Call Center Management Featured Article
2015 Will Represent Another Year of Strong Growth for Cloud Contact Centers
It’s that time when we begin looking back at the year past and looking forward to the year ahead. While it’s popular to spot trends for the year ahead at this time, it’s also critical to recognize a more long-term movement that is currently progressing: the increasing movement of call center solutions (as well as many other applications) to the cloud.
Cloud contact centers are growing exponentially. From very small “experimental” numbers in 2008, the number of cloud call center implementations has skyrocketed, with the number of seats growing 32.5 percent in 2012 and 12.8 percent in 2013. The number of cloud-based contact center seats has been predicted to grow by 20 percent in 2014 and 2015, 18 percent in 2016 and 2017, and 16 percent in 2018, according to DMG Consulting
In a recent blog post, Monet Software CEO Chuck Ciarlo examines the current state of cloud-based contact center solutions and cited data from DMG that evaluated the performance of eight leading and contending cloud vendors found that the majority (61.5 percent) of satisfaction scores fell into the “highly satisfied” range for in all 12 major categories surveyed. In simple terms, companies that implement cloud-based contact center solutions are finding a high level of value with them.
“The potential in this system for contact centers and other types of businesses was immediately apparent,” wrote Ciarlo. “Cloud computing represented a major sea change in the design, development and deployment of technology, through a pay-as-you-go business model that transformed the future of computing, even as it was already evolving through the emergence of mobile platforms.”
As more and more companies educate themselves about the benefits of the cloud -- including increased flexibility in resource management, lower costs, easier access to upgrades, less burden on internal IT resources, and improved automation, scalability and operational efficiency – they are able to leverage the benefits the model brings them, such as distributed contact centers, 24-hour-a-day coverage, the use of home-based agents, disaster recovery and more.
“The switch from an on-premise solution to a cloud solution at a contact center is not the equivalent of a company switching from one hardware provider to another,” wrote Ciaro. “Instead, this is a fundamental shift in IT services delivery, which can seem daunting to businesses that have utilized the same systems for decades.”
But as more contact centers and their managers realize the benefits offered to them by the cloud, the new paradigm will seem less daunting and more of an opportunity for growth.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi