6 Reasons to Move to a Cloud Contact Center
By now, your business has probably moved at least some of your technology stack into the cloud. Ninety-six percent of organizations used at least one cloud app or service in 2018 and 81% of large companies have a multi-cloud strategy. If you have a call center, your contact center may be the lifeblood of your business. Many operating call centers ask us if a cloud migration can offer significant cost savings and flexibility advantages and should they keep it in-house or move it to the cloud?
With proper planning and the right Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) partnership, a cloud contact center can help improve your operations. We've worked with a lot of small companies that have been apprehensive about moving their call center to the cloud as they are concerned about losing connectivity or exposing their important customer and prospect information in a cloud environment. We'll give you six excellent reasons to make a switch to the cloud today and show you the next step in the cloud-migration journey. We believe so much in a cloud-based contact center solution that we use it ourselves.
6 Cloud Contact Center Benefits
A cloud contact center is a unified solution for inbound and outbound voice communications, typically for a call center (help desk, as an example) which is hosted outside of the office premises. Cloud contact center solutions can centralize customer communications across multiple channels, including voice, email, chat, text messages, social media, and customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Switching to a cloud contact center over premises-based solutions can offer businesses of all sizes significant benefits, including newfound flexibility, new and often better cost structures, and stronger compliance.
1. Scalability and Flexibility
Cloud contact center solutions require minimal on-site hardware or software, which allows businesses the flexibility to scale phone lines and features up and down in real-time. Companies can add new phone lines or call routing structures to accommodate seasonal fluctuations in customer call volume. For instance, a snow day, agents can work from their home office and still make and take phone calls.
Leading Cloud Call Center solutions like the Cisco/Broadsoft Customer Journey Platform can provide flexible features and support from anywhere from several dozen agents to thousands of customer service representatives. With premises-based solutions, your business was stuck paying for licensing costs during periods when demand was lower. With cloud-based contact center, you can pay for the volume and features used each month without carrying the costs of unneeded capacity. Atlantech Online is able to deliver such a solution with a concurrent agent model. You only pay for the amount of agents concurrently logged in.
2. Flat Rate Billing
Cloud contact center offers the benefit of flexible, flat rate billing paid each month as opposed to significant, one-time costs to install or update contact center solutions on site. Cloud-based solutions provide automatic access to regular software updates and new features and charge a transparent amount based on actual use.
Depending on the structure of your organization, this is the chance to consolidate costs across multiple geographic locations or achieve flexible billing which fits your business structure. If your business needs to bill various departments or clients for contact center services, your cloud contact center vendors may offer the ability to unlock precise billing arrangements, based on resource usage.
Learn more in 10 Factors that Impact UCaaS Total Cost of Ownership.
3. Outsourced Maintenance & Upgrades
Premises-based contact center technology is typically maintained by a combination of internal resources, vendor support, and on-site visits from service technicians. Cloud contact center allows you to outsource the implementation, hosting, operations, and day-to-day maintenance requirements for your contact center to a single vendor. Outsourcing system maintenance will enable you to optimize internal IT resources while providing great technology to global contact center agents.
4. Easier & Better Remote Workforce Communication
Cloud contact center solutions can allow your business to explore options for "homeshoring" or expanding the remote workforce to support more employees who clock in from home (or, at a minimum outside of the office). Cloud-based technologies minimize the costs of home-based agents and allow organizations to access a better talent pool of native English speakers at a lower cost with the flexibility to scale talent as call volume increases.
More insights in 11 Valuable Business Benefits of Unified Communications as a Service.
5. Always Up-To-Date Compliance
With a premises-based contact center, it's common for businesses to handle compliance requirements internally. This means contact center agents have to balance required disclosures, scripts, and policies for safe data handling. Contact center management needs to work closely with compliance experts to understand how evolving legislative requirements should impact the workflow.
Compliance requirements can be complicated in heavily-regulated industries which are affected by PCI, HIPAA, Dodd/Frank, Sarbanes/Oxley and similar regulatory regimes. Cloud Contact Center solutions offer flexibility to adapt to new regulatory changes with a centralized platform for recording, archiving, and deleting calls to control regulatory risks. The flexibility of cloud technology can significantly lower the cost to add new features and workflow changes to meet emerging compliance requirements.
Learn more in Regulatory Compliance and Enterprise Communications: What You Need to Know.
6. Free Up Your IT Team
With Cloud Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS), your IT team can gain new independence. Premises-based solutions can require intensive hardware and system maintenance and significant staff hours to maintain system performance. By fully outsourcing the system to a trusted vendor, you can reduce the burden on staff members and unlock increased productivity for the IT team.
Talk to a Cloud Contact Center Professional
Organizations of all sizes are making the transition to using Cloud Contact Center-as-a-Service. According to one study, the cloud-based contact center technology market is predicted to reach a global value of $15.67 billion by 2021 with an estimated Compound Annual Growth Rate of (23.6%).
Transitioning from premises-based hardware and solutions to the cloud can deliver serious benefits, including flexibility, better cost structures, and outsourced maintenance. Cloud solutions can reduce the burden on your IT team, allowing your internal experts to focus on strategic initiatives and revenue growth.
To learn more about flexible cloud solutions for contact centers at companies of all sizes, contact Atlantech Online to learn more.
