Is ROI the Compelling Reason for You to Consider a Cloud-Hosted Contact Center?

What is the most important consideration when you evaluate a new technology investment?

It is the Return on Investment (ROI).

In essence, for every dollar that you invest, you are trying to figure out if the return is more than a dollar. It is as simple as that, and it makes sense. Else, there is no point in making that investment.

ROI helps you quantify the value a technology delivers, allowing businesses to make informed decisions about where to allocate their resources. With technology investments, you are looking at high upfront costs, and ROI helps you understand the long-term gains in the form of improved revenue, cost savings, and efficiency.

In this article, we are going to focus on cloud contact center – a solution that uses Internet-based technologies to manage customer interactions. It helps you handle customer interactions from anywhere and anytime using any device with browser access and Internet capabilities. It provides scalability, flexibility, and low barriers to entry – you can have all enterprise-grade features at a fraction of the cost, irrespective of your size.

However, justifying a move from a traditional on-premise contact center platform to cloud platforms comes down to understanding the Return on Investment (ROI).

Let us look at the major ROI components of cloud hosting platform and see if they make sense.

Cost Efficiency

Firstly, let us look at the costs involved in a contact center:

• Dialer costs
• Voice infrastructure costs
• Hosting the dialer on a server either locally or at a data center
• Integrating the dialer platform with multiple other departments and systems
• Integrating the various channels through which you offer customer experience with the contact center platform – voice, IVR, click-to-call, email, web, SMS, chat, video, and social
• Managing patches, upgrades, and vulnerabilities of the infrastructure
• Customization of the workflow to fit your organizational needs
• Ongoing maintenance and support

These are the overall costs involved in running a contact center.

Let us look at the scenario where you own the technology.

You will have to pay a hefty license cost and commit to the vendor up front to the number of seats you purchase on different channels. Likely, you may not use everything you buy right from the beginning.

You will also sign an annual maintenance contract to be covered with upgrades, patches, and vulnerability fixes.

You will also have to factor in resources that would ensure the security and availability of your infrastructure. You will have to upgrade your server and voice hardware every three years, as they become obsolete at the hardware and software levels.

Now, look at the cloud offering.

There is no CAPEX that you incur. You will be billed on a per-minute basis – this includes dialer, voice, integrations, maintenance, upgrades, patches, vulnerability fixes, data security, hosting, customizations, and all the channels.

There is no annual maintenance cost; you don’t need resources to manage and sustain the infrastructure.

Besides, you can scale up and down the number of agents per your needs. There is no upfront commitment on the licenses and the number of agents. You pay per your use.

All your agents need is an Internet connection, access to a browser, and a headset to be up and running to provide the best possible customer experience.

Now, a cloud platform would mean better ROI in the short- and long-term.

Many of our customers have reported savings of up to 50% in terms of infrastructure costs and 35% lower operational costs. As you have the flexibility to scale up and down your resources per your business needs, businesses have reported savings between 40 and 50% by paying only for what they use.

Agent Productivity Improvements

When your agents are empowered and more efficient, they resolve customer queries quicker, and fewer resources are needed to handle each inquiry.

How do you empower your agents?

Agents usually get frustrated when they have to switch between multiple screens to respond to a customer query.

With cloud platforms, you get to have omnichannel capabilities where agents get to see a single view of their customers across all channels and systems.

With this consolidation, you can cut down the Average Handling Time (AHT) by 20% and improve First Call Resolution (FCR) by 30%. This would allow you to handle more calls with fewer agents and resolve more queries than you can imagine.

Enhanced Customer Interaction

This is the heart of any ROI activity.

Imagine having a seamless experience across all the channels – email, SMS, voice, chatbots, social, and mobile.

Would you agree that you would be happy as a customer?

Most organizations use different systems for different functions. Silos are one of the great challenges facing contact centers today. Data becomes siloed as the customer view is carved up between these systems.

This would mean your customer-facing reps will have to access multiple screens and numerous applications to resolve customer requests.

