What’s a Cloud-Based Contact Center? Exploring Software & Technology

Customer service is a defining factor in the customer experience, influencing everything from a customer's purchasing decisions to their brand loyalty. You can't provide top-notch customer service without a simple, reliable way for customers to communicate with you. That's where a cloud-based call center comes in.

You're probably familiar with a traditional contact center setup, with a call distributor that disperses calls to agents, who answer them from their cubicles in a massive call center. The modern call center, however, is so much more than that, and it looks a lot different, too.

Here, we'll explain what a cloud-based call center is and explore the benefits of call center software for businesses and customers. You'll discover how a virtual customer service solution can help you reduce costs and increase reliability while providing better service to your customers at every turn. By the end of this article, you'll have a better idea of whether a cloud-based contact center solution is the right fit for your organization and know where to go for more information.

Defining Cloud Software for Call Centers

A cloud-based call center, also called a cloud call center, is a web-based software platform for handling a company's inbound and outbound communications. Since it's based in the cloud, there's no need for a physical location to house the cloud call center technology. This also means it can be accessed from anywhere, anytime, which gives you the flexibility to employ remote agents all over the world and scale your workforce to meet demand on an as-needed basis.

A cloud-based contact center is built around the core technologies of the automatic call distributor (ACD) and the interactive voice response (IVR) system, but it's not limited to voice calls. It can manage a wide range of communication channels, including email, SMS, live chat, and social media. It also has built-in workforce optimization capabilities to help you manage staffing, as well as reporting tools that allow you to pinpoint your most profitable opportunities for growth.

Unlike legacy contact center software, which agents access from their desk in an onsite location, cloud-based contact center software is accessible anywhere there's an internet connection. An all-in-one dashboard brings together every application agents need to do their jobs so they can provide seamless service across channels, even switching between them when necessary. Armed with the right information at the right time, agents are empowered to reach resolutions faster and provide more personalized service, which pleases customers.

Replacing legacy call center technology with cloud-based call center software has the potential to dramatically reduce your costs, increase your service capacity, improve your service levels, and boost your customer satisfaction ratings. Plus, easily accessible up-to-the-minute reports give you a new perspective on your performance so you can constantly be improving.

The Benefits of Cloud Technology for Call Centers

Adopting a cloud call center can have a far-reaching impact on your ability to meet customers' needs, scale your service capacity and protect your business as it grows. Here are a few key benefits of cloud-based contact center software.

Improve the customer experience

Thanks to automation, the data agents need is displayed in front of them automatically with every call, with no need to toggle between multiple applications looking for it (and making the customer wait in the process). AI capabilities like sentiment analysis and speech analytics guide agents with the next best steps for each individual, empowering them to deliver the level of personalization savvy customers crave. Convenient self-service tools like intelligent IVR allow customers to quickly self-resolve simple issues, boosting satisfaction.

Add communication channels easily

If your current call center platform is limited strictly to voice interactions, you might not be ready to jump straight into offering support on channels like SMS and live chat. With a cloud contact center, it's easy to "turn on" additional channels as demand grows and readiness allows, without making hefty changes to infrastructure.

Cloud-based call center solutions with ease

With legacy contact center platforms, making updates is a time- and labor-intensive process, one that often requires enlisting the skills of costly specialists. This isn't the case with a cloud-based CCaaS. Its cloud-based nature means new functionality can be deployed rapidly without huge overhead costs. What's more, it can be improved upon often to meet your changing needs as your organization evolves.

Achieve global reach through call center cloud services

With a contact center solution that's housed in the cloud, agents aren't bound by the confines of geography. A remote team can work from anywhere, collaborating across time zones and international borders. This gives you the freedom to have representatives all over the world, helping you respond to customers around the clock and in more languages. It's easy to scale your workforce teams to meet the ebb and flow of customer demand.

Increase reliability

Eighty-two percent of contact center decision-makers rank system uptime as 'important' or 'very important,' second only to customer experience in terms of value. If your system crashes during a period of peak call volume, it could quickly spell disaster for your brand reputation. That's why uptime is so paramount. A cloud contact center can help you reach best-in-class uptime of 99.99% or more, which means you'll always be available when customers need you.

