At this point in our society, nearly every business uses cloud-based software on some level. You’ve undoubtedly experienced its many benefits: automatic updates, zero downtime, digital workspaces, the ability to promote remote work, flexibility, and more. Still, when it comes to your call center, tradition can have a pretty strong hold. Many of the concerns some have with switching away from their on-premise customer service hub are actually some of the strongest cloud contact center benefits. Here are seven of the strongest reasons you’ll want to switch to a cloud-based call center — completely.
Reduce Your Costs with a Cloud-Based Call Center
This benefit is realized instantly and is the most obvious. When you have an on-premise call center, you have expensive associated costs. From the physical building investment to the technology upgrades and maintenance, from building security to staffing needs, keeping the lights on becomes costly — literally. There’s no need to heat or cool a cloud-based call center, nor do you need to insure it. When new communication forms arise, cloud-based call center solutions get you up to speed fast, easily, and cost-effectively.
Scalability is Turnkey in Cloud-Based Call Centers
One of the hallmark benefits of the cloud and cloud-based call center solutions is scalability. In a traditional call center, when your business needs to increase its customer service presence, you need to hire and train more staff, buy equipment, and find space to house it all. For businesses with seasonal changes, such as retailers, this means valuable resources aren’t being used during slower times. Not so with a cloud-based call center.
There are also times when a business needs to scale on-demand in response to unexpected events. Cloud-based contact center solutions leverage cloud infrastructure to increase or decrease your IT resources as you need them when you need them. You’ll have access to unlimited and flexible data storage capacity, processing power, and networking capabilities. All at the press of a button.
Leverage Greater Security with Call Centers
Oftentimes, this is one of the bigger hesitations in moving a call center entirely to the cloud. At first glance, it seems a cloud-based contact center would have more security risks, but it’s not true. Protecting personal information is non-negotiable, which is why our solutions can be PCI, TCPA, SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant.
Disaster recovery and business continuity plans are built into your Bright Pattern solution. Every minute your business is offline costs you money. When there’s a disaster on-premise, it could take weeks or months to rebuild. When it’s in the cloud, with global redundancies, it could take hours.
Offer Seamless Omnichannel Communications
Customers expect to be able to contact a business in their preferred method. An omnichannel cloud-based contact center gives you and your customers the ability to communicate across all channels: text, email, voice, social media, video, live chat, and web chat, including messenger apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. When a new communication method comes out, a cloud-based call center can adapt much quicker than an on-premise system.
When your contact center is completely in the cloud, you can do more than simply offer every channel. You can make it seamless. Let’s say, for example, someone initially contacts your business via web chat. The AI-powered bot (more on this next) efficiently routes the customer to an agent, who then calls and picks up the conversation right where it was left off.
Empower Customers through Artificial Intelligence
With AI-powered cloud-based call center solutions, your ability to create efficient customer service skyrockets. One of the most frustrating experiences for an angry customer is a long wait time. If the customer wasn’t angry when they first contacted you, making them wait a long time will make them angry. Through speech recognition and voice recognition, artificial intelligence authenticates customers quickly to decrease wait times. Virtual agents, virtual assistants, chatbots, and interactive voice response (IVRs) all help customers get the service they need as fast as possible.
As customers are empowered to find answers to basic questions themselves, agents are free to focus on more skilled assignments. They’re more satisfied with the day-to-day responsibilities, which improves morale and leads to decreased turnover. Modernizing your call center through advanced cognitive technologies, such as AI, bots, and Natural Language Understanding — combined with a human touch — makes your customer experience the best it can be.
Transform Your CX with Powerful Integrations
Not only can your agents provide seamless transitions between communication channels but also holistic overviews. When your cloud center call solution can integrate with your CRM, you’ve truly leveled up your customer experience. Bright Pattern integrates with Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow, Oracle Service Cloud, Hubspot and Zoso.
You’ve already reduced wait times, thanks to the technologies we discussed. Now you’re saving them the hassle and frustration that comes with having to repeat themselves multiple times. What’s more is that because the agent can see the entire customer journey, they’re able to cross-sell and upsell while solving whatever challenge the customer is facing. Imagine turning your cloud-based contact center into a revenue-driving center — it can be done.
Proactively Adjust Thanks to Unified Reports
When your entire contact center is in the cloud, with the right tools, managers can see everything. They can measure all communications across all channels. Through AI, agents can be assisted while on the call, and managers can be flagged when there’s trouble. Your business can set key performance indicators based on channel, agent, subject, etc. Through comprehensive reporting and analysis, you’ll know which automations are a priority and how to find and fix any trouble spots. You’ll have insights into training and productivity opportunities.
The (Cloud-Based) Bottom Line
Giving your customers an efficient, productive, and personalized experience can only really happen in a fully cloud-based contact center that offers omnichannel capabilities. It’s why Bright Pattern specializes in this type of service. It’s in the combination of all these benefits that the value of cloud-based call center solutions is found. When you continue to have one foot on land, you’re not truly sailing the seas. The same is true here. When you continue to have an on-premise location, you may see some of these benefits, but not all. In a cloud-based solution, such as Bright Pattern’s, organizations of all sizes can leverage this technology and actually save time, money and resources while doing it.
