Why Move Your Contact Center Operations to the Cloud?
The truth is that the cloud can power up your contact center operations– that’s why 41% of technology leaders plan to increase their usage of cloud-based tools.
The cloud keeps processes efficient, whether you’re reaching customers locally or across seas. It’s transforming legacy hardware into optimized infrastructure, empowering IT leaders to regain control of their systems, while also scaling, increasing agility and reducing costs.
With customer experience (CX) as a driving factor, and voice becoming a premium support feature, your business can rely on cloud benefits to deliver reliable calls and exceptional service. Read on to see why you should move your contact center operations to a cloud environment.
What is the Cloud Communications?
Cloud communications is a powerful infrastructure made up of highly-secure data centers and submarine cables that transports call traffic. You can think of it as a digital network of highways that keep customers and businesses connected around the world through the internet.
What is Moving a Contact Center to the Cloud Like?
One of the best things about moving your contact center to the cloud is that it doesn’t cause interruption to your operations. In fact, it’s a rather easy and affordable process. With an internet connection, you can integrate business applications and legacy on-premise phone system infrastructure to centralize your communications in one place.
Especially when it comes to your legacy infrastructure, moving to the cloud doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It’s about modernizing what you have, not replacing it.
Below are nine advantages the cloud can bring to your contact center operations:
1. Extensive global reach
Cloud voice offers businesses more opportunities to expand their global footprint than on-premise voice infrastructure. Businesses using the cloud for VoIP can easily buy, port, SIP and manage numbers and consolidate carriers practically anywhere.
There’s no need to spend money on landlines and desk phones as you expand. You can easily manage and reduce overhead costs with cloud communications. VoIP providers often have inventory on-demand, giving you that one-stop-shop solution to reach more of your customers.
2. Cost-saving optimizations
An investment in cloud communications is actually very sustainable for your long-term contact center operations. Its capabilities emphasize cost-saving benefits and reduce your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in the following ways:
→ Reduce hardware costs since platforms are virtual.
→ Lower call rates using SIP trunking and usage-based plans.
→ Avoid human errors through workflow automation in your business tools.
→ Avoid payment errors by consolidating vendors and currencies into one invoice.
→ Pay only for the usage and features you need and nothing you don’t.
Consider what your contact center costs currently look like. There’s likely room to improve, and the cloud can make that happen.
3. Fast account setup
Unlike traditional on-premise phone systems, it only takes a few minutes to get your account set up in the cloud. Once you’re in, you can easily assign roles, configure call routing, deploy call features, manage global numbers, and more from within a single platform.
Additionally, you don’t need to provide updates or maintenance to your virtual numbers and infrastructure. That’s the responsibility of your VoIP provider.
4. Scalable infrastructure
It’s crucial that technologies adapt to your business needs. The cloud provides flexibility, allowing you to scale your resources up or down without impacting your performance or causing a disruption to your operations.
You can easily…
→ Turn up or turn down call plans and usage
→ Turn on or off virtual numbers as needed
→ Grow or scale back agent licenses when headcount shifts
…to gain more control over your infrastructure directly from your cloud platform.
5. Accessible for remote teams
Where there’s the internet, there’s cloud access. When your contact center communications are in the cloud, your voice network and agents can access their environment from anywhere: at home, the office, the airport, etc.
And because of its web-based application, your voice network and customer service agents can work remotely on multiple devices.
6. Accelerate internal collaboration
You want your contact center to operate like a well-oiled machine to ensure your customers get the best experience possible. And that starts on the inside with internal collaboration.
The cloud enables global contact centers to work together and collaborate efficiently across the organization. Here’s how it can apply to your IT and customer experience teams:
→ IT Teams: Since your engineers and developers are responsible for maintaining a fully operational network, a cloud communications platform can empower their configurations from both an internal and external perspective.
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- Business PBX: Set up employee extensions, voicemails and call forwarding rules to get callers to the right destination.
- Contact Center: Share number and IVR reporting, configure routing and queues, set up integrations, and distribute compliant call recording data to monitor the state of your contact center.
→ Customer Experience Teams: Your contact center managers rely on tools of their own to measure collaboration and SLAs.
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- Contact Center: Coach agents through live calls with verbal and documented feedback, set up integrations and share performance results in real-time to improve satisfaction and service level targets.
7. Improve efficiency
Are you being asked to do more with fewer resources? Methods to improve operational efficiency in your contact center can be solved with the cloud.
→ IT Teams: Your voice network teams are tasked with providing architectural support and call configurations among other responsibilities. They can improve the efficiency of your global network through…
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- Voice APIs and Webhooks. Using a programmatic language, set up automated workflows and integrated applications to manage global communications to reduce errors and increase productivity.
- Low-Code No-Code. Save time with global IVR configurations across your contact center. Drag-and-drop technology allows teams to build complex call flows intuitively.
→ Customer Experience Teams: Your contact center managers can increase efficiency in customer-facing activities through…
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- Automated Call Logging. Review call details, call handling issues, follow-up tasks and call recordings to ensure company standards are being met.
8. Experience the best call quality
You can get the best call quality on the cloud. Cloud providers have the advantage of high-quality voice calls and more uptime because of…
- Proactive support teams that monitor traffic metrics, and identify and resolve call traffic issues.
- Dedicated security engineers deploy safety features to protect networks from cyber-attacks.
- Tier-1 carrier partnerships with direct ties to internet infrastructure.
- Enriched voice tools that let you take control of call quality.
- Geo-redundancy servers so you can route calls through data centers closest to termination destinations for optimal call quality.
9. Better security features
Running global infrastructure requires advanced security and fraud monitoring techniques to keep it well protected. Without defenses for your contact center operations, you risk exposing your network and data to fraudsters.
Cloud providers who continuously invest in fortifying their infrastructure are ones well-worth considering. Look for those with the following safeguards in place:
- Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) monitor and filter suspicious traffic activity between the internet and your communications platform.
- SIP protocols for end-to-end security and ensuring calls can’t be manipulated.
- WebRTC for reliable communications in real-time from an agent’s web browser and softphone.
- Built-in controls that assist users with toll-fraud management in their accounts.
- Personal data compliance certifications to securely collect and handle sensitive information.
- Cold potato routing moves call traffic longer over the internet, so it’s better guarded and less likely to be intercepted.
Migrating Your Global Contact Center’s On-Premise Phone System to the Cloud
The cloud is a resilient infrastructure that global contact centers can use to scale their on-premise phone system capabilities, increase agility and reduce voice costs at the same time. With your operations migrated to a cloud-based platform, you have the backing of high-quality calls and robust user features to power an exceptional customer experience.
The AVOXI Platform offers all those things and more. When you modernize your contact center operations with us, you can easily manage and expand your voice infrastructure across 150+ countries worldwide and enrich your customer experience from a one-stop-shop platform.
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