Today, many contact centers are finding a plethora of benefits by switching over to cloud-based solutions. Often initially attracted by cost savings on up-front capital investment and IT resources, these organizations find – as they take on more cloud-based applications – that the model offers benefits from human resources to customer engagement to data analytics.

While the “why” questions have essentially been answered for cloud-based contact center solutions, some contact center organizations are still struggling with the how. From the narrow selection of cloud-based contact center solutions vendors 10 years ago, the marketplace has burgeoned into a multibillion dollar endeavor, and there is a dizzying array of choices available to companies interested in putting their contact centers into the cloud. One of the most important things for a contact center to do, according to Scott Welch, EVP of Cloud Operations for Five9 (News - Alert), in a recent blog post, is to establish trust with a vendor.

“When companies trust their cloud vendor to shoulder the responsibility of running their enterprise applications, the expectation is that the vendor can do it better than the business can do themselves,” he wrote. “This means cloud vendors need to have the right team, technology, process and procedures in place to provide continuous access and meet service level agreements.”

Since a cloud-based contact center needs to be a living, breathing, evolving thing, it’s critical to have a robust process for change management in place, according to Welch.

“There is a direct correlation between the maturity of the change management processes and the service availability numbers,” he wrote. “It is equally important to learn from mistakes, and ensure that processes evolve to avoid errors made in the past.”

It’s also vital to have robust communications between the contact center’s technology people and the individuals who manage the account at the cloud vendor.  These people will work together closely and be in contact almost daily. A vendor with a service-oriented approach is vital to building this collaborative relationship. Before you choose a vendor, ensure that you understand how you will communicate with that vendor, when they will make themselves available, how often you will receive updates and where you can turn at any hour or the day for resolution to a problem or question. Talking to other customers can help: you don’t want to be stuck with a vendor who offers an apology and a call recording when you try to contact them for help.

It’s crucial for a cloud services provider to keep the customers at the top of mind, according to Welch.

“As a service provider with a cloud delivery model, it’s important to recognize that you are dealing with hardware, software and humans,” he wrote. “All three will fail at some point in their lifecycle. The difference is the delivery of fault tolerance architecture with appropriate mitigation plans that reduce, minimize or eliminate customer impact when they fail.”