The question
The adoption of cloud-based contact centre solutions has
drastically accelerated with Gartner predicting that 50% of all contact centres will make the journey to cloud by 2022.
‘Why are so many Contact Centres adopting cloud-based solutions? What are benefits, what are the risks’?
The challenge
A typical commercial sized contact centre employs anything between 50 – 200 contact centre agents.
Budgets are limited but it appears that most would love to expand and adopt cloud-based technology.
By switching to a new cloud-based contact centre solution, users can significantly improve customer experience, scale their contact centre elastically and can easily add new communications channels!
But can they pivot to the cloud whilst keeping costs down & minimising risk?
Yes they can!
In the past, Contact centre technology used to be installed on-premise in data centres.
Implementation or expansion meant massive up-front costs. These included the purchase or lease of property, constructing and maintaining a data centre including power, cooling and security costs.
Agents had to be accommodated, meaning more property and equipment costs. Unlike servers, agents need cooling in the summer and heating in the winter!
GDPR has made data security and privacy concerns all the more pressing.
Now the situation has changed.
Cloud technology allows the leaders of these six thousand contact centres to bounce back into the market.
Using technology such as Amazon Connect and the Omningage desktop, companies can plan, build and operate a contact centre from scratch in record time with minimal up-front investment.
Amazon Connect is a “Platform as a Service” (PaaS) that can be run on Amazon Web Service with no hardware requirements other than the agents’ own computers and headsets. Both computing and telephony costs are billed on a pay per use basis. As a company, you only pay for what you use. If the demand doesn’t materialize, then you have no up-front commitments to meet.
Accessing a cloud contact centre is exactly the same whether you are in the office or at home. If you prefer to minimize facilities’ costs by employing agents on a work from home or hybrid basis, access controls and security for cloud contact centres are just as tight.
Two factor authentication or accessing the contact centre by means of a remote desktop can be implemented so that what starts in the cloud stays in the cloud.
Demand may fall, but it may also increase. You will want to take advantage of that too. Amazon Connect and Omningage are built to scale and flex as volumes rise and fall. If you want to add automated bots for your first line workloads, you can configure and launch these in the cloud, using the same technology that powers Amazon’s Alexa. The same goes for adding speech analytics and machine learning. That was once the preserve of the “big boys”. Now everything is on the cloud, so as a company, you only pay for what you use.
Doubtless, you will have a CRM system where you store and handle data about your existing customers. Amazon Connect is a “Platform as a Service”, so it is designed to make integration, via Omningage, with third party systems such as the CRM as easy, reliable and secure as possible.
GDPR has made security and privacy more important than ever. Many businesses wonder how their data can be safe in the cloud on “someone else’s computer”.
No CFO today would consider keeping the all the company’s money in the office safe for any length of time. Banks have better vaults and security systems than any medium sized company can hope to maintain.
The same applies with data. Cloud providers take responsibility for all aspects of network security other than user management. They have security technology, processes and specialists which none but the world’s largest companies could afford to hire. These days, providers of cloud computing services are even allowed to handle “Top Secret” workloads by the US Department of Defence.
The takeaway
Cloud contact centre technology allows businesses of all sizes to take advantage of the recovering market without incurring massive risks. With Amazon Connect and Omningage, you only pay for what you use.
Curious? Contact Omningage!
To discuss your cloud contact centre requirements, arrange a demonstration or ask for a proof of concept contact: