Success in the call center used to be gauged by how quickly agents could answer telephone calls and how fast they could solve a customer’s problem or finish the transaction. Average handle time (AHT) was the metric most worshipped, and keeping it short often got in the way of providing the best quality service to the customer.

Today, the name of the game is “customer engagement,” and it goes far past simply answering calls quickly. It involves using every contact with a customer, regardless of channel, as an opportunity to further the customer relationship and learn from it to improve operations. The old style contact center – a bunch of premise-based technologies cobbled together into a kind of Frankenstein whole – simply isn’t equipped for this new goal of customer engagement.

Customers today engage with us in many ways. While the telephone is still the most common, nearly all customers use other media as well, including e-mail, chat, self-service, message boards, Web forms and even social media and mobile apps. Since customer engagement cannot be attained by operating these media independent of one another, the expectation is that the smart, successful call center today possesses a unified solution that allows for a 360-degree view of the customer regardless of contact or channel.

This is where the cloud has proved to be so valuable. More and more companies are moving their call centers into the cloud, deploying virtualized contact center software in order to take advantage of the benefits of the model, which include more flexibility, better integration, little to no upfront capital and the ability to pay for only what the call center requires.

To help contact center executives and managers better understand what the cloud can do for them, contact center solutions provider Genesys (News - Alert) will present a Web event entitled, “The Power of the Cloud Call Center: Five Tips You Need to Know Now.” The event, which will take place on Tuesday, Aug. 6 at 2 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. PDT), will help attendees understand how a cloud based solution can help them improve agent efficiency, save money and reduce operational costs while at the same time creating a positive customer experience.

For more information or to register, visit TMCnet here.