What is a Cloud Call Center?
Read Time: 8 Minutes
Table of contents
Introduction
Cloud call centers are a relatively new concept, but they are quickly becoming a popular setup for more and more businesses. In this post, we’ll explore the specific ways that cloud call centers differ from traditional call centers and show the benefits that have convinced many businesses to turn to cloud call center solutions.
Key takeaways
- Flexibility and scalability: Cloud call centers are much easier to customize than other models and can be quickly scaled up or down depending on demand, which is more cost-effective.
- Cost and maintenance efficiency: A cloud call center requires much less overhead, which translates to far less time and money spent on installing, maintaining, and upgrading expensive equipment, taking advantage of manageable subscription pricing models.
- Improved customer experience: Cloud call centers make it easier to integrate powerful tools like Interactive Voice Response (IVR), real-time data analytics, call recording, and many others. These tools allow for a richer customer experience with higher customer satisfaction.
Cloud call center vs. traditional call center models
Cloud contact centers have quickly grown in popularity over the past several years, and are expected to continue growing.
Major advantages of cloud-based call center phone systems include their extreme flexibility, the ease of their setup process, and the ability to integrate real-time analytics. They are also incredibly simple to scale and manage, allowing agents to work from anywhere with stable internet and easily setting up out-of-the-box installations that work off the cloud-based capabilities of a central server.
Though traditional call centers can be useful, they usually require agents to be physically present in one building, a building that needs expensive call center hardware and infrastructure — and that’s before even considering the constant maintenance and upgrades needed to keep things running smoothly.
On-premises call center
An in-house or “on-premises” call center refers to a call center that your business owns and operates. All of the real estate, hardware, infrastructure, software, staffing, and other assets or investments necessary for the call center are purchased and maintained by your business. On-premises call centers usually hardwire all of the computers and phones into their own central system and require all employees to be on-site to perform their work.
Hosted call center
Hosted call centers are a middle step between on-premises and cloud call centers. A hosted call center is based at a physical location that is hosted by another company. Your vendor offers the use of their infrastructure and call center equipment, which they maintain and upgrade. Your staff can either work within the hosted call center or remotely access their system. While more affordable than an on-premises call center, a hosted call center still relies on a physical server, which limits some of your flexibility and scalability.
Benefits of cloud contact center software
Scalability
Very few companies see a completely consistent level of business throughout the year. Most, if not all businesses have fluctuating levels of business that peak and valley at fairly predictable times of year. For instance, most companies that sell physical products will see considerable increases in sales during the end-of-year holiday gift-giving season, before dropping below baseline in January, and finally evening out by the end of Q1. Lots of businesses have similar patterns throughout the year, determined by relevant seasonal factors of their business, and these patterns affect the call centers that serve them as well.
A huge plus of cloud contact center software is that it allows your business to easily scale your contact center team up and down to account for the seasonal highs and lows your business will see, giving you the volume you need in busy times, but allowing you to temporarily cut back while things are slower.
Remote teams
Remote work is a new standard in many businesses, which has made it possible for many call centers to oblige with remote or hybrid work models themselves. It has become especially beneficial for cloud call center teams.
With smooth interconnectivity keeping agents in touch with supervisors and enabling productive calls from any place in the world with a good internet signal, cloud contact center software allows remote teams to be just as productive as those in a central location, all with less overhead.
Easy integrations
Cloud-based systems often play nicely between the applications and operating systems they most need to interact with. For that reason, cloud contact center software integrates beautifully with various different call center applications, such as CRMs, ticketing systems, speech analytics, and much more!
Low-maintenance
When you have your own on-premises call center, the technology and infrastructure are all your responsibility. Even after you invest in all of the infrastructure upfront, it will require constant maintenance, upgrades, and patches. Physical devices and their components will also need to be maintained or replaced as time goes on. But by using a cloud call center, you can take all of that maintenance off of your own plate, trusting that your vendor can manage all of it reliably.
