A Few Compelling Reasons to Move Your Contact Centers to the Cloud!
Executive Vice President
We have been having multiple conversations with people in the customer experience function. What we realize is that most organizations have moved their contact centers to the cloud or are in the process of moving them to the cloud.
While we have been a pure-play cloud contact center platform provider for a few decades now, most other platform providers are also moving their offerings to the cloud.
Would you agree that customers would only be opting for a cloud solution – not just for the contact centers, but for every software need of theirs?
It is most likely.
However, if you haven’t moved your contact center to the cloud already, here are some compelling reasons why you should be looking at the cloud:
1. No CapEx, Only OpEx
When you buy on-premise software, you have to factor in costs like license for the dialer, voice infrastructure, hardware, integrations, customization, maintenance, resources to administer and manage the contact center software, security, and upgrades.
With cloud, you don’t have to look at any of these costs. You only have to pay for what you use. Depending on the number of minutes you consume, you can make a payment without having to worry about minimum commitments or contracts.
Besides, you don’t have to worry about integrations, as it comes pre-integrated with multiple CRMs, helpdesk software, and other best-of-breed IT systems. Imagine when customizations are built-in as a part of the implementation – you are truly talking only about OpEx.
2. Access From Anywhere, Anytime
With the onset of the pandemic, many of our customers and prospects wanted to move their agents to work from home. Their on-premise setups did not allow them to do that immediately.
Those who agreed to move their agents home needed high-speed connectivity at homes and VPN licenses to connect to their on-premise setup.
They approached us, and we had them move to work from home within 24 hours. We ported all their data onto our platform and got them to work from home immediately.
All they needed to have was a working Internet connectivity and a browser (irrespective of the devices) to connect to our platform and service their customers. Even at places where they had spotty Internet, we helped them with our ‘connected method’ calling to ensure there were no challenges in the experience.
3. Scale Easily
The biggest impediment that any organization faces with its contact center platform is its ability to scale up and down the number of resources.
Let us assume you want to add about 20 people for a specific campaign onto your platform.
How do you go about doing it?
You may have to contact your provider, give the details of what you want, pay a license fee, and subscribe for a minimum period, and then you are provided with the licenses.
With the cloud platform, you can scale up and down at the click of a button. You only have to pay on a per-minute basis based on your consumption.
It gives you so much flexibility that you don’t even have to think twice about scaling up and down.
4. Automatically Update New Features
Whenever you release a new feature on your on-premise software, you will have to plan an update for all your existing customers. You have to ensure that they keep their servers on with the Internet so you can access and update the systems.
When it comes to cloud contact center platforms, it is so seamless that, as users, you would not even know that your software is going for an upgrade.
You understand the lean periods of every customer and choose that time to update the software. Besides, any security patches or vulnerabilities are automatically addressed by the cloud software provider. You are always protected from any security vulnerabilities.
5. Deployment in Hours and Days
I remember customers stating that our provider is working on our contact center workflow, and we expect to be up and running in four months.
Seriously?
What if you need to change the workflow after the implementation?
You are easily looking at another few weeks or a month for that.
In essence, for an on-premise contact center solution to be implemented, you can easily assume a timeframe of six months from the time you decide to work with them. Besides, this comes at a hefty cost.
I am sure all of us have come across these timelines.
How about cloud deployment?
The provider instantly creates an instance, and you are running with your implementation in a few hours. Assuming that you may have to import a lot of your legacy data, you are probably talking a few days.
That’s about it.
It never takes more than 72 hours for you to start using your cloud instance.
6. Security
Security is a big area of concern when it comes to contact centers. The fact that your servers are at your premises does not make it more secure in comparison to the cloud.
Usually, cloud providers have full-time staff monitoring their security operations center round-the-clock against attacks and vulnerabilities. Besides, they will have access to the global vulnerability database.
This may not be possible at all with your on-premise installations. Where do you get such experts, and imagine the cost at which you will be able to get them?
Cloud providers ensure redundancy, failover routes, virtualization, and physical security of your servers. All of these are additional costs when you look at implementing them on-premise.
7. Compliance
Compliance can be a real dark spot for contact center providers. Being compliant ensures that you get to work with customers across different industries worldwide.
How do you ensure compliance?
In an on-premise model, becoming compliant can be really cost-prohibitive.
Take, for example, our platform, ClearTouch Operator. By virtue of providing cloud contact center platforms for more than 20 years, we are compliant with most of the standards and regulations that are demanded by different industries and geographies.
We are compliant with HIPAA, PCI-DSS, TCPA, FDCPA, Reg-F, SOC2, FedRamp, and ISAE 3402 Type II specifications.
This has been our USP all along, and this has ensured continuous patronage from our customers worldwide.
Cloud is the way forward when it comes to contact centers. There shouldn’t be any second thoughts about it.
However, you have to be aware of who you are signing up with and whether they provide things that you want.
You should definitely ask them these questions before signing up:
- Are there any contractual commitments? Is it really pay-as-you-go?
- Who takes care of the customizations and integrations? What are the cost implications of it?
- How long would it take to implement the platform?
- How about security?
- Are you compliant with industry standards and regulations?
- Do you provide APIs to integrate with our existing IT systems?
- Are there any hidden costs?
Once you are clear with all of this, you can safely sign up with the provider to move your contact center platform to the cloud and gain all the benefits associated with it.
Let’s cloud.