Moving to the cloud: 60% of contact centres report higher employee satisfaction

Moving to a cloud contact centre offers many advantages over traditional on-premise solutions. These benefits are reflected in increased efficiency, reduced costs, greater flexibility and scalability for businesses of all sizes. With cloud-based solutions, companies can quickly adapt to a changing business environment while improving the customer experience by leveraging process automation. 

Improved customer experience

Quality customer service is essential to the success of any business, and a cloud contact center offers a number of benefits that directly contribute to an improved CX (Customer Experience). On the other hand, long wait times, endless automated IVR (Interactive Voice Response System) voice menus and impersonal communication can lead to negative customer perceptions of your brand. This can have a direct impact on the financial performance of the business. Studies show that up to 45% of customers may permanently abandon a brand after an impersonal experience. Process automation, including the use of chatbots and voicebots, can significantly reduce wait times and improve the overall customer experience.

Traditional contact center systems are often unable to keep up with changing customer expectations, contributing to negative interactions. On the other hand, cloud-based contact center software provides businesses with the tools to anticipate customer needs and subsequently deliver superior service.

Flexibility and scalability

Moving to cloud contact centres provides organisations with increased flexibility and scalability, which is one of the main reasons why companies choose to migrate their contact centres to the cloud. These cloud-based solutions make it easy to add or remove jobs, introduce new communication channels, or adjust configurations in real-time without the need for capital expenditures or hardware upgrades. In this way, they support flexible automation and facilitate dynamic response to business needs.

This agility enables businesses to respond quickly to changing market trends and customer needs, allowing them to scale their operations efficiently to meet current needs. Cloud contact centers eliminate geographic and hardware limitations, provide complete remote access to communication channels and tools from any device, and typically require no hardware or software installation or integration.

According to recent statistics, the contact center industry is rapidly adapting and growing due to cloud technologies and digitalization.

• 75% of contact centers are already in the cloud, allowing them to be more business and strategy oriented.
• Approximately 60% of contact centers report that the cloud has increased their employee engagement and satisfaction.
• The 75% of companies that have moved to the cloud are more likely to trust new and innovative tools such as AI.

Disaster Recovery (DR)

Traditional call centres that use systems located in the same buildings struggle to easily expand or adapt, which is key to fast recovery after an outage. To do this, it would have to spend a lot of money buying backup equipment. This shortcoming could lead to extended outages during which your company would be offline for days, weeks, or even longer.

By utilizing a cloud contact center - with infrastructure and data located in a remote data center - your business can benefit from excellent business continuity. Cloud solutions are accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, meaning data can be easily accessed from smartphones, laptops, tablets or desktops.

Cloud-based disaster recovery (DRaaS) solutions offer a number of advantages over traditional on-premise solutions. Cloud DR solutions:

• are generally easy to execute,
• have lower upfront costs,
• flexible and scalable,
• provide fast data recovery
• and enable scheduled testing that meets governance and compliance requirements.

On-premise solutions, on the other hand, offer greater control, lower latency and compatibility with custom applications, but require significant investment in hardware, software and technical staff. With a cloud-based disaster recovery solution, organizations can reduce costs and simplify the disaster recovery process. However, it is important that organizations consider potential challenges when making the choice, such as reliance on internet connectivity and trust in third parties to ensure data security.

The advantages and disadvantages of both approaches need to be carefully weighed when choosing between cloud and traditional on-premise solutions for disaster recovery and business continuity. Each company should consider its specific needs, security and compliance requirements, and financial capabilities to select the most appropriate solution.

Reduction of capital and operating costs

Reducing capital and operating costs is the biggest advantage of moving to a CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) model. This model allows businesses to avoid high upfront investments in hardware, such as servers and phone systems, which need to be regularly upgraded for efficient operation.

The service provider takes care of maintenance and software updates, which means contact centres always have access to the latest technology at no extra cost.

Pay-as-you-go model

CCaaS also offers flexibility and cost control through a pay-as-you-go model, which means that call centres only pay for the services they actually use. This can be more cost-effective than investing in a solution with high upfront costs. This model makes it quick and easy to adapt resources to changing business requirements, adding or removing agents based on call volume, helping to avoid the cost of over- or under-staffing.

According to a study conducted by Tata Communications, CCaaS provides several key benefits for enterprises, including ease of setup, savings on IT support, expensive hardware and overall energy costs. Additionally, cloud contact centers do not own hardware that depreciates over time, and the software in the cloud is constantly updated to prevent depreciation.

