What Are Cloud-Based Contact Centers?

Is your call center showing its age? Are your agents overworked? Do your customers hang up unsatisfied? Is your business running blind by not using analytics and predictions to its advantage? Are you needing to cut administrative costs while having […]

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Is your call center showing its age? Are your agents overworked? Do your customers hang up unsatisfied? Is your business running blind by not using analytics and predictions to its advantage? Are you needing to cut administrative costs while having to increase profits? 

If you answered yes to any of these questions, it’s time to switch to a cloud-based contact center!

What Is a Cloud-Based Contact Center?

A cloud-based contact center is similar to a traditional infrastructure call center in that your customers contact an agent to have their questions answered and their concerns addressed. Agents on the other end-use a headset or keyboard (or both) to assist in any way they can. However, there aren’t too many similarities beyond these basics. 

A contact center in the cloud is a modern, technologically advanced and analytics-driven system that offers many benefits to both customers and companies. Some of the major benefits include:

  • Dramatically improved customer experiences, regardless of how they contact the company.
  • Scalability and elasticity for all the natural business shifts that occur over time.
  • Global expansion and reach while still providing unrivaled reliability and connectivity.
  • Cost control without compromised quality.
  • Reporting and analytics tools that respond to and accurately predict customer needs, and how you can meet them while still achieving your own goals.

What Are the Top 6 Cloud-Based Contact Center Solutions?

Here are the top 6 contact center concerns and how a cloud-based contact center solution can help:

  1. If you aren’t sure how to improve the customer experience, ACD Analytics enables a complete analysis of customer interaction data, giving you the knowledge and numbers you need to make changes.
  2. If your business is struggling to figure out how to best meet a specific customer’s need and route them to the optimal agent, ACD and Multi-System Predictive Analytics-Driven Routing are the solutions. In addition, Speech-Enabled IVR reduces first-contact resolution time so customers can hang up satisfied. 
  3. If you are having trouble evaluating agent performance, gain wider visibility with Call Recording and Monitoring, Agent Presence and State Management, Quality Management, and WFO Analytics.
  4. If you can’t accurately forecast staffing needs, Workforce Management uses historical data to automatically schedule employees based on skills, interaction types, and any other factors you deem helpful.
  5. If you need help with outbound calls for sales and marketing, Outbound Campaigns Concurrent can give you the edge on profits.
  6. If your business would benefit from the organization of raw, structured, and unstructured data to unify and deliver key performance management insights that are explorable, shareable, and actionable, then 360° Analytics with Cross-system Insight is for you.

Why Should I Choose an Omni-Channel Solution for My Contact Center in the Cloud?

If you want to truly transform your contact center into a strategic asset, utilizing an omni-channel solution with predictive analytics is certainly the way to go. 

Omni is Latin for “all, of all things, in all ways or places.” Channel means to “direct toward a particular end or object.” Put these two words together in terms of a cloud-based call center and for your customers it means that no matter how or why they are contacting your company, they will experience a true continuity of service that is optimized by anticipating their needs. For you, it means improved performance across all sites, a reduction of administrative overhead, and improved business outcomes. 

Let’s look at each of these benefits individually.

  • Continuity of Customer Experience: An omni-channel approach allows voice, email, chat, and social media to be centrally queued. There is improved collaboration between agents, managers, and back-office experts. 
  • Optimized Customer Journey: With omni-channel, every customer interaction is analyzed in real-time. The data will tell you what is really happening, predict each customer’s needs, and route appropriately. 
  • Reduced Administrative Overhead: Managing all interactions, operations, and resources from an omni-channel contact center makes it easy to identify and eliminate unnecessary or duplicated tasks and processes.
  • Improved Business Outcomes: Through a reduction of call abandon rates, resolved issues, satisfied customers, surged retention, increased sales conversions, and heightened revenues, omni-channel solves many concerns.  

If you’re ready to gain all the benefits that come with having a cloud-based call center, contact a FirstDigital representative!