need. Data visualization helps agents to understand the data they’re looking for at a glance.
6. Remote agent management
Many contact centers use remote workers, and the COVID-19 virus accelerated that trend. Unfortunately, legacy systems simply can’t provide the flexibility needed to support remote agents effectively. Cloud-based software allow agents to access the same information, regardless of their location.
7. Improved security and compliance
Cloud-based systems are often managed by third parties or providers. This means your IT team doesn’t need to worry about managing the security of your systems. And in most cases, compliance features are built in.
On a legacy system, compliance related scripts and procedures can be difficult to manage and update as regulations change. Cloud systems allow easy integration of new policies and procedures so your business can keep up with the latest regulations.
8. Improved customer service
Cloud-based call centers provide all the capabilities you need to increase your customers’ satisfaction. Your agents will have the right information at their fingertips, and your customers won’t wait while agents are forced to move from one legacy system to another to provide quality service.
When you have the ability to match your agents’ skills to customer needs, your customers will notice the difference. And, when you can scale your workforce quickly during peak times, your customers won’t need to wait on hold for the next available agent.
Conclusion
With so many call centers using more remote agents this past year, migrating to a cloud contact center is a timely idea. Whether your calling agents remain working remotely or return to an office, they can still work effectively with the same software solutions. Scalability during this holiday season is also essential.
If your call center is still using legacy technology, this is a good time to invest in new solutions to keep your contact center running efficiently. Contact Call Tools to learn more about how to increase customer satisfaction by making your contact center and remote employees more successful.
