What Will Be the Cloud Strategy for Your Contact Center?

Most contact centers have already migrated to the cloud or are in the process of moving to the cloud.

That’s the way the industry is going. Moving to the cloud is no longer a choice but a necessity because of the advantages it offers.

However, what should be your strategy when you migrate to the cloud?

For easier understanding, let us look at that as a checklist you should follow while planning your migration.

Business Objectives

These are possible reasons why you should move your contact center to the cloud. 

• Are you looking at better scalability?
• Do you want to enhance the customer experience across all channels?
• Do you want to reduce costs?
• Are you looking at better integrations with other best-of-breed systems?

What Features Should You Look At in Your Cloud Platform?

• Omnichannel capabilities – you want an integrated solution where all of your channels – voice, email, SMS, messaging apps, mobile apps, and social. Besides, you also want integrations with CRM, helpdesk software, ERP, and other best-of-breed systems. This will allow you to have a single view of your customers irrespective of the channels or interfaces.
• Workforce optimization – this will ensure that the right number of resources are available to handle the customer queries at the right time and in the right manner without any hassles.
• List management services – you have data from multiple sources, and you need to make sense of them in the most practical way possible. With list management services, you can slice and dice the data the way you want them and make sense of it.
• Analytics – ensure compliance and adherence to standards from your data and recordings
• Intelligent routing – ensure that all the interactions are routed based on the time, location, and skills of the agents.
• BOTs – ensure that most mundane and routine things are automated with AI-powered bots freeing up your agents to handle complex queries.

Ensure the cloud platform vendor provides all the features you need.

Security and Compliance

Check with your provider on how they would secure sensitive customer data. Confirm there is data encryption in transit and at rest.

Besides, check their physical and logical security practices and see if they adhere to your expectations.

Ensure the platform is compliant with GDPR, CCPA, TCPA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FDCPA, Reg-F, FedRamp, and ISO standards and regulations.

Integration Capabilities

• Check if they already have pre-built integrations with existing CRMs like Zoho, Freshdesk, Zendesk, Salesforce, Leadsquared, or Hubspot.
• Does the platform have any other integrations with helpdesk software and marketing automation tools?
• Does it offer API support for custom integrations?

This will allow you to ensure easy integration with all the internal systems as well as other best-of-breed IT systems, enabling you to provide the best possible customer experiences.

Scalability and Flexibility

Can you scale up and down the number of resources per your business needs? How difficult or easy is it? Do you have to be dependent on the provider to do this? Do you have to commit to a minimum number of licenses or contract periods?

Do they follow a pay-as-you-use pricing model, which will allow you to scale up and down your resources based on your business needs?

Reliability

Does your platform provider promise 99.9% uptime of the platform? What kind of SLAs do they promise? What are their adherence levels to their defined SLAs?

Does it include automatic failover and redundancy as a part of the offering? Do they have data on ensuring business continuity?

Ease of Use

• Is it an intuitive system that allows agents and administrators to start using it immediately?
• What kind of training does your team require before they become conversant with the platform?
• Does the platform provider help you during the transition to ensure minimal disruption in business continuity? Do they have a fallback plan if there is an issue during the transition?
• How about the migration of data from the existing platform to the cloud platform? What about any workflow customizations?
• Are customizations and migrations a part of the implementation? Or do they cost additional dollars?

Costing

There is a myth that cloud platforms are expensive over time in comparison to an on-premise contact center platform. However, you will have to be mindful of the costs associated with your cloud platform to see if they make sense.

• How does the cloud platform cost look in comparison to your existing cost structure over a while?
• Do they offer a truly pas-as-you-go model, or are there any hidden costs associated with the platform for maintenance, customization, licenses, activations, and minimum commitments?
• Would the provider help you in measuring ROI post-deployment?

Customer Support

This is the most important component of any relationship. The kind of support you get defines the adoption levels of the platform, and it is directly related to your success.

• What kind of support do they offer?
• Would your provider say they are available 24×7 on email, phone, and WhatsApp?
• What percentage of support requests are addressed in the first interaction? How much of it gets escalated?
• Do they have any referenceable customers who would vouch for their support capabilities?

Measuring Post-Implementation Success

One of the important objectives for any organization to move its contact center to the cloud is to ensure that it improves their operations and allows them to offer better customer experiences. You will have to measure them to understand how successful your cloud migration is.

• How do the resolution times look before and after the cloud implementation?
• Is there a marked improvement in the customer satisfaction scores?
• How much effect does the platform have on agent productivity? Has it gone up drastically, and is there a clear scope for productivity improvement?
• Does the platform allow you to seek feedback from customers and agents after every interaction automatically? This can be used to improve functionality.

Proof of Concept

This is one of the easiest ways to figure out if the platform is ideal for your business needs. You can start small with a small chunk of your operations and see how it works before going ahead with the migration.

• Does the provider offer proof of concept?
• Do they have a standard pilot program for their customers?
• Do they help you measure the metrics with the POC to help you understand if the platform is right for you?

Cloud is the way to go for every organization. Given this reality, you have to be aware of what you are getting into, as not all cloud platforms are the same.

You should take into account your business objectives, business-specific or client-specific needs, and budgetary constraints while deciding to choose a platform.

Also, it would help if you had a good platform provider who would guide you through the transition and support you to ensure your success.

The checklist provided in this article is a good starting point if you are considering a migration to a cloud contact center platform.