The contact center has become the inflection point for digital transformation in the enterprise. Companies must now compete by delivering innovative, flawless customer experiences. To accomplish this, the vast majority of enterprises are moving their contact centers to the cloud. Nearly half of the world’s contact centers have deployed cloud-based solutions and an additional third are in the process, according to IDC.
I recently asked CX experts for their view on cloud migrations.
“What are the drivers of migrating contact centers to the cloud?”
Joe Eisner
Global Lead, Partners, Amazon Connect, AWS
Businesses of all sizes want the most reliable, secure and advanced contact center solutions, coupled with ease of configuration/integration, all at the most affordable price point possible. Cloud contact centers, particularly Amazon Connect, provide businesses with a service that incorporates and embraces all of these characteristics.
A consumption-based pricing model, such as that offered by Amazon Connect, would not be practical or even possible in the legacy premise contact center world.
Of equal importance, the cloud enables a much more rapid pace of innovation than legacy premise platforms can provide; frequently introduced new features and capabilities and third-party integrations, such as Cyara, can be layered into an existing deployment at a much faster and more efficient pace.
Perhaps most prevalent, from the standpoint of impact on existing customer service processes, is the advent of AI/ML services such as those offered by AWS (LEX, Personalize, Comprehend, Transcribe, Translate)—these services empower businesses to automate routine interactions using LEX voice chatbots, with often dramatic reductions in Average Handling Times, and increases in both agent and customer satisfaction. LEX is one example of such a service that would be difficult, if not impossible to implement, in a premise-only environment.
Steve Nuttall
Director of CX Research at Fifth Quadrant
Businesses are undergoing a process of digital transformation which is driven by customer demand for a more personalized, seamless and predictive customer experience, combined with internal pressure to reduce operating costs. To achieve these outcomes, the process of digital transformation often starts with shifting the main customer interaction systems, including the contact centre, to the cloud.
The feedback from Australian users of hosted cloud contact centre solutions indicates compelling benefits: these include new functionality, reduced operating costs, improved reliability and improved systems integration. Taken together these benefits help organisations future proof their technology infrastructure and increase their competitive advantage. A contact centre cloud migration project should therefore start with considerations around corporate strategy and risk, before considering the technical aspects.
Art Schoeller
Vice President, Principal Analyst serving Application Development & Delivery Professionals at Forrester Research, Inc.
Cloud contact center solutions need to be agile. This means enterprises will then be able to manage multiple sites as one, have flexibility for capacity, incorporate outsourced agents, stream updates and upgrades, and experiment with new technology in a risk-mitigated manner.
Transitioning contact center technology to the cloud helps companies:
- Rapidly deliver critical capabilities. The cost and complexity of trying new contact flows with legacy on-premises systems would cause many firms to simply forgo the effort. A flexible, cloud-based solution allows customer service leaders to trial and implement new, more efficient contact flows for seamless cross-channel interactions.
- Increase flexibility and scale of operations as needed. Forty-one percent of technology decision makers think that call volumes will increase and 39% expect headcount to rise. Whereas investment in on-prem systems requires buying for peak capacity needs, CCaaS on-demand including support for flexible staffing models like work-at-home and gig economy.
- Lay the foundation for a cognitive contact center. In the future, artificial intelligence (AI) will enhance a wide range of existing contact center applications. Agents will rely on AI for more intelligent desktops, quality assurance teams will leverage AI in agent evaluations and coaching, and workforce managers will rely on AI to anticipate intraday traffic spikes.
— Art Schoeller with Daniel Hong, Sarah Dawson, Peggy Dostie, Now Tech: Cloud Contact Center Providers, Q3 2018, Forrester, August 10, 2018
