Cloud contact center migration can be a complex and challenging journey. Businesses that choose to follow this path can gain many benefits. Those that don’t, might not. According to CX Today, the CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) space will grow to $19.8 billion by 2031, putting it on a 16.8% annual growth rate.
What is cloud contact center migration?
All system changes including migration should be approached with care as key business processes may change significantly. At the very least, processes face some level of uncertainty that has the potential to impact on customer experiences.
Migration is the delicate process of moving data, systems or software from one environment to another. There are varying degrees of difficulty depending on the scope of change. In the case of CCaaS migrations, businesses often look for more than simply a move from on-premise to a cloud computing environment and new functionalities that enhance the customer journey may form much of the justification for the change.
Why migrate to the cloud?
Contact center management are often looking to connect regional centers and to partner with BPOs. Additionally, the post-pandemic environment demands more home-working and workforce flexibility.
Many note multisite capacity and capabilities as the greatest benefit of cloud-based contact center solutions. Solutions also scale more easily and cost effectively. Any organization that is growing, or experiences short-term fluctuation in demand, will appreciate the inherent flexibility.
Sizing up the job
If you’re considering CCaaS, you must clearly understand your goals and objectives. How will you measure the success of a cloud contact center migration project if you proceed?
Research is critical. You will need to know what key features of the current solution are critical to your processes. Explore solutions from the leading CCaaS providers and make sure that potential cloud contact center solutions are compatible with your current processes. Secondly, identify what added features and benefits are available to enhance and grow these.
Consider the added benefits and the costs and effort required to implement the change. Many businesses are now finding a compelling case to embark on a CCaaS migration. And it is likely you too will see a positive cost-benefit analysis. It is also likely you will see the potential for cloud solutions to secure the future of your customer engagement processes.
Planning change
Where problems arise with a CCaaS migration, poor planning is often the cause. There are many complexities to changing mission-critical systems and this is why careful analysis and planning needs to be applied.
In the absence of careful planning, unanticipated issues will arise, increasing risks of configuration issues, interoperability problems and security concerns. Costs can easily escalate.
Good planning will use a structured approach as can be found in the Project Management Institute, PRINCE2, and others. Additionally, involvement of key stakeholders and subject matter experts is important to secure the customer journey and to achieve the goals and objectives of the change.
A project plan or migration plan serves as a roadmap for change. It identifies the starting point, the ultimate destination, and the milestones of progress required along the way. It serves as a tool for clarifying resource requirements. The plan also supports clear communication within the organization and provides a lens for monitoring progress.
Executing a contact center cloud migration plan
Executing means putting your plan into action. It means tracking and measuring progress on your cloud journey. It requires managing quality, mitigating risk, managing the budget, and using ongoing feedback and data to inform decisions.
There is a close relationship between planning and execution. Good planning makes for good execution. Where the thinking has already been done in planning, implementation is more straightforward. But, poor planning leads to far too much in-change thinking.
Cloud contact center solutions do simplify contact center management efforts. However, managing real-time communications elements is important. The voice channel, voice routing, and the quality of audio that enables and supports the quality of customer engagement can be a significant challenge.
Real-time communications need special care. Many businesses migrate using a mix of bring-your-own-carrier and cloud carrier services. With the flexibility offered by CCaaS solutions, call routing is more dynamic than ever. Call delivery can target available skill-sets in multiple geographies. Calls may also be delivered outside of the corporate network to BPO partners or to home-workers. These multiple call termination options can each impact the quality experienced by customers. A powerful tool such as Cyara’s Voice Assure is vital to maintain service quality. Additionally, you will need to take a baseline assessment before commencing migration, monitor this during the key change events, and assess routinely.
Verifying cloud contact center migration outcomes
Your well developed plan will articulate the key milestones where clear evidence of change success will be. It is important to ensure that all aspects of your original business process work as expected. It is also important that newly introduced functionality be robustly checked, even if it is not yet deployed in your process.
Your cloud contact center migration plan will have a complete view of all functionality. It will have considered interoperability and your real-time communication requirements.
Each milestone should have a go-forward and roll-back capability, preserving business continuity at each step. It is important to note that change activities will typically happen at weekends or late evenings when demand is low. Real business load during the peak demand of a business day may identify issues and the roll-back option should always be viable.
Monitoring and evaluation
Contact center reporting is another key function which will be identified in your plan. Maintaining reporting is critical. Ultimately, improved reporting and performance indicators should provide evidence of project benefits.
Management will expect ongoing performance to be maintained and improved. Increased flexibility in call handling will help to reduce queuing, call handling time, and more.
Once adjusted to the change, agents should experience improved working conditions that translate to improved performance. Staff will be a key source of subjective feedback on the usability of new interfaces and more and should always be consulted.
Ultimately, customers will tend to be the real beneficiaries of such a change. Customer surveys and consultations should therefore yield feedback indicating an improved customer experience. The detailed numbers in the contact center reporting should provide indications of where the gains are that bring the improved experience.
Reaping the benefits
Monitor, evaluate, adjust, and be ever watchful for new features which can be availed of to improve your competitive position.
