Hosted contact centers offer a wealth of benefits to communications outposts that can help them remain nimble and effective even as they grow. The reduction of operational cost, removal of startup cost, and ability to expand software access as the need arises mean that with a hosted contact center managers can remain vigilant on the tasks that require their attention-- namely offering top notch customer service.

In addition to these advantages, cloud based technology can also allow call centers to seamlessly integrate diffused workforces. This helps them to increase the number of expert representatives on the phone and in some cases totally eliminate the need to run a facility of any kind.

In a September 2009, a report by the Aberdeen (News - Alert) group made reference to this as possibly the strongest advantage of hosted solutions.“We discovered that a new disruptive technology has changed the nature of traditional contact center outsourcing: cloud services,” the report said. The company predicted the impact of hosted solution on the contact center manager would be an effective blurring of the lines between in-sourcing and out-sourcing.

 In a follow up report this year, the Aberdeen group confirmed this suspicion they posed in 2009’s report saying, “The top business drivers contact center managers are contending with is the need to reduce costs and enhance competitiveness. Their customers increasingly want to interact with contact centers at the time and in the manner of their choosing.” The only way to do both of these things in a simultaneous fashion is to move to a hosted solution.

Five9 (News - Alert) offers a full suite of hosted call center solution that can take the place of nearly any premise based utility. By incorporating a cloud based options your communications strategy can take a new angle in helping customers by using both internal and external agents on one unified system. Hosted solutions allow managers to eliminate the need for physical expansions, reduce the costs associated with office maintenance while outfitting strategic agents globally to handle customer service inquiries at all times.

Aberdeen’s report is available for free download: Here

Chris DiMarco is a Web 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 @cpdimarco.

Edited by Rich Steeves