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The cloud brings several benefits to contact centers, but a crucial one is its ability to deliver a simpler and better operating model to what can be a very complex environment. A big example of this is the ability to sunset an expensive chunk of hardware whose time has come and gone is the PBX (News - Alert).

The PBX is a phone switch to deliver dial tone—to connect your center to the greater public switched telephone network. Especially for outbound contact centers, the PBX has always been one of a company’s first purchases when building their sites. And people typically buy more than they need considering some shops don’t use agent directories and have only a skeleton back office crew to support. Then, when a shop decides to tap into the cost efficiency of VoIP out comes the PBX sales rep again with a six-figure price tag (News - Alert) on an IP PBX (and all the maintenance and support calls that comes with it) that he/she says you need in order to upgrade your network.

It’s time to say “No, thank you.” Technology has advanced and the PBX is no longer needed and costs monthly support and maintenance, and ultimately prevents contact centers from simplifying networks and improving call routing.

Cloud switching eliminates this issue through direct access to carrier backbones. Site-based switching adds multiple layers to a contact center’s network, while cloud switching flattens those layers and delivers more flexibility. Combined with soft phones, contact centers can eliminate PBX for agents completely and tap into the benefits of VoIP/MPLS without hardware.

The private VoIP cloud is a fundamentally different approach to the way technology is deployed within the call center. LiveVox (News - Alert), a provider of cloud contact center solutions, leveraged mature IP standards to create a multi-carrier IP/MPLS mesh for voice and data transport that eliminates site-based switching requirements.

Cloud-based switching delivers network-level presence, which enables more intelligent routing and better data transfers to improve service level metrics, all without the need to provision site-premised switches. It enables contact centers to more seamlessly execute multi-site call routing with real-time visibility into agent presence at all locations. Site-to-site voice and data transfers and screen pops are all delivered without reliance on site-premised PBXs or network routing “master node” hardware.