8x8, Inc., the leading provider of global Enterprise Communications as a Service (ECaaS), today released the findings of a survey, conducted in partnership with the CCNG Contact Center & Customer Care Industry Professional Network, that suggests cloud-based contact center technologies are gaining strong momentum. The survey further suggests that the industry has reached a tipping point in cloud-based technology adoption among companies of all sizes. The report, titled “Cloud Contact Centers Gaining Share,” suggests three quarters of companies have recognized the value of the cloud, with 25 percent of contact centers having fully deployed cloud today and another 28 percent partially transitioned -- either migrated some functionality or moved a subset of their agents to the cloud. In addition, 21 percent have plans to migrate within the next year.

Additional trends highlighted in the survey include the importance of analytics in contact center success; the increase in remote working and challenges created by this; and the integration of more non-voice channels into the contact center. According to IDC, the overall contact center market, which includes on-premises and public cloud solutions, is forecasted to reach US$9.8 billion by 2020.

“The adoption of cloud-based communications and contact centers are key to the future of work, especially with an increasingly mobile, global and remote workforce,” said Enzo Signore, CMO, 8x8. “However, to usher in today’s new era of business communications and collaboration, organizations must also be willing to fully integrate powerful new technologies like quality management and analytics. This will enable companies to enhance agent performance, staffing efficiency and customer service while also controlling costs.”

Tightly integrating quality management with contact centers optimizes agent performance and supports companies in their quest to delight customers. Demonstrating the value contact centers place on increasing agent performance and overall customer satisfaction, 52 percent of respondents said they use quality management software, while 47 percent said they use survey tools. A further 25 percent stated using customer journey metrics.

The days of a contact center limited to voice calls are passing into history. Increasingly customers are integrating multi-channel into their environments. Respondents cited email as the most widely adopted non-voice channel at 85 percent. Next came website-based communication, used by 50 percent of respondents, followed by chat at 46 percent. In fourth place was the broad category of social media, used by 37 percent of respondents.

The report also revealed:

• Companies are moving their contact centers to the cloud for three main reasons, in roughly equal importance: business continuity, scalability and lower cost. A fourth significant reason is to enable remote agents.
• While analytics play an important role in managing contact center success, many are still relying on outmoded tools and methods to measure and improve agent performance. 59 percent of respondents cited spreadsheets and notes as the top tools used closely followed by informal discussions at 44 percent.
• While remote working among contact center staff is common - 59 percent of respondents said they accommodate some remote agents on their team - managing remote workers continues to be a challenge. Approximately 40 percent cited management issues as the leading problem with remote agents, followed by technology issues at 38 percent and accessibility challenges at 29 percent.
• Companies have plans to integrate more non-voice channels into their contact centers. The most popular non-voice channels cited for future adoption was chat at 37 percent, mobile applications at 25 percent, and SMS (text messages), also at 25 percent.

The survey was conducted in September and October 2016, and responses were gathered from 154 respondents in the US and UK.

To read the full report and see how your contact center compares to others in the industry, click here.