Essential features of a cloud-based call center software

There are many features of cloud based call center software. These table stakes features can include:

Call routing

Routes calls to the appropriate contact center agent.

Automatic call distribution

Helps businesses distribute calls evenly among contact center agents.

Caller ID

Identifies the caller and their contact information.

Reporting and analytics

Allows businesses to track the performance of their contact center with data analytics and insights.

Integration with other software

Integrates contact center solution with other software, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Speech analytics

Technology that analyzes telephone calls between customers and call center agents.

Omnichannel capabilities as well as campaign performance analytics and workforce optimization are also essential features. An omnichannel contact center strategy enables a company to interact with their customers through multiple channels, such as phone, email, chat, and social media. This type of strategy is important because it lets businesses meet their customers where they are. In order for a contact center to have omnichannel capabilities, it must be able to integrate with other software so that all customer interactions are in one place. This way, businesses can provide a consistent experience to their customers no matter what channel they are using

Transitioning to a cloud-based platform from a hosted platform

A cloud transition strategy is a high-level plan a business creates for adopting or moving existing on-premises or hosted systems and the data they house into the cloud.

There are few components that define a successful transition from a hosted platform to cloud-based one:

Re-hosting

Sometimes referred to as "lift and shift," re-hosting entails redeploying systems and workflows to a cloud-based hardware environment and making the appropriate changes to the cloud application's configuration.

Re-platforming

This refers to the data migration from one platform to another.

Repurchasing

This entails the selection of a new provider and the "sunsetting"of a legacy software.

Refactoring/Re-architecting

This entails defining the features, capabilities, and use cases the platform is intended to solve and designing a solution to meet these business needs.

Retiring

This refers to the general maintenance and upkeep of the new platform.

What industries use cloud call center solutions?

Any industry that has a need to regularly communicate with customers can use cloud call center solutions. Any time you contact a business to resolve an issue or get help with a problem. You are contacting their call center.

The financial services industry uses cloud call center solutions to provide customer support, conduct account recovery management, and even handle internal matters like IT.

Other industries like retail, hospitality, and teleservices utilize cloud call center solutions to orchestrate outbound campaigns, field order inquiries, and much more.

Cloud Solutions to Quickly Recover from Disasters and Ensure Business Continuity

The constraints of typical onsite call centers make them incredibly vulnerable to disasters. If a storm takes out power to the area where a physical call center is located, for example, it could be offline for hours or even weeks. Hardware could be destroyed, leaving you on the hook for hefty replacement costs.

A cloud call center is constructed in a way that's inherently protected from these threats. Geographic redundancy ensures that if one service center is taken offline, the others can step in to fill the gap. Because employees can access the network from anywhere with an internet connection, they can easily work from home-based laptops or even smartphones in the event of a disaster that hits the company's premises.

The LiveVox Cloud Call Center Approach

LiveVox helps clients work smarter and serve customers better, with more than 20 years of expertise delivering outstanding cloud contact center solutions. The LiveVox platform seamlessly integrates omnichannel communications, CRM, and workforce optimization to provide an excellent experience customers can depend on. By optimizing the agent experience with an intuitive dashboard and single view of the customer, agents are empowered to do their jobs with confidence and meet high performance standards.

LiveVox is built on data-driven innovation. With comprehensive yet accessible reporting, leaders have the business intelligence they need to make more informed decisions and provide coaching to continuously improve agent performance. Built-in risk mitigation features help you maintain compliance without complex workflows, while consent is automatically tracked at every stage of the customer journey.

We excel at helping our clients maximize their potential and future-proof their profits in an evolving business landscape. Our solutions were built to help forward-thinking organizations differentiate with a cloud-first approach while building a competitive advantage that's not only sustainable, but dynamic based on where the market goes and what your customers want next.

Still have questions about cloud contact centers? Need more technical details specific to your situation or want to see a demo firsthand? Contact us and one of our cloud experts will be in touch soon.

Cloud Call Center F.A.Q.s

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