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Are you thinking of switching to a cloud contact centre, but aren't sure if it's the right move for you? Trying to research the pros and cons can feel overwhelming. Instead, take a look below at some advice to help you make the best informed decision for your business.

What is Contact Centre as a Service?

CCaaS bundles together all the different forms of communication used in customer service to create the perfect packaged experience. These can include a live chat function, phone calls, text messages, and a lot more.

Essentially, CCaaS is a contact centre, but without the hardware. Everything is conducted on the cloud, and is focused around keeping customer interactions organised and running efficiently.

It is more popular now than ever, due to the increasing demand for a top quality service from customers. To be able to offer an exceptional customer experience should be at the forefront of your business strategy. Without it, your customer will only build a negative view of your service, thereby damaging your brand.

In the same way that you need a good CDN to engage and convert potential customers, you also need a good CCaaS system to ensure customers continue to use your service once they have converted to it.

8 reasons to invest in CCaaS

Leveraging cloud computing is the future of a successful business, and here are 8 reasons to prove why.

 

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1.    It's better for your agents

If you make the shift to a cloud based, omnichannel platform, this will hugely improve the working conditions of your call centre agents. This is because everything is moved to one easy to find and navigate platform. Your agents don't have to worry about missing anything, and their job is easier to perform by improving the technology they use on a day to day basis.

Everybody knows that working in customer service is a stressful job. With constant performance targets to meet, angry customers to deal with, and time pressures to navigate, it can become overwhelming. It isn't surprising that there is such a high turnover rate within this profession, considering the conditions involved with working there.

If your agents have better working conditions, this will improve their phone presence. benefiting everybody involved, from the customer to the business owner.

Improving the experience for your agents is a worthy reason to shift to CCaaS. From 5 or 6 different softwares to 1 intuitive platform, your agents can quickly become experts, improving their overall performance. Centralising customer data into one place can also speed up overall call times, as agents can see account values, requests and how customers are feeling in real-time.

And real-time data is at the heart of a successful agent-customer interaction.

2.    It will save you money

What better reason to make the shift than that CCaaS is cost efficient?

With CCaaS, you just pay for the tools you need, through a subscription service. Moreover, companies can easily download the software and get started, without needing to pay for expensive hardware and other materials that need regular updating.

To add to this, costs are entirely transparent. You know what you are getting, and for how much, without the nasty surprise of added costs further down the line.

You even save money on having to pay (less) for tech teams and licence fees. The age of obsolete hardware is coming to an end. Move to CCaaS, and use the money you are saving to improve other elements of your business, for instance with a course that teaches your agents how to leverage emotional intelligence for a better customer experience.

 

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3.    It provides a better customer experience

It isn't surprising that cloud infrastructure spending saw huge growth in 2021, cloud based services are becoming increasingly popular.

This is because, essentially, CCaaS offers a customer full agency of how and where they want to contact an agent. The software used by agents sends them a notification, and they can respond to a large range of questions and demands from customers, whether the client has chosen to contact via live chat, email, a call, or a range of different apps and social media platforms.

This is a great step forward as it makes the customer feel at ease. If they don't wish to speak on the phone, they can use the live chat. If they don't know how to use Instagram, they can send an email, and so on. An omnichannel approach meets the needs of every customer, improving their overall experience.

Not to mention that CCaaS has automated functions within the system that fulfil repetitive tasks so that the agent doesn't have to do them. Not only does this improve the working conditions of the agent, it also reduces the amount of human errors that occur, creating a more efficient and smooth experience for the customer.

4.    CCaaS is flexible

Customer expectations are very high. Now, customers are no longer happy to wait or call again later if they want to speak to an agent. Nowadays, customers just move to another service if you aren't providing them with what they need. That's where the benefits of agile methodology come in. CCaaS provides quality and speed, alongside a truly impressive flexibility.

With CCaaS, you don't have to worry about sudden surges in sales overwhelming your contact centre. A company can simply increase their current plan to deal with the demand, making it a great, flexible option.

Just like with deadstock (deadstock meaning), you can then decrease your plan when demand lowers, with zero hassle.

 

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5.    Easy data collection

CCaaS platforms make it easier to compile and analyse data from customers. This data is crucial to the success of your business, and you should be mining it for how you can improve your product or service.

Teams of people in every meeting room need to be discussing how you can move the needs of your client to the centre of your business strategy. The data from a CCaaS platform will help you do this.

Use the data to figure out what drives buyer decisions, creating targeted ads and marketing campaigns on the demographic you have identified as your customer. Take that data and find the demographic you aren't reaching, and figure out why.

And don't worry about missing or incorrect data - CCaaS solutions integrate your data so that it is ready to be analysed as it is. Using this information, you can then create customer profiles so that you can have all the information you need about a customer during your interaction with them.

6.    It's scalable

In the same way that they're flexible, CCaaS solutions are also highly scalable, allow you to make adjustments, add features and install the software on new computers with very little hassle.

Pay for the features you want, with the full knowledge that you can adjust your plan at any time. If your business begins to grow, you can upgrade with just a handful of clicks, to a whole other plan.

And, CCaaS platforms often tend to offer custom plans too, if you have particular needs you want met.

According to research, 75% of companies are worried about being displaced by competition. Innovating with the times is a great way to stay on top of increasing demands by customers - implementing CCaaS solutions will ensure you aren't falling behind!

 

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7.    CCaaS solutions are reliable

As well as being flexible and scalable, CCaaS solutions also have very impressive disaster recovery levels, and are considered to be incredibly reliable.

Most providers guarantee a 99% uptime, often by housing infrastructure in areas with redundant data centres that have around-the-clock staff.

A reliable service is an absolute must for call centres, where satisfying the needs of your customers as soon as possible is a priority.

8.    And lastly, a higher quality service

There are so many reasons why CCaaS provides a better experience for your customers, but perhaps most importantly, it provides a qualitatively superior service. With AI-powered agents working alongside real agents, problems are resolved faster and more efficiently.

Minor tasks are conducted by bots, removing typos and memory loss from the equation and leaving space for real agents to get on with more important tasks.

Moreover, CCaaS have data tools like CRM which improve interactions between customers and the agents who can conduct more personalised interactions.

CCaaS has so much to offer, and that's why it is being increasingly adopted as the new cloud call centre choice.

 

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Conclusions

Switching to CCaaS may seem daunting, but overall, the benefits are many. With unrivalled flexibility, scalability and reliability, it is the perfect step up towards a better customer experience for your clients.

CCaaS is like a really good synopsis - all the best of a call centre service, in one efficient place.

In this increasingly competitive market, you have to be providing the best quality service. And CCaaS is capable of helping you achieve this.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patty Yan

 

Patty is the EMEA Product Marketing Manager for RingCentral Office, the leader in cloud hosting and communications solutions. Patty is passionate about creating value and differentiation, ensuring a better experience for customers and partners. She gained a wealth of international product marketing, product management, GTM and market development experience, across a range of high-tech SaaS in a fast-paced, hyper-growth environment that assumes both strategic and tactical execution. She is not new to UC, starting in Tandberg, then Cisco, driving the launch of video collaboration and services, and Enghouse with global responsibilities for hosted CCaaS. Patty Yan also published articles for domains such as Storyblok and MGID.