Many contact center organizations have switched to cloud-based solutions in recent years, and the process is generally undertaken for a few very important reasons: cost and speed of implementation. A cloud-based solution can be up and running in days instead of months (or even years), and companies pay for it on a monthly subscription basis (meaning that the solution’s costs are switched from the capital expenses side of the balance sheet to the operating expenses side). The nature of cloud-based solutions means that companies pay for only what they use, so there are no licenses gathering dust and wasting money during slow seasons in the contact center.

But while cost and convenience may be the primary reasons contact centers choose cloud-based solutions, those that have done so have found that the model opens up a whole host of benefits that relate to the quality of the customer service experience.

According to a recent Constellation Research report, “Cloud Customer Service Delivers High Value,” customer support grows in complexity as new demands for services and expanding customer expectations increase in magnitude. A cloud-based solution becomes an effective means to deliver differentiated services quickly and provides greater flexibility for meeting customer demands.  The innate features of a cloud-based solution allow companies to improve current operations, support emerging social and mobile channels, and deliver a superior customer experience, according to the report’s authors.

The ability to boost the quality of customer service while lowering costs is one of the major benefits of a cloud-based solution. Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) analyst Brendan Read, in a recent guest blog post for virtual contact center solutions provider Five9 (News - Alert), writes that the place where high-quality service and profitability meet in the contact center can be termed “the virtuous intersection.”

“Companies are facing rising demand with the slowly rebounding economy, which puts pressure on them to ensure that there are enough contact center agents to handle customers,” writes Read. “But at the same time they face stiffening competition that keeps prices down, yet also forces service quality, and costs, up. Helping to drive this market environment is that the customers themselves are empowered and knowledgeable, they research firms on the Internet, particularly on social media, and they know their worth. Consequently they have high expectations from companies as to price, quality, and above all, service.”

Cloud-based solutions typically have a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than premise based solutions. Because there is little upfront capital necessary and costs can be handled on a monthly subscription basis, allowing contact centers to pay for only what they need, it’s a money-saving model. (It also means that companies don’t need to maintain in-house IT staff to cope with the solution.) At the same time, a cloud-based solution offers unprecedented flexibility – allowing it to be used by remote and home-based agents and administered remotely – and a robust feature set that can be tailored to a company’s needs (that might not be available to a smaller or medium-sized company in a premises-based solution because of cost prohibitions).

In the cloud, the smart customer-facing organization can accomplish two seemingly counter-intuitive goals: keep costs under control and stay in budget, while boosting the quality of customer service and taking better charge of the customer experience. It’s truly a “best of both worlds” scenario that smart companies today are finding very compelling.