• Contact Center Outsourcing
• Articles

Why the Cloud Call Center Trumps its Premise-Based Predecessor

By Chris DiMarco, TMCnet Managing Editor

In the call center there is one ultimately important metric for tracking success: customer experience. Meeting queue requirements, call times, and abandonment rates don’t mean anything if your customers are getting off the phone disinterested and dissatisfied with their experience. So what’s the quickest way to get back to your roots in the call center? It might be finding a new call center technology strategy.

When you talk about call center technologies there are two paths you can take. Premise-based and cloud options. While the cloud option is a recent development in the call center space, it’s redefining what is possible in the call center, offering more flexibility and scalability than ever before. But what’s wrong with the old way of doing things?

Premise-based contact centers rely on hardware, software and a dedicated team to maintain them; this means more investment in service and the personnel to keep those services running. With this model, your company is entirely responsible for the infrastructure that supports the call center and hardware upgrades, maintenance, and replacement is all par for the course. Ever work somewhere with that ominously humming server room that the IT staff is always running worriedly in and out of? That’s the major problem with the premise-based model.

Cloud call center solutions are managed by service providers, so there is no hardware or software maintenance on your side. Plus, cloud call center software suites have all of the technologies you’d typically find in a premise based call center, but allow you to add service as needed. Your agents connect to the call center through a sufficiently connected PC work station and have access to the entire standard panel of tools they’re used to.

When you’re not worrying so much about juggling different interfaces, and technology needs, you have more time to concentrate on what really matters; satisfying the customer every time. Cloud options allow that. Cloud call centers streamline your technology needs and bring the customer back into focus.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.

Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.

Chris DiMarco is a Managing Editor for TMCnet. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert) Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page. Follow him on Twitter (News - Alert) @cpdimarco.

Edited by Rich Steeves