Cost-effective
Being low-maintenance, cloud call centers can get away with having much leaner IT teams, staffed with a few focused, specialized members, which presents major cost savings. Additionally, the cost of hardware is much lower because cloud solutions tend to be subscription-based, giving businesses the ability to pay just for what they use on a monthly or yearly basis.
Traditional on-premises call centers also require businesses to buy all of the hardware and software upfront, as well as hire all of the necessary staff to keep that infrastructure running smoothly. The staffing then needs to scale up and down depending on how busy the season is, which results in either being understaffed when you need more or overpaying for extra staff who have nothing to do. Cloud solutions on the other hand are easily scaled, ensuring that you get the most out of your system without wasting time, money, and effort.
We can help you improve your efficiency and flexibility as you expand with a cloud call center. See what ROI CX Solutions can do for you today!
Using cloud call center solutions to improve customer experience
24/7 availability
Cloud call centers often have remote work capabilities and more flexible hours of operation. Through those arrangements, cloud call centers are able to provide remote teams around the world, giving you more uptime and access to 24/7 service from qualified agents.
Shorter hold times
Long hold times are a surefire way to frustrate customers and lower the quality of the customer experience. Through cloud call center solutions like automated callbacks, skills, location, and needs-based call routing, and integrations with CRMs, call centers can significantly shorten the amount of time that customers spend on hold.
Less call transferring
By setting up a cloud call center with Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), you can ensure that callers are automatically sent to the agent best-suited to answer their query. Skills-based routing allows your customers to get the help they need sooner, greatly decreasing the chance that the call will need to be transferred one or more times. This not only keeps customers happy and satisfied, but it also improves the efficiency of the call center as a whole.
More control
Compared to traditional call centers, cloud-based call centers provide you with a greater degree of control and customization. Because cloud call centers are often decentralized from single locations and one building’s infrastructure, it makes it much more convenient and affordable for the businesses that use them to mix and match the services they hire out to a cloud call center.
Features of a cloud-based call center
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
With natural language processing, IVR systems can understand not only the content of what a customer says but also the sentiments and tones behind their words. IVR is an excellent tool for automatically handling the more basic customer queries, giving customers the tools they need for self-service. The calls that remain can finally be routed to the appropriate teams and agents who can focus their time and attention on the issues that require their specific expertise.
Call distributing
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) allows for a high degree of customizability when it comes to call routing rules. Cloud-based call centers can use a custom set of rules and logic for intelligently routing each call based on the skill level or expertise of each agent, how long each agent has been unoccupied, the location of the caller, the caller’s history with the company, and many other parameters.
Call forwarding
A call forwarding function gives cloud-based call centers the ability to automatically reroute calls to a different number or group of numbers if the initial number is unavailable in some way. This allows callers to reach a human agent, regardless of individual or team availability, whether due to breaks, meetings, or time off.
Call recording
Cloud call centers can easily record each phone call as well as agents’ computer screens. This gives supervisors an easy way to dive into the call for important information, evaluate the call for quality assurance, or use the scenarios presented in the call to train other agents.
Data for analytics
Cold, hard data is extremely useful for learning what your call center is doing correctly, where you could use improvement, and where you need to double down. Having that data in real-time allows you and your team to make those distinctions on the fly. With real-time analytics, supervisors have the ability to monitor and assist agents to improve their performance in the moment, even providing coaching opportunities during calls. With post-call analytics, supervisors can spot overall team-wide trends, presenting opportunities for team-wide trainings and refreshers, as well as exposing patterns in customer sentiments, allowing the team to adjust messaging and strategies.
Security
When providing cloud call center services, it’s particularly important to take security seriously. When hiring a cloud call center, be sure to pay attention to the security measures they have in place. Call encryption protocols like Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) will be crucial layers of security to keep all of the call center’s communications private and protected.
Get started with a cloud-based call center
Are you in the market for a flexible and scalable call center solution for your business? ROI CX Solutions can get you started with your very own cloud call center! Get a quote to see how we can help!
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