What Will Be the Cloud Strategy for Your Contact Center?

Gartner predicts that 50 percent of the contact centers will be in the cloud by 2022.

In another survey conducted by Serenova, 64% of respondents said they plan to move to the cloud or explore cloud options. 27% said they are already using the cloud, or a move to the cloud is in process. Only 8% said they were not considering a move to the cloud.

Now, it is a given that contact centers are moving towards the cloud. Let us take a moment to figure out why they are moving to the cloud. Some possible reasons are:

Flexibility

You don’t have to be stuck with a significant upfront commitment to the platform provider on the number of seats or minutes. You don’t need to invest in the infrastructure as capital expenses, and your OPEX model would make it easier for you.

Imagine you get the dialer, automated agent tools, omnichannel communications, workforce management, compliance & data management, integration & automation, intelligence, reporting & analytics, customer collaboration & accessibility, all integrated at a per-minute pricing. This is how cloud contact centers are structured.

All you need is a browser and Internet connectivity to start using the platform.

Scalability

You can scale up and down the number of resources without having to worry about efforts, timelines, or budgets. It takes only hours for the cloud contact center provider to scale up and down the resources per your needs.

Your platform is updated with the latest compliance and security, and features are added without the need for additional infrastructure.

Easy-To-Manage

You don’t have to worry about the sustenance and security of the platform like an on-premise solution. The platform provider takes care of everything by ensuring the solution’s availability, security, scalability, and flexibility.

Integrations

The cloud platform offers easier integrations with other cloud solutions and in-house solutions. Most integrations on the cloud are API-driven, and that makes it easy. Besides, adding social, bots, and intelligence channels on the cloud is more effortless, as they are structured towards such integrations.

Faster-To-Market

During the onset of the pandemic, we were able to migrate thousands of agents to work-from-home within 24 to 48 hours. This was possible because our platform was completely delivered from the cloud. They could use any device with a browser and Internet connectivity to connect to our cloud platform. Besides, you can deploy new services rapidly compared to your competition.

Increased Visibility to the Customer Journey

It is easy to collect data from across communication channels from chatbots to voice call logs to emails, with a cloud platform. You can derive intelligence from all of this and proactively improve the customer experience across their entire journey. For instance, if customers are constantly asking about delivery schedules, your product category managers can include that as a part of the product descriptions and availability itself.

It is time to move your contact center to the cloud if you haven’t already done so. Moving to the cloud would enhance the customer experience that you provide.

However, how do you go about choosing the appropriate cloud platform?

Here is a quick checklist:

1. Does it fulfill all the reasons mentioned in this article?
2. Does it comply with your security standards, and does it provide availability at all times?
3. Does it comply with SOC, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, TCPA, DoT, and TRAI standards 
4. Does the platform provider have referenceable customers?

I guess this would get you started on the right note. I am also excited to let you know that TCN has been named a finalist in the 2021-2022 cloud awards for its advanced contact center platform.