Don’t wait to migrate to the cloud. Since all the setup is done by the provider, entire contact center deployments and new projects, which would otherwise take months to complete, can be set up in a number of days. For organizations with a full or hybrid working-from-home model, agents are able to work from home in as little as 48 hours, instantly improving employee and customer experience.
Having as little downtime to the service is imperative to maintaining 24/7 customer interactions. Tried and tested updates to the platform don’t impact service, as there is no downtime- with no need to rely on in-house developers for innovation and upgrades. If there were ever a problem, cloud contact center support staff are available at 24/7, 365 days a year to troubleshoot, fix problems, and ensure 99.999% availability.
Some businesses and local councils were able to have their move to the cloud completed before the lockdowns, which ensured no service downtime to their customers. Such deployments were crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic, making the cloud a must-have for businesses that prioritize the customer experience or are assessed based on the level of CX they deliver. When people needed it the most, the cloud was able to provide them with the solutions they needed to deliver quality, empathetic, personable CX, even during peak demand.
Cloud contact center solutions are like Lego. With different colored and shaped blocks at your disposal, you can create whatever you want. It’s the same for cloud contact center solutions. Pick your products and features, then add them to your main solution in the order that suits you, to build the solution that caters to your business needs. Want to swap something out or add something in, like analytics capabilities? With the cloud, you can!
Integrate as many systems and channels as you need
The advantage of a cloud contact center solution is that no in-house work is needed. That means when you want to add new functionality, the work is handled by the provider.
Configuring and maintaining integrations is easier with a cloud contact center. Migrating to the cloud is no longer just ‘lifting and shifting’, but adapting your contact center to the new features that cloud solutions can offer.
Customer behavior is changing. Cloud CX solutions are able to go beyond omnichannel to create so-called “channel-less” or “opti-channel” experiences: integrating your cloud contact center with multiple systems simultaneously, instantly syncing data as it is updated by either an agent or by customers sending their data directly into a central database using self-service channels.
Cloud contact centers support cohesive integration between customer journeys, without needing additional solutions. Compared to call centers, which only have one channel at their disposal, cloud contact centers are able to integrate multiple forms of inbound communication, including voice, email, web chat, asynchronous messaging services such as social media and WhatsApp, SMS messages, and more! Allowing consumers to interact with your brand across multiple different channels, and choose the channel of their choice, can reduce wait times and improve First Contact Resolution (FCR).
Historically, moving from on-premise solutions to the cloud meant lifting an existing solution and recreating it in a cloud environment. Now, you can tailor the solution to your needs over time, scaling to add channels as the needs of your customers evolve. Cloud software updates can quickly respond to novel consumer preferences, such as asynchronous messaging and voice notes, creating a fluid experience across all channels.
With greater channel diversity, AI can play a greater role in improving CX in addition to general contact center processes. On-prem systems simply cannot take advantage of these technologies. The cloud contact center can seamlessly integrate with third-party AI services, enabling AI-powered chatbots, Intelligent Automation to assist agents during interactions, and AI-backed contact center analytics. AI conversational agents can be integrated effortlessly into the start of the customer journey, helping them to self-serve non-urgent inquiries, and reducing wait times.
With new AI technologies being released every week, keeping up with the pace of change necessitates a cloud solution. If your organization doesn’t embrace AI, your competitors will. The future of the cloud contact center equation is balanced: part agent and part machine.
One solution, infinite integrations
With its building block-like nature, most cloud contact center providers are able to offer end-to-end, or single-stack solutions. With an end-to-end solution, such as storm, all the tools and features necessary to deliver great CX is available from a single provider. Therefore there’s no chance of integrations breaking since all products and modules are cross-compatible and come pre-integrated.
And for those organizations that need bespoke integrations, APIs can make it happen. Build the solution you need with APIs, without spending on hardware or software packages you don’t need. APIs can help your agents instantly access a customer’s details from a CRM or industry-specific third-party system without switching between multiple windows, reducing the time it takes for agents to get information, increasing the efficiency of calls, and resulting in better CX.
Integrating data channels on the cloud allows for personalized and empathetic CX, using omni-data to give a 360 view of the customer’s historical interactions. This customer data can be combined with product and service information to provide agents with dynamic scripting, which you would need to pay to maintain with on-prem solutions.
4. Cloud Contact Centers Are Cost-Effective
72% of businesses prefer cloud contact centers because agents can have applications that would be too costly to access on-prem. At first glance, cloud contact centers can appear more expensive. However, it’s important to view the total cost of ownership (TCO). Cloud contact centers have no upfront costs for things such as on-premise hardware and infrastructure and instead operate on a subscription model. Global carrier costs are also included. Lower TCO of cloud contact centers enables businesses to cut down on outgoings with predictable billing.
90% of contact centers that switched to the cloud did so for financial flexibility. Lowering operational costs means an increased budget for things that matter, such as a larger staff team or an improved promotion structure. In return, you can expect less employee churn, as wages and promotions were listed as the most important reasons given by agents to stay in the role.
In the cloud, the contact center goes from being a cost sink to a value center. Outstanding Customer Experiences deliver real value for your business. The flexibility of the cloud contact center allows for significant ROI, and creates a true competitive advantage.
