Call centers have dominated the arena of customer query resolution for decades. It was through the phone calls that the queries were answered and resolved. But with evolving technology and customer needs, additional channels have emerged to enhance the customer experience.

The phone calls were not free of hassles. The long waiting period, and disturbance during the calls are some of these. To tackle this, new types of centers emerged to address customer concerns. One of them is the cloud contact center.

In a cloud contact center, the agents use powerful tools to address the questions of the customers and do not limit their way of responding to only phone calls. The agents use email, text messages, social media, and video calls in addition to the conventional phone calls to resolve the issues. These elevate customer satisfaction and these do not solely depend upon the location of the customer.

What is a cloud contact center?

In today’s world, companies operate contact centers as business units to handle customer requests. These requests are handled across multiple channels such as the phone email, tickets, and chat. These agents get the flexibility to work from one or more locations, including their homes or office.

To facilitate a smooth calling experience, these centers use contact center software to manage inbound and outbound customer communications. The solutions offered include:

Addressing customer queries via phone, email, SMS, and video.

Data integration with CRM, helpdesk, and marketing software to know the caller better.

Analytics and reports on cases, calls, quality management, and self-service to enhance the working experience of agents.

Dedicated tools for agents and supervisors to reduce call volume.

How does a cloud contact center work?

A cloud contact center uses high-speed internet to manage inbound and outbound voice, text, social media, and video communications. The service providers handle all the technical setup, equipment, and maintenance of the servers.

Unlike a PBX, there isn’t any need for telecom hardware to purchase, install, and maintain. Instead, phone calls are connected using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology.

Once you connect the cloud contact center software to your other channels like social media or email, it does all the work. Each interaction is tied to an account and assigned to the right agent to avoid conflicts. Then, a contact center syncs data with your CRM software in the background, so everyone is on the same page.

There is just a handful of things that you need for your call center to work. It works solely on the internet so you just need workstations, headsets, and a stable internet connection for your team. Also, when the agents log on, they can still receive calls, emails, or chat messages if they wish to. Resultingly, your brand interacts with customers round the clock. It goes a long way in enhancing customer experience and satisfaction.

What are the benefits of the cloud contact center?

  1. Allows Remote work:

Covid-19 pandemic has changed the entire work culture across the globe. With millions of employees now working from home and the office, cloud contact centers work as a panacea. They provide ultimate flexibility.

Irrespective of the location, employees can stay connected with each other through the internet. Supervisors and call center directors can directly supervise the team wherever they work. Also, the cloud call centers can work on almost any device that supports the internet.

They also provide real-time analytics to provide greater transparency into productivity and customer experience.

One of the main concerns of the people working from home is end-to-end security. Cloud call center solutions are sanitized regularly to avoid unwanted data breaches.

  1. Strong integration between platforms:

In today’s world, integration between platforms is of utmost importance. Contact centers use approved third-party integrations to bridge the digital divide between different applications.

Integrations enhance the functionality of the agents and even their supervisors. It also syncs data continuously in the background for system admins.

  1. Real-time analytics:

Cloud contact centers provide the simplicity of measuring every stage of your customer experience. These come in two forms namely real-time dashboards and custom reports.

Real-time dashboards help agents and supervisors in knowing how they are performing. It also helps with scheduling so that people aren’t too stressed about their time and work.

Another utility of the dashboard is that the historical data can be used by the supervisors to forecast trends, and satisfaction scores, and dissect cross-sections of customer data.

This not only helps in instilling trust in the agents but also in the customers. They gain trust because agents know what the customers want exactly. And this is made possible through the reports and dashboards.

  1. Ease of management:

To manage the technicalities of the cloud contact center is easy and quick for both IT staff and other business professionals. This advantage cannot be overstated.

Imagine, if you want to make a quick change or modify the standards, you can implement those changes instantly. This allows the managers and supervisors to truly manage the system efficiently.

The management can be done by the administrators through a secure web portal. It can be accessed from any location and connection. The changes can also be made in the middle of the night.

Since the interaction is not limited to calls only, the scope for getting feedback is also much more. This comes in handy when the companies want to add new services or products to their brochure.

  1. Better customer experience:

The primary goal of a contact center is to solve the queries of your customers. For this, the call center must be easy to contact. A smooth customer experience is important in case the company wants to make lasting customer relations.

This is not possible through the traditional customer support tools. For example, do you want to book a ticket and the ticket provider does not pick up your phone? The pressure will be much less if you have another way to get in touch with them. The customer feels personally connected to the company if they receive custom texts or responses.

  1. Tough security and data protection:

It is usually believed that shifting your communications to the cloud opens it up to more attacks. But studies have repeatedly suggested that it is not the case in reality. With call encryption and permission management, you can disarm potential threats.

To prevent the redundancy of checks, just a handful of cloud contact centers undergo regular audits to know if they meet quality and data protection standards. Data protection becomes increasingly important when the call center processes credit card payments or discusses private health information.

Conventional communication channels require you to perform regular, costly audits. More than that, it places confidential customer and employee data at risk. Also, data security depends largely upon the efficiency of the data and IT team. Cloud contact centers provide you with the assurance that you are working safely and securely.

  1. The sky is the limit:

Using cloud-based call centers, you can add as many users or calls as you want. Also, there isn’t any complex configuration or wiring to manage. So, you can expand your business as much as you want to, the sky is the limit.

With the conventional systems, you cannot aim for the sky on the very first day. Also, you will have to upgrade the hirings, location, workspace and other facilities to cater to more customers.

Each of the systems offers its benefits, but the cloud contact center has more advantages. If you prefer comfort and familiarity, we suggest you stick with a VoIP phone setup. If you want unbound growth, you can choose VoIP solutions to let the inbound calls and tickets come through.

  1. Enhanced agent productivity:

With the right set of tools, agents can provide an excellent customer experience. The hard truth is that many companies use various internal and external tools stitched together to address the workflow. This impacts productivity in a negative way.

One of the major complaints of customer service agents is the sluggish, slow tools. Cloud contact centers make sure that the agents are in the driver’s seat with an optimized dashboard tuned for every customer inquiry. It can save tonnes of new excuses and lets your team anticipates customer needs.

Wait, that’s not all. Cloud contact centers leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to solve customer queries before they even call the center for the same. The self-service facility directs the calls to the appropriate destination to improve the customer experience.

  1. Quick installation and setup:

It does not take long hours to set up cloud contact centers. Since there is no hardware involved, you can change anything in a matter of minutes. Onboarding employees is also quick. You don’t need to manipulate the endless IT support requests.

Besides handling inbound and outbound calls through phone calls, contact centers interact with the customers through emails and CRM connections.

And when your supervisors need to show statistics on the calls related to employee performance etc, they can do it in a jiffy.