You must integrate all of the systems with your contact center platform to provide a single view of your customers to the customer service reps. This will allow them to provide the best possible customer experience.

Besides, you need to integrate all of the channels on which you are available – voice, SMS, IVR, chat, messenger, email, mobile, and social. The customers will not have to repeat themselves, irrespective of the channels they choose to interact with you. This is what you call omnichannel interaction. 

Most cloud platforms offer the following as a part of its omnichannel play:

• API integrations, which will allow multiple systems and platforms to be integrated easily
• Pre-built integrations with industry-leading CRMs, helpdesks, and ERPs?
• Ease of adding and integrating newer channels.

How about personalizing your customer interactions?

Look at Amazon and Netflix – they are the poster boys of personalization.

Recently, I saw a movie on Netflix, and I loved it. At the end of the credits, it had an option to ask for your feedback.

It had three options – thumbs down, thumbs up, and double thumbs up.

Thumbs down – Netflix won’t suggest similar movies for you. Thumbs up – Netflix would, and double thumbs up – you are a true fan, and Netflix would go out of its way to suggest similar stuff.

Do we make it that simple for your users to give feedback?

Imagine having a provision for your users to give feedback while they are using the software. It would be much easier, and they are more likely to engage.

If you know the business case for your users, then it becomes very easy to personalize.

How about something like this?

“Hi, First name. We noticed you recently purchased the license of our financial planning software for your equity needs. We’d love to hear how it is going and how we can improve the experience.”

Let me give you a couple of real-world examples.

Airbnb used its cloud call center to offer personalized support by analyzing a customer’s past interactions and current bookings. It resulted in a 15% improvement in CSAT scores within just a few months.

Another example is Spotify, which improved the Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 12% after switching to a cloud solution.

Improved Workforce Management

Workforce management in traditional contact centers is often clunky, resulting in overstaffing and understaffing. Cloud platforms offer intelligent workforce management solutions that optimize workforce deployment.

Our experience of working with multiple customers across banking, collections, BPOs, and retail has resulted in an increase of about 20% in agent utilization.

Besides, cloud platforms support remote workforce operations, resulting in an additional saving of $3000 per agent annually.

Analytics and Data-Driven Insights

Cloud platforms are packed with analytics tools that allow businesses to gain insights into customer behavior, agent performance, and operational inefficiencies.

Organizations have implemented real-time analytics solutions to track customer interactions across various touchpoints, such as call centers, mobile apps, and social media platforms.

By analyzing customer feedback and sentiment in real-time, these organizations can identify pain points, address issues promptly, and deliver personalized services tailored to individual preferences.

Look at this example of omnichannel analytics:

One of our customers implemented omnichannel analytics to track customer journeys across the web, mobile app, and social media platforms.

As a result, the company achieved a 20% reduction in customer churn by identifying and addressing friction points in the digital experience, increasing customer satisfaction by 20%, and improving first-call resolution rates by 15%.

Here is another example of predictive analytics:

Predictive analytics help organizations make informed decisions, improve operational efficiency, and drive business growth.

One of our customers implemented predictive analytics to forecast call volumes and allocate resources accordingly. By accurately predicting peak call times and staffing levels, the bank reduced wait times for customers and improved service levels by 20%.

Flexibility and Business Continuity

When the pandemic started in 2020, the need for Zoom conferencing went up, and they had to increase their customer support capacity. As they were using a cloud-based contact center, they were able to add more agents to address their customer queries.

How do you address peak traffic?

With cloud contact centers, it is easy to scale up and down per your business needs at the click of a button. You only pay for what you use with the cloud, and you don’t have to provide any minimum guarantee or commitments to your vendor.

Cloud platform maximize the ROI for every customer across verticals. The inherent capabilities of the cloud make it the best choice to opt for, offering the best possible customer experiences.

Most contact centers today have their operations or are in the process of moving their operations to the cloud because of the stated advantages and the return on investment.

In my mind, cloud platforms are no more a choice – they are a necessity. ROI stated here in the article makes it a compelling proposition to consider the cloud for your contact center.