Recently the worldwide pandemic of Covid-19 has led to a rapid rise in untact consumption of goods and services without face-to-face contact between people. Untact consumption is easy to use when it comes to unmanned kiosks, chatbot services, delivery apps, etc.. With this shift in consumer trends, companies are making great efforts to reach their customers more efficiently. In order to promote non-face-to-face communication, companies are trying to communicate with customers through various channels such as telephone, e-mail, and messages. Therefore, most of the company’s activities, from service counseling to sales and post-service, are now possible through non-face-to-face communication.
As untact marketing expands, the importance of contact centers, which are non-face-to-face contacts between businesses and customers, is growing. Until recently, contact centers had mostly played a simple role in responding to customer inquiries and handling complaints as contacts with customers via phone, e-mail, etc. However, as customized marketing per customer is becoming popular, many companies that are aware of the importance of customer management and managing communication history have begun to utilize contact centers in more active ways, including analyzing consumer inflow patterns through communication records with customers and developing new means of generating revenue based on these analysis. Some companies also build a kind of dual service processes to maximize business efficiency. For example, simple tasks or responses are handled by chatbots or IVR, and the contact center manages the overall experience of the customer’s purchasing journey.
Cloud contact center has many benefits.
Until a few years ago, customers were reluctant to adopt the cloud due to concerns about security and customization. However, as cloud technology’s performance and benefits have been enhanced and market concerns have been supplemented, cloud technology has become increasingly relevant and utilized. This trend has also been reflected in the contact center, and cloud-based contact centers are expanding in addition to the traditional, on-prem type of contact centers.
Then, why are many companies moving to cloud-based contact centers?
Superior customer experiences
The goal of every contact center is to provide the best customer experience. Customers can ask for help because they can’t find what they want on the website or app, they reach out to the contact center using phone, email, or messaging regardless of the time. These customers usually need a quick response or are very curious about something. So, they want to be able to solve their problem without waiting as much as possible. In order to respond quickly and accurately to customers, you need to be able to quickly connect them to the appropriate agents who have the knowledge of the field and by using advanced analytics and knowledge-based routing technologies route them there. The capabilities and technologies of contact centers to improve customer experience are evolving. Cloud-based contact center solutions make it easier to update or upgrade, so you can apply the latest features and technologies right away to deliver better service to your customers.
Greater scalability
Cloud solutions are providing “on-demand service” as one of the key advantages which makes it easier to scale down or expand contact centers as the company scales. That is because cloud solutions typically use many resources from data centers without requiring extra hardware, and smart managing by software allows you to quickly adjust the number of agents or functionalities you need. We often see a temporary surge in demand for consultation due to the launch of new products, or a significant change in demand for products or services depending on the season. In this case, the flexible architecture of cloud contact centers helps companies become more agile in responding to changing service demands for services. As a result, if you are building a cloud-based contact center, you don’t have to predict the size of your business or service demand for the future to calculate the investment cost for your IT infrastructure, and you just need to invest in the capacity and functionalities you need right now. Because we can respond quickly to changes in demand.
Extended business continuity
Traditionally, a common option for securing business continuity in an on-prem type of contact center is to build a backup system. Building a backup system not only costs a lot of money, but despite these huge investments, it cannot guarantee 100% access to a backup system in the event of a disaster. In the worst-case scenario, if the system’s data is corrupted, it could take several weeks for the contact center to recover and be back running in a normal capacity. However, if a contact center is built on the cloud, you can think of a completely different scenario in the event of a disaster. Even if the worst happens and the office is unavailable for some time, contact center solutions can remain secure in the offsite data center, so the agents can still access the company’s contact center solution at home or outside the offices to serve the customers. As technology advances, and the reliability of the data centers continues to improve and withstand catastrophic events, geographic redundancy can further improve business continuity.
Operational efficiency
Regular upgrades and maintenance are an essential consideration when operating the contact center. In the case of on-prem type of contact center, it is common for service technicians to visit the site and implement necessary measures, and in some cases, dedicated management personnel are required within the company. Cloud contact centers, on the other hand, are continually updated, upgraded, and maintained by service providers or outside experts, so individual companies using contact center solutions need to focus on the primary role of providing the best customer experience without worrying about this.
Also, from a cost perspective, cloud contact centers offer services at monthly rates based on pay-as-you-go, minimizing initial capital expenditures (CAPEX) and managing expenditures in the form of monthly OPEX.
