While many companies today are switching to cloud-based solutions in an attempt to save on upfront capital costs, there are many more reasons why the move is beneficial, particularly in the contact center. Some of them involve more hidden costs, and others involve improvements to the customer relationship and the ability of managers to monitor and alter operations as required.

In a recent blog post, cloud-based contact center solutions provider TCN, based in Utah, discusses some of these less obvious advantages. One of them is a company’s ability to scale back on internal IT resources with the launch of a cloud-based system.

“A premise-based call center requires an extensive amount of income to establish and operate,” wrote TCN. “If you operate a premise-based call center, such as one that uses a PBX (News - Alert) system, the amount of capital required to buy the necessary hardware and hire an IT team can be staggering. Using a cloud-based system will relieve that burden on both counts.”

Another advantage many contact centers find with the move to a cloud-based solution is the ability to have workers logged in from anywhere: from home, from satellite offices or even from the road with mobile connections to the platform. This allows companies to engage more flexible contact center models, such as home-based agents, which can save companies money and boost the quality of employees they can hire. This also helps call centers with disaster recovery in the event of an outage or a storm.

“One example of cloud-based flexibility advantages can be found in the ability to retain employees, even if they move or visit another part of the world or sometimes work from home,” wrote TCN. “Employees can work from anywhere with the right call center software in place!”

In addition, many cloud-based call center software systems have more to offer when it comes to intelligent call monitoring features. Monitoring and alerts on premise-based systems are often cumbersome, delayed and don’t allow managers to take action in real-time to solve problems. Recording calls with premise-based systems can be expensive and difficult to store, but with cloud-based solutions, recording is flexible and calls can be stored off-site at the solution provider’s secure data center. Finally, for contact centers where compliance is an issue – do-not-call list maintenance, list scrubbing and call abandonment regulations – cloud-based solutions often come with build-in features to ensure that contact centers are remaining on the right side of the rules.