What to Demand when Migrating to the Cloud Call Center

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

In the current economic environment, companies around the world are under pressure to cut the costs of customer service. At the same time, a superior customer experience is required to dominate the market. To balance between the two priorities, companies are increasingly turning to the cloud call center.

A recent Genesys (News - Alert) whitepaper explored the importance of the cloud call center and how it enables companies to connect with customers across all channels, empowers employees to help customers through a personalized experience and ensures customer tasks are completed efficiently whether in the branch, back office or other location.

One of the biggest drivers of the cloud call center has been the inflexibility of the existing infrastructure and operational flow it dictates. The problem is highlighted when contact centers merge and disparate systems have incompatible legacy hardware and applications. If a company also feels locked in with a current vendor that lacks the solution to meet their needs or budget, service experience and growth potential are both stagnant.

The optimal customer experience today relies on the flexibility, scalability and capability of the cloud call center, one that is supported with IP/SIP technology. Enterprise-wide service is enabled through the virtualization of resources into a single pool that users can tap into as needed.

This efficiency, however, relies on an implementation rooted in best practices, such as:

• A customer service environment based on promoting future business growth
  • Open and standards-based platform
  • Robust cloud call center migration plan
  • Flexible contact center environment
  • Remote and home agent strategy