Contact Centers and their Evolution to the Cloud with Five9 Contact Centers have an ever-growing list of applications (eg, routing, agent desktop, WFO) that they use to meet and exceed customer needs. As companies try to keep up with these technologies, they must consider how they access them. Specifically, do they use a local model where they buy dedicated hardware and allocate IT resources to implement, manage and maintain it? Or do they use services provided by a third party, allowing the business to access contact center applications without dedicated hardware costs or IT resources?
Between March and April 2018, we surveyed 302 contact centers around the world on the main trends and best practices that influence their activities; including your contact center application delivery models. The data from this research reveals that almost two-thirds of contact centers currently use a local model for their technology infrastructure of their contact centers. To be exact, 36% of contact centers currently use any form of cloud technology, including Software as a Service (SaaS), hosted, hybrid and in the private cloud.
A trend analysis of cloud contact center studies between 2013 and 2018 shows that the adoption of cloud technology has increased continuously during this time, at different rates each year. So why are contact centers increasingly incorporating cloud technology into their activities?
Financial flexibility
The number one reason for 90% of respondents is financial flexibility. Specifically, this refers to the conversion of fixed costs that are associated with on-premises technology with variable (and more predictable) costs that are associated with cloud technology. Costs are more predictable for users of cloud technology. Unlike a local model, where investment in technology is a sunk cost incurred by the company regardless of how often it is used, companies pay cloud contact center service providers based on how much they use their services. As such, when customer traffic drops, businesses can cut and cut costs. They can also scale at peak times, helping to avoid unnecessary infrastructure costs.
Increase uptime through more redundant carrier integration
This refers to the contact centers that ensure business continuity to serve customer needs. If a contact center experiences excessive downtime in service, it means that it cannot serve the buyer’s needs on time. This will inevitably frustrate customers and push them to seek other companies that are more likely to meet their needs without delay in service delivery.
Research shows 73% of contact centers cite increased uptime through redundant integration of carriers available through cloud contact center providers as the second top reason driving their technology investment on the cloud.
Give agents access to better applications that do not require a large investment to develop On-Premise
72% of those surveyed cite the possibility of providing agents access to applications that would otherwise have been very expensive to access through a local model as a reason to prefer cloud technology. For example, a midsize contact center might want to add voice analytics to their activities to ensure compliance and improve customer experiences. With a local model, they would have to invest in related hardware, hire employees with related experience, or allocate existing resources with relevant knowledge to manage the application. This often requires spending significant resources that could be a burden for a medium-sized contact center.
A cloud-based delivery model enables the business to use speech analytics as needed. This, in turn, helps avoid unnecessary costs and eliminates internal resource requirements that would be necessary to manage speech analysis. Agents can also benefit from a technology that can analyze voice interactions to prompt them on customer sentiment and help them better manage each conversation. This is true not only for speech analysis, but also for all customer service applications.
Improve security and compliance with Standards
Traditionally, companies have cited security and compliance as reasons for preferring a local deployment model. Currently, 70% of cloud contact center users cite security and regulatory compliance as a reason to invest in cloud technology, demonstrating that companies have largely overcome their concerns in this area. and continually improve and evolve in data control in an infrastructure-based cloud. The ability to use a cloud contact center while ensuring data security and compliance with relevant regulations is especially important for companies in highly regulated industries, such as financial services and healthcare, as well as for those that are affected by the RGPD. regulations.
Reduce the dependency of the Contact Center in the IT area for support and to be able to focus on more strategic initiatives
Since an on-premises deployment model requires internal IT resources to manage contact center hardware setup, maintenance, support, and upgrades, companies aim to reduce those IT expenses by switching to a model where an external vendor manages the infrastructure. for business, and support for operators and supervisors. Research results show that companies recognize the benefits of relieving IT from contact center application management. 62% mention that reducing dependency on IT helps the IT team focus more on strategic activities, such as building a single view of customer insights, that are necessary to deliver omnichannel interactions with customers
Author: Daniel Liszka – Systems Engineer
