15 Savvy Uses and Benefits of Cloud Contact Centers
Your company's cloud contact center is the apex of your organization. It is hosted on your server and is the point which all in and outbound communications from customers are handled. Cloud contact centers interact via the internet, voice, social media, and email as it is accessible in virtually every geographical location.
The rate at which customers continue to rely on the use of digital devices and channels to connect with various entities exemplifies the need to use a cloud contact center. The technology is trustworthy and the benefits cannot be denied. Now is the time to transform your business and enjoy the numerous benefits a cloud contact center provides: flexible, state-of-the-art capabilities that are both cost-effective, and functional.
Benefits Abound with Cloud Contact Centers
A cloud-based contact center is full of solutions. It allows your company to hire employees on a remote, or work from home basis and is doable using less hardware resulting in lower cost. Usually, an on-premise solution can take months to install and configure, however, when using a cloud contact center, implementations are quicker to deploy. Additional benefits include:
- No upfront investment for hardware or software.
- Advisors connect to the platform using standard internet connections, regardless of location.
- Upgrades are available to all customers immediately.
- The steady and consistent flow of information between departments.
- Improved cross-collaboration between staff.
- Promotes intelligent, history-based call routing for customers.
- Prevents the need for scheduled maintenance downtimes.
- Accurately measures multiple metrics.
- Allows immediate changes to routing or IVR scripts.
- Delivers highly responsive, predictive, fully contextual and efficient service.
- Provides quality geographic fault tolerance and disaster recovery.
- New functionality can be added in days or weeks instead of months and years.
- Systems are continually updated with new releases which are automatically applied.
- Access to cloud collaboration tools allowing collaboration with other members of the contact center team.
- Improves the company's scalability and flexibility.
Important Advice When Planning a Cloud Contact Center
According to Daniel Foppen, senior principal product manager at Oracle, "When planning your deployment of the cloud solution, make a detailed list of the minimal functionality your agents will need to be able to perform their basic duties," he continues. "This is called an MVP—minimum viable product—in the world of software development. Test the MVP setting with a small group of agents, make any necessary changes, and roll out the MVP to the rest of your team."
How Cloud Contact Centers Benefit the Bottom Line
Companies have the opportunity to move their monetary burdens from CAPEX to OPEX. OPEX budgeting is usually a more attractive option financially for businesses investing in new software applications as it prevents the need for costly capital expenditures. The cloud contact center provides help that facilitates better management planning and staffing dilemmas. It also frees up in-house IT from being tied to the contact center's operations.
