Call centers are a great way for companies to make person-to-person contact with consumers in this time of online customer service. Contact center technology makes personal interaction possible.
Consumers still like talking to someone on the phone as a means of receiving individual attention. The 2019 State of global customer service report found that 39% of respondents prefer phone or voice as a customer service channel, making it the highest-ranking channel.
Organizations need to manage and maintain complex telephony systems to keep their contact centers running. In this time of rising customer experience expectations, cloud contact center has become the gold standard.
Here are 4 reasons why your company should move its contact center to the cloud:
1) Increased scalability
Traditional call centers lack scalability. When customer service demands increase, a company must deploy additional phones and lines. This is expensive and takes time. Not only that, but if traffic decreases, your company is stuck with all the extra equipment.
As with any cloud service, cloud contact center can be scaled up or down depending on your business needs. Additional call center resources can be accessed immediately and then scaled back when and if they become unnecessary.
2) Cost savings
Companies that switch to cloud for contact center eliminate capital expenditures while also saving on operating costs. Cloud Contact Center frees companies from needing to purchase phone systems. Instead, the cloud provider equips the contact center with feature-rich handsets. The provider performs all necessary upgrades and maintenance, reducing ongoing operating costs for the call center.
Using cloud for contact center means you pay only for what you need through a monthly subscription charge. Your business doesn’t need to worry about being charged for overages or getting hit with surprise repair costs.
3) Staying current
Not only do cloud contact center providers perform necessary equipment updates, but the technology makes it easy to add the latest communications channels.
Application programming interfaces (APIs) can be used to add new channels, such as instant messaging, social messaging, or web-based chat and conferencing. This way your business can communicate with customers through their favorite channels as their preferences change.
4) Improving reliability
According to the State of global customer service report, 20% of customers rank difficulty or inability to reach a live agent as the most frustrating aspect of customer service. For this reason, contact centers need to maintain high levels of availability. Customers want to buy products, request services, and have their questions answered at any time of day or night.
The right cloud partner will provide redundancy to keep systems up and running. Companies should look for a cloud provider that supports cloud contact center with a high-speed, low-latency network to ensure uninterrupted service.
Enhancing the User Experience
The cloud serves as a hub for all outbound and inbound calls in a contact center. With cloud, companies can also leverage data analytics for greater efficiency and a truly personal customer experience. Calls can be routed automatically to reach the correct agent or be triaged based on the importance of the call.
Always a leader in connectivity for the Northeast, FirstLight has augmented our Cloud Communications offerings with Cloud Contact Center. We have teamed up with Telax to offer our clients enhanced customer services operations. Our Cloud Contact Center delivers interactive voice response, omni-channel routing, dynamic notifications, and optimized agent scheduling, all supported by our fiber optic network.
See Cloud Contact Center in action. Request a Contact Center Demo from FirstLight today.
