Contact Centers in the Cloud: Sky-High Performance or Cloudy Results

I think it has been the consumers who have made cloud what it is today; a mega trend. It has been people like you and me using no-cost services which were conveniently available anytime, anywhere and often with any device from the cloud. We as consumers helped providers to develop and improve services which have then also become attractive for enterprise customers. Nowadays a large number of services are offered via the cloud for professional users and all of them come with similar benefits; flexibility, minimal maintenance, and cost savings.

Cloud services in contact centers can make customer service faster, better, and more efficient. A recent study of the Aberdeen Group called Transitioning your Contact Center from On-Premise to the Cloud shows that the overall revenue and the overall profit of companies who rely on a cloud-based model overtop those businesses that rely on on-premise solutions. Aberdeen’s research also reveals that companies that deploy their contact center in the cloud enjoy 27% lower ($112.5 million vs. $155.0 million) annual contact center costs, compared to their peers and improvements in customer retention are more than twice as high. These figures and many more statistics available in the Aberdeen Study demonstrate the same rationale as what I have experienced. Customers choose cloud because they want to know what they will need to pay for the services they need per month and also the service is reliable and easy.

There are also other reasons for the growing popularity of cloud computing in the contact center industry: Businesses value the flexibility they get and the ability to act fast when changes are needed – whether it is about scaling the capacity and users, introducing new features or deploying new customer service sites. In a nutshell; Cloud contact centers are often more convenient, risk free, and inexpensive compared to on-premise systems patched together from multi-vendor one-purpose best-of-breed components.

Cloud is today’s mega trend however companies need to keep in mind that taking their on-premise contact center and moving it into the cloud does not automatically improve anything. Companies need to take a broader view on customer service and customer experience. As a simple advice, ask yourself the following questions: What are the elements in your company affecting the omnichannel customer experience? How do they fit together and what is contact center’s role in this big picture? How can you make sure the cloud-based contact center is not just an island but truly embedded into the customer-facing processes and back-end systems to bring the maximal value to you and to the customers? Getting the answers to these questions is the foundation to start building your contact center in the cloud and that will pave the way to sky-high performance.

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1h9Auj0