CCaaS, or “contact center as a service”, refers to call center software that is hosted in the cloud rather than on-premise. A CCaaS solution eliminates the need for in-house servers, maintenance, and software upgrades. This, in turn, eliminates significant expenses on operations and personnel while still giving your call center access to powerful call center technology and communication channels to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Powerful contact center solutions and functionality, once accessible to only the largest enterprises and businesses, are now accessible to businesses of all sizes.
Investing in a cloud call center solution is often lower than their traditional, on-premise contact center counterparts. There are substantial savings to cost and increases in ROI that can be felt by switching to a CCaaS solution. Some benefits include:
In the customer experience industry, many businesses often get call centers and contact centers mixed up. Call centers focus on incoming and outgoing voice calls, which often severely limit how a business can communicate with it’s customers. Call centers may not be able to provide as modern and dynamic of a customer service as businesses need to adapt to the new digital age.
Contact centers are much more capable and involve numerous channels, including email, web chat, video calls, messenger apps, text messaging, and more. Contact centers offer more options for customers and provide a more dynamic customer experience, leading to higher customer satisfaction and a more modern customer experience.
Your contact center should support modern digital channels to provide the best possible customer experience. Some digital channels your contact center should support include web chat, SMS, text messaging, mobile apps, messenger apps, and video calls. These digital channels allow your business to connect with a wider audience, and allows customers to choose the channels that they want to connect with your business on, leading to a more personalized customer experience.
There are many features that your call center software should support that can improve the efficiency of your call center and improve customer satisfaction. These communication tools include:
Omnichannel and multichannel are two different types of call center platforms and can alter how your contact center performs customer interactions.
In a multichannel contact center, different communication channels are siloed and there is friction in the customer experience. There is not a single customer journey, since they need to start from the beginning when they try to connect on another channel. This disrupts the customer experience and can lead to a disjointed, negative customer journey.
An omnichannel call center platform allows customers to switch between any channels seamlessly, all while the agent is following the context of the conversation. This means when customers switch to another communication channel, they can pick up right where they left off with the agent. This creates a more personalized, seamless customer experience.
What Industry Regulations Should CCaaS Comply With?
Because call center software can be deployed in a wide variety of industries, varying from financial institutions to retail stores to healthcare providers, it is important that the call center software is secure and able to comply with the different regulations that are present in these industries.For a contact center focused on the healthcare industry, call centers need to focus on HIPAA. For a contact center focused on processing payment information, call center software needs to be compliant with standards set by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS. For call centers focused on outbound dialing, call center software needs to be compliant with regulations set by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA.Finally, all call center software should be SOC 2 compliant.
What Are Some Good KPIs to Track in Your Call Center Software Solution?
Measuring key performance indicators, or KPIs, in a call center software solution is a requirement for call centers that want to optimize performance and improve workplace efficiency, all while improving customer satisfaction. The first KPI to track in the contact center is the average time to answer. Average time to answer is a metric that evaluates the amount of time that an inbound interaction needs until it is answered by an agent. Another KPI is the average abandonment rate, which measures the number of callers that are disconnected before they can reach an agent. First call resolution, or FCR, is an important measurement that determines a call center’s ability to resolve customer issues on the first interaction. Average idle time is the idle time that an agent spends. Finally, average hold time is the amount of time that a customer is put on hold during an interaction, which plays a role in contributing to overall call length.
Improving KPIs in the call center means having an effective platform that can support omnichannel capabilities as well as advanced call center technology.
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When selecting a CCaaS call center solution, it is important to consider many factors that may make one solution much more suitable for your organization than others. Some of the important considerations to make include:
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