Contact centres, like most aspects of business, have undergone serious evolution over the past few years. But while traditional contact centre technologies have changed, they haven’t done so as fast as other enterprise tools. As a result, many companies are locked into expensive, on-premise contact centre infrastructure that won’t scale.

Cloud-based computing removes the need for that infrastructure by moving the contact centre functionality over to a third-party provider, hosted on an external internet server. A cloud contact centre provides quick and easy access to the tools and services businesses need to communicate in today’s web-based world. Because they’re hosted online, cloud contact centres make customer interactions accessible from virtually anywhere. Here, we outline five benefits contact centre owners can expect to see when they move their contact centre into the cloud.

Cost benefits

There are several cost benefits associated with becoming a cloud-based contact centre. Alongside the reduced cost that comes from not having to buy and maintain expensive physical infrastructure, moving to the cloud allows contact centres to use a single provider and deploy the same toolset and same version, across the entire workforce.

Another cost-related benefit that is also an operational efficiency is that the administrative burden of updating the software is usually handled by the vendor providing the software. There are further cost benefits to be accrued by going with a provider which offers localised costing. This not only helps avoid the fluctuations caused by exchange rates, but also means that you’ll get local support teams who are more likely to understand any issues you might have. That saves you time and, therefore, money.

Scalability

Because cloud-based contact centres require minimal onsite infrastructure, your contact centre can expand and contract as needed. This means it can easily handle short-term contracts and seasonal ebbs and flows, which also adds cost efficiency (a client may, for instance, require additional contact centre support during major holidays).

Perhaps most importantly, however, you can prototype, build, deploy, and rapidly iterate with little or no impact on your operating budget. So, for example, rather than enforcing a set of certified applications and relying solely on in-house developers for innovation, you draw on a wide pool of knowledge from the broader community.

Improved productivity

Because agents can access contextual information ahead of time, they don’t need customers to relay it every time they call. With this information at their fingertips, agents can reduce the average call handle time and increase first call resolution and customer satisfaction. The ability to carry out conversations across multiple channels further saves time and improves productivity.

A cloud-based contact centre solution also allows organisations to access vital data in real time. That means they can address any bottlenecks as they happen, as well as identifying high performers. That data, in turn, can be used for real-time agent management. In the contact centre environment, productivity is vital to both consumer and employee experience. By moving to the cloud, contact centres can realise major productivity benefits. Agents can, for instance, access online databases that display customer interaction histories across channels which can help them to resolve calls and other customer queries faster.

Better customer experience

Customer experience is the single biggest differentiator between companies today. Customers who have a good experience of a company are more loyal, make more purchases, and are willing to pay more. Providing that kind of experience covers all sectors of a business, but the contact centre plays a particularly important role. The importance of that role is underlined by the fact that one in three companies have lost a customer due to internal communication issues.

The thing is, contact centres often have multiple clients with different outcomes-based reporting. Traditional contact centre systems measured productivity in terms of volumes, and not the outcome of interactions. Being able to understand customer interactions with the contact centre and their outcome is far more powerful in realising meaningful engagements and actual performance. Here the ability to access real-time data also comes into play, allowing contact centres to identify customer trends, interaction opportunities, and to serve as a source for modelling future customer behaviours and interactions.