Over the past few years many contact center leaders have learned moving to cloud based systems is a good move. With the onset of Covid-19 contact centers have escalated their migration to cloud providers. In this article I will provide many of the reasons companies have made the move, and why you may want to as well.
Cost
With on-premises systems your organization spends copious amounts of money on servers, switches networking, storage and a host of other hardware and IT resources required to maintain the internal systems. On-premises systems are also typically an owned asset that requires updates and maintenance. Every time you need an update to your software, there is a substantial cost, plus your software providers charge more and more for costly maintenance and professional services. With Cloud based technology, these costs are gone.
Security
CCaaS was built with today’s security concerns in mind and they make continual changes based on emerging threats. With On-Prem systems, your internal teams must react and stay aware of threats, with Cloud based systems, your IT can focus on more productive activities to achieve company goals.
Flexibility
Contact center leaders that are still on prem are consistently frustrated with requirements that IT must help with any moves, add or changes related to employees, the IVR, and capacity needs. When you are with cloud-based providers, the systems are much more intuitive and allow the contact center teams to easily add and change employee and their skills.
Additionally, anyone can build out an IVR or make changes, as most products offer simple to use drag and drop IVR builder and set up capabilities. Cloud based systems are designed to eliminate most of the IT labor requirements and put control in the contact center’s hands. This allows a contact center to be more flexible to meet custom needs and respond to changes in the center. This flexibility causes a significant increase in customer satisfaction.
Functionality
With On-Premises systems you need to bring in ancillary products to offer additional functionality. With Cloud based providers, contact center can get a wholistic approach to technology with one seamless system. No more shopping for multiple technologies. Many CCaaS (Cloud) providers offer full omni channel capabilities along with ACD/IVR, call and screen recording, WFM/WFO, quality management, speech analytics, artificial intelligence and industry leading analytics and BI tools.
Logistics
When companies want to perform upgrades or move servers, they must shut down the technology, leaving your customers with no access. With cloud-based providers you are never shut down for maintenance or upgrades as the providers are set up with industry leading redundancies and processes to provide almost perfect uptime.
With on Premises systems, you often need to set up VPNs for your agents to work from anywhere other than in center. This adds additional costs, additional failure points and additional IT resources and requirements. With Cloud based systems, you simply need a computer, internet, and a browser. Your agents can work anywhere and get the same experience.
Speed to market
Cloud based providers can launch in days to week, rather than months to years, as needed for on-premises systems. With the use of APIs, cloud providers can integrate directly with every one of your other systems including, CRM and advanced analytics tools.
Summary
With Cloud based systems contact centers always know they have the latest and greatest technology, security, and functionality, all at a significant costs savings. Contact centers that have moved to the cloud are more agile, offer more custome3r channels and are better available to meet the customer’s ever-changing needs.
If you are looking at moving to the cloud, please email eric at eric@ccproconsulting.com. Eric provides free education on functionality and technology options and can introduce you to the technology companies that best meet your unique needs.
Eric Berg is a 25-year veteran of the contact center industry and has run multiple contact centers for small to Fortune 100 companies. Eric is founder and executive Board Member of the Midwest Contact Center Association and founder of ContactCenterPRO Consulting. Eric is a nationally known expert and columnist for the Contact Center Pipeline and lead operations consultant for JD Power.