Strong security and compliance

Cloud contact centres offer robust security solutions that protect customer information and data. Deploying the latest security measures and complying with privacy regulations is key to protecting sensitive information, but for some organizations this can be costly and time-consuming.

Maintaining strong physical security across multiple systems in place is neither practical nor cost-effective. Housing all customer data in secure data centers, managed by highly skilled on-site specialists, provides companies with better security measures to protect their data.

What are the current statistics and security challenges?

According to Experts Insights, the top security threats in the cloud include misconfiguration, account misuse and exploitation of vulnerabilities. The most common configuration errors include:

• Unsecured data backups (23%),
• Insufficiently secure data transfer (21%)
• and lack of monitoring (20%).

In addition, nearly 93% of organizations are concerned that human error can lead to inadvertent data exposure. Also according to a recent survey:

• 80% of companies have experienced at least one cloud security incident in the last year
• 27% of organizations have experienced a security incident in the public cloud.
• In addition, 88% of data breaches in the cloud are caused by human error.

Advanced features and AI integration

By integrating all data into a centralized cloud environment, or a system of interconnected clouds, businesses not only gain the ability to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automate operations and predictive analytics to identify opportunities for improvement and strategic planning, but also maintain the flexibility and scalability inherent in cloud solutions.

While AI and ML implementation is technically possible in traditional on-premise infrastructures, cloud platforms offer additional benefits such as easier access to advanced analytics tools, faster deployment of new applications and technologies without requiring major hardware investments, and greater flexibility to scale resources to meet current needs. These aspects make cloud solutions attractive to companies looking to maximize the efficiency and innovation potential of their operations.

The integration of AI in enterprises is gaining importance and bringing significant benefits. McKinsey's survey showed that although many organizations have already started using generative AI, only 21% of those that have adopted AI have established policies for employee use of these technologies. For its part, CompTIA reports that 91.5% of leading enterprises are investing in AI on an ongoing basis.

According to current statistics and predictions for 2024 , artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to fundamentally change the way business is conducted.

• Approximately 73% of US companies have already adopted AI in some areas of their business,
• More than half of the companies surveyed (54%) have implemented generative AI in some areas of their business.

Salesforce' s 2024 statistics further state that 47% of respondents expect generative AI to help them better automate customer service communications, and 46% believe it will be useful in analyzing service data. These expectations suggest significant potential for improving customer experience and increasing revenue.

Current trends in chatbots and voicebots

A significant shift towards more advanced and personalised interactions with users is expected. In the area of chatbots, large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 are expected to play a key role, enabling chatbots to access real online information and greatly expanding their capabilities.

In addition, local hosting of Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots is expected to be expanded for enhanced data security and better customization. Chatbots will also be able to analyze user sentiment and context, allowing them to make better decisions about whether to handle a query themselves or pass it on to a human agent.

According to a survey conducted by Tidio, nearly 88% of customers have had at least one conversation with a chatbot in the past year, and had a positive experience. Chatbots are increasingly recognized as key tools in customer support and are also finding their way into marketing and human resources.

In marketing, for example, they can automate responses to FAQs, qualify leads or support campaigns. In human resources, they can facilitate the recruitment process, answer employee queries or collect feedback. These applications make chatbots an indispensable part of effective strategies in these industries.

How to choose the right contact centre

When choosing the right cloud contact centre provider, it's important to consider several key factors that will affect the efficiency and effectiveness of your customer support. Here is a summary of the latest information and recommendations:

• Understanding your organization's needs: It's important to be clear about what services and features you expect from a cloud contact center. Consider whether you will focus on customer support, help desk, sales or other types of client communication.
• Security and compliance: choose a provider that meets the most stringent security protocols and can adapt to your industry-specific regulations.
• Excellent customer support: Make sure the provider you choose offers quality customer support and training to ensure smooth use of the service.
• High connection quality: It is important that the provider has a stable and secure connection, ensuring that your calls are not dropped or lost.
• Omni-channel communication: choose a provider that allows communication across multiple channels (phone, email, chat, etc.) from a single user interface.
• Advanced productivity features: look for a provider that offers automation of routine tasks, advanced call routing, and other smart features.
• Real-world analytics and reporting: choose a service that offers advanced analytics tools and reports to gain a deeper understanding of your team's performance and customer satisfaction.

Cloud services for contact centers from Algotech

Algotech offers an innovative solution for contact centers - AlgoCC, which is based on the reliable platform of Avaya, the market leader in telephony and contact centers. AlgoCC is designed to meet your company's specific requirements for communication and customer interaction, while providing a high level of security and operational efficiency. Contact us and we will be happy to help you with everything.