The cloud environment today offers many options and facilitates innovation and agility. Nevertheless, to respond to the concerns of IT and the business, which combine performance, security, cost control and innovation, cloud contact center solutions have many advantages.
As companies embark on their digital transformation, they need to offer their businesses high-performance, agile and scalable tools, and IT needs to be able to control the security of data and flows.
The Cloud responds to these challenges by offering an easier implementation of business applications and a portfolio of service levels and customization.
The Contact Center is no exception and is part of this evolution. Research firm MarketsandMarkets has valued the current global cloud-based contact center market at $11.5 billion and expects it to reach $36.1 billion by 2025, at a compound annual growth rate of 25.8%.
Market analysis | Why move to the Cloud Contact Center?
Today’s world is accustomed to having “everything, right away” and the contact center is no exception to this trend of immediacy and the brand promise must meet the expectations of customers who want more personalization, service, responsiveness, choice and simplicity.
The new generation of solutions tends towards an omnichannel approach that is certainly more accomplished, but above all more intuitive, simpler and more in line with customer and agent usage.
This results in streamlined processes while optimizing efficiency and providing a better customer experience.
An improved customer and employee experience
The Cloud Contact Center is both customer-centric and more adaptable to the way consultants work and respond to customer requests.
Consumers have a more positive perception of the brand and recommend it when they are able to contact it through their preferred channel, access the desired service quickly and have relevant information readily available.
With this type of solution, agents receive notifications via the app and can respond to various customer requests, whether they come from chat, WhatsApp, a call or an email. This more dynamic method of interaction is more advantageous, more harmonious even, and reduces response times. It also makes it easier to choose the channel they feel most comfortable with, the channel of preference.
Seamless and complete integration
These solutions seamlessly integrate customer experience channels into a unified platform. This enables interactions to be routed to the right agent via intelligent routing (by skill, by team or by queue) and to better manage periods of high call volumes, seasonality, and call peaks related to a specific activity.
Integration is native with the various CRMs on the market for improved management within the customer’s business applications. Some providers also offer enhanced integration with collaboration tools, which makes it much easier to use. As a result, companies only need internet access to access their telephony/contact center environment.
Moving contact center infrastructure to the cloud makes it easy to adopt new features and technologies, including the latest tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. Access to intuitive, cutting-edge technologies also enables self-care and fully automated actions, eliminating or reducing repetitive, low-value tasks and speeding up the resolution of customer issues, for example.
Significant cost reductions
In this cloud model, the contact center hardware and software is hosted and managed by a third-party provider. This eliminates the need for upfront investment in infrastructure and maintenance for regular upgrades.
This can result in the redistribution of IT skills within a team or a reduction of IT staff dedicated to the operational maintenance of equipment and limits the risk of downtime.
In addition, the Cloud Contact Center allows organizations to move from a capital expense to an operational expense, allowing the customer to budget for a variable monthly cost and to best adjust to usage.
An evolving technology
Cloud-native, the solutions are based on a microservices architecture and are highly scalable (continuous updates avoiding version upgrades/migrations, proven reliability due to the independence of the mircoservices, on-demand scaling without hardware limitations, remote working without the need for VPN access, …)
They accelerate the deployment of new solutions whenever necessary and remove them just as easily.
More information
The Contact Center Cloud Platforms have been greatly enriched with functional modules to meet the expanded needs of customer service, support, HR, marketing, IT, data, etc. In addition, customer knowledge and experience, customer and employee engagement, scheduling, and record automation have been added to the workflow functionality to provide a complete, holistic solution that includes customer journey data analysis, customer reviews, and statistical reporting.
These functions allow you to optimize and personalize customer service to deliver measurable improvements and result in increased levels of productivity, performance, engagement and satisfaction.
Making a success of your project – getting your teams on board and leading the change
Companies no longer wish to invest in projects lasting several months with significant material costs and an abysmal involvement of their teams.
This is why our dual technological and business expertise and our in-depth knowledge of remote customer relations legitimizes us to address these transformation and evolution projects towards the Cloud and to propose our successful and proven methodology of project management.
The hybrid approach
Responsibilities are now shared between 3 actors: The end customer, the Cloud Contact Center solution provider and the integrator.
The supplier provides support throughout the project to ensure that the needs are well understood, that the solution’s functional depth is appropriate, that the installation is compliant, that the solution is adopted and, later, that the platform is optimized to meet the changing needs and practices.
The discovery phase is crucial in this type of project because it first allows us to understand the business and the issues at stake, then to have a global vision of the customer’s organization (business and IT actors), the precise needs related to the activity and the resources, and to understand the set objectives and the roadmap.
During the workshop phases, an essential step that will allow us to develop proximity, intimacy and to “settle” in the place of the customer and the agent, expectations are important.
The workshop in “exploratory” mode has three objectives:
- Better understand our customers’ objectives and facilitate the alignment between them and the solution’s functionalities
- Identify and share the full potential of the solution to exploit its value and bring innovation
- Agree on a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will facilitate the monitoring and progress of actions, decision making and corrective actions
The workshop must be prepared (expectations, contents, representative teams of the organization, restitution, agenda,…), take place in collaborative mode to increase interactivity and challenge the existing.
Making a success of your project, optimizing usage
Once we are familiar with the client’s environment, we can initiate the project and conduct the first sprints in agility with the various actors identified.
Our approach is collaborative in co-construction mode and allows us to optimize costs and facilitate the appropriation of solutions during the specification and co-development phases.
We will not cease to insist: a strong involvement of the customer with identified and representative actors is key for a good progress and the success of the project.
Activeo’s approach is differentiated by its double technological and business expertise. A mixed project team, experienced knowing how to speak technical, functional and business will be able to decipher very precisely the need and to propose the best method and the good practices.
Activeo also helps you in the choice of the operator, the appropriate telephony and the useful solutions for the good functioning of the system without forgetting the integration to the business applications and CRM leaders of the market including the realization of specific developments (App, Cloud to Cloud, integration to specific IT environments).
Once the various iterations of sprints have been completed, the final delivery is carried out and a complete support system is implemented, including communication, training and coaching of business teams.
At the end of the project, a feedback (REX) / Balance sheet is proposed and recommended with the various stakeholders for a point by point analysis of the organization, including the technical and financial aspects. This allows us to identify areas for improvement and positive measures to be reused in future projects or to be extended to other entities/teams. This meeting is also the object of an introduction of a Customer Success Manager (CSM) to continue the accompaniment of the customer during the RUN phase. The RUN, which at Activeo will be offered to you as a support, Managed Services 24/7 if needed, will orchestrate a precise follow-up of the contractual commitments and will bring you advice and monitoring to optimize the existing and increase the value of the investment in the long run.
