Shifting from legacy infrastructure to innovative cloud technology is a new means of driving innovation which allows organisations to focus on core business activities rather than building server rooms or stacks. This advanced technology removes the burden of managing complex telephony networks & infrastructure, thereby freeing you up to look after what matters most to call centres - customers.
Just as Siri and Google voice —cloud-connected software applications—transformed our lives, the advanced cloud-connected call centre software will be capable of transforming the entire call centre model.
As the contact centre landscape is expanding at a fast pace to address evolving customer expectations, it has become quite important to embrace cloud technology which brings new levels of sophistication. When we consider the present scenario, contact centre technology represents a $22 billion market which is dominated by giant equipment suppliers like Cisco, and Avaya. A research from Gartner reveals that only 10% of the estimated 14.5 million agents across the globe use cloud-based contact centre applications, although the adoption should be closer to 13% by December 2016.
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Let’s understand in detail the reasons for the success of cloud based contact centre technology:
Flexibility of OPEX over CAPEX: The transition from upfront capital expenses to ongoing pay-as-you-go operational expenses implies that the cloud technology solutions allows contact centre leaders to deploy new technology anytime. One of the studies suggests; “For outbound call centres and telemarketers who may face varying call volume depending upon the campaigns, a flexible pay per usage pricing structure or solution is particularly important.”
Cloud reduces the costs: Without an iota of doubt, cloud technology helps contact centre firms in great savings from flexibility and improved efficiency. It reduces the overall costs by allowing you to scale up or down resources to meet the changing requirements. Whether it is adding seasonal employees to handle volume spikes or increasing your permanent staff to expand business, a cloud-based solution makes it easy to scale up or down the agents according to your business needs.
No security concerns: The majority of business professionals did not rate cloud security risks as a big concern. In addition to this, good call centre service provider has better security in comparison to their customers. Well-established cloud service vendors have invested heavily in physical and logical security to avoid any kind of security breach.
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Easy to integrate with existing infrastructure: Integrating cloud-based solutions into multi-faceted legacy systems infrastructures has always been a skepticism to many call centre service providers. To overhaul such problem, cloud providers worked hard to integrate with legacy models smoothly. For e.g. a company can integrate payment processing system into different agent application, be it a simple iframe on a website or CRM application.
Simplifies scalability: Conventionally, adding more users in a call centre requires adding hardware and software licenses. This is a time consuming yet expensive process. In the same manner, changing processes such as IVR workflows to meet growing business needs could become a complex process as it requires expensive consultant to reprogram onsite equipment. Scalability is the key to remove all these barriers. With the cloud solution, leveraging capacity–more lines, new workflows, additional licenses or more users takes few minutes.
Unlimited storage on-demand: Most of the time you heard it: “your call may be recorded”. Do your ever emphasise on the fact that where do those recordings go? If they are stored on-premise then they require huge servers equipped with stack of hardware and all the security and compliance concerns that rise in it. By moving storage to the cloud, outbound call centre gets virtually unlimited storage. Herein, you only pay what actually you use.
Improved performance: This is true that small-medium scale businesses with budget constraints can’t afford the levels of redundancy, duplication and IT management required to deliver uninterrupted performance and availability. With cloud services, call centre companies can enhance the performance level and ensure high availability. Applications can be accessed from anywhere by any individual with a browser–means that the problem at client’s premises can be addressed without physically moving the staff.
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Cloud technology is becoming the mainstream in the contact centre industry by offering the utmost flexibility to make changes, add new functionality and operate smoothly. With games, films, music and books are transfiguring to the cloud, it’s time for contact centres to jump on the bandwagon.