At this point, everyone who runs, manages or is even tangential to the call center knows the upside of cloud-based contact center solutions: they offer flexibility, pay-for-what-you-use pricing, little upfront capital requirements, less IT administration, mobile and remote management, home-agent working, disaster recovery and more. But there may be another benefit to some call center organizations: they offer choices when it comes to vendors.
A new report from analyst group ContactBabel (News - Alert) entitled, “The Inner Circle Guide to Cloud-Based Contact Centre Solutions” examined the benefits and the barriers of cloud-based contact centers versus conventional contact center platforms that use equipment on the customer's premises. Examining the use of cloud services, the report demonstrates how today’s cloud-based contact centers provide a way to break the old cycle of capital expenses (capex), licenses, maintenance and renewals of existing solutions, a cycle that was formerly controlled by only a few large software companies.
The report found that that while large enterprises with calls centers with predictable inbound call patterns and with all or the majority of staff based at one site were better suited to conventional, premise-based contact center model, many other types of company – small to medium-sized business, for starters -- were likely to gain greater commercial and operational advantages from a cloud-based solution.
The report concluded the types of companies best suited to a cloud-based solution included those that:
- Have fluctuating call volumes from customers, particularly because of seasonal demand or the nature of the product/service offered
- Are comprised of multiple sites and the need to maximize skills across sites
- Have the ability for people to work from home or remotely
- Have disaster recovery built-in
- Are fast-growing organization, whether that is because of organic business development or through mergers and acquisitions
- Are seeking a reduction of capital expenditure budgets in favor of operational expenditure; and
- Are pursuing a competitive edge through innovation, particularly in frontline customer service.
"Moving to the cloud is not necessarily right for every business but these characteristics are typical of firms that will consider migrating to Cloud-based contact center solutions and could reap the rewards of doing so, said Steve Morrell, principal analyst at ContactBabel in a release. “While some businesses may be suited to moving all customer service agents to a Cloud-based platform, others are starting to see the cloud as a smart addition to their commercial armory. As ingrained cultural and technical inhibitors to outsourcing enterprise IT are broken, and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms move to the cloud, contact center functionality is also making the transition," he added.
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Edited by Brooke Neuman