What is Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)?
You’ve probably heard the term ‘CCaaS’ before, but do you know what it means? CCaaS stands for Contact Center as a Service. The term describes a Customer Experience (CX) solution that provides all the tools you need to operate a fully-functional, omni-channel cloud contact center.
CCaaS uses a Software as a Service (SaaS) payment model that lets an organization pay only for the features it actually uses. A CCaaS solution provides flexibility, scalability and reliability; read on to find out how.
The Key Features of a CCaaS Solution
- A CCaaS solution is cloud-based. This means it can be accessed within a browser, via any internet-enabled device. Users can work from anywhere, securely.
- A CCaaS solution is constantly updated. When new features are rolled out, they become instantly available, without the need for downtime. From Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the Metaverse, a CCaaS solution ensures that you get the best of new technologies.
On top of these innate features of a CCaaS solution, a leading provider should be able to offer the following benefits:
- Leading CCaaS solutions are omni-channel by design. This means that your customers can contact you whenever, wherever and over any channel they choose. Every contact is brought into a single interface, for a truly channel-agnostic contact center.
- The contact center runs on data. A leading CCaaS solution integrates via API with any third-party solution or system of record, for a truly omni-data contact center. Agents are empowered with customer data from across your entire CX ecosystem, all in a single pane of glass.
- Agents are your most valuable asset. A leading CCaaS solution should allow for inbuilt Workforce Engagement Management, allowing for improvements to agent experience like automated scheduling and Quality Management. CCaaS combats agent attrition, while providing the best quality of experience for your customers.
- A CCaaS solution offers the potential to scale in a way on-premise solutions are not able to. Hosted in data centers, a CCaaS solution allows you to add new users at the click of a button, scaling up and down to match customer demand. Your business will always be accessible to customers, no matter the situation.
- Customer trust is invaluable. Leading CCaaS solutions provide security tools to ensure customer data is kept on a need-to-know basis, no matter how distributed your workforce.
CCaaS Benefits and User Success Stories
A CCaaS solution opens up a whole world of potential. Here is a snapshot of the benefits CCaaS can provide to your organization:
Scalability
A leading CCaaS solution lets you add new users at the click of a button, with no new infrastructure required. Utilities provider UK Power Networks faces regular surges in demand when storms disrupt its nationwide infrastructure. With a CCaaS solution, it is able to scale instantly to meet 10,000%+ surges in contact demand, ensuring that every customer gets the answers they need when they most need them.
Omni-channel
Leading CCaaS solutions allow customers to switch seamlessly between channels, for a truly omni-channel customer experience. Healthcare provider HUC uses a CCaaS solution to let patients and medical practitioners to switch instantly from voice to video. This requires no additional apps or interfaces and allows for more consistent diagnoses.
Flexible
A leading CCaaS solution allows you to rapidly respond to changing circumstances. Whether this means updating your reporting to reflect changed priorities, or allowing your colleagues to work from anywhere, CCaaS allows you to present a unified contact center, no matter how complex your business or workforce is. The Rail Delivery Group used a CCaaS solution to migrate its entire contact center to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing customer contact to continue during unprecedented circumstances.
Powered by AI
Leading CCaaS solutions incorporate AI at every level. From intelligent chatbots that leverage Generative AI, to contact routing supported by voice recognition, CCaaS solutions bring AI-powered efficiencies to your customer communications.
One government agency leveraged its CCaaS solution’s inbuilt AI to automate customer contacts. By shifting callers into an AI-powered webchat. Of the contacts who were sent to chat, 70% were successfully automated, reducing the pressure on human agents during times of peak demand.
Cloud Migration for CCaaS
- Constrained by physical space: on-prem servers need to be stored somewhere, and this can be costly!
- Maintenance: organizations need to have their own IT teams, and spend money on maintenance.
- Capacity is fixed: if an organization wants to scale its contact center, it needs to purchase and install an entirely new server.
On-prem solutions can’t scale as quickly or flexibly as CCaaS solutions. If these servers experience a technical malfunction, bringing those servers back online is costly and complicated. Responsibility for fixing the solution falls entirely on the business and its IT team.
If an organization doesn’t have an on-premise solution, it might have either a hosted contact center or a managed contact center.
- A hosted contact center involves a server reserved solely for an organization, located either in its offices, or in a data center. In both cases, the organization is responsible for the management of the server.
- A managed contact center also involves a server in a remote location, dedicated solely to one organization. A managed services provider is responsible for support, management, and maintenance.
- Both hosted and managed contact centers suffer from the same limitations as on-premise: space limitations, inflated maintenance and operational costs, and fixed capacity.
By contrast, CCaaS solution needs no on-premise infrastructure. Contact center software is hosted in a data center; a highly secure facility, equipped with a massive amount of extra server capacity and staffed by skilled teams of engineers.
Data centers:
- Allow for unlimited spare capacity in the event of a demand surge
- Cover all server maintenance, including heat management
- Offer organizations dedicated space, with room for flexible expansion
Making the leap to CCaaS is the logical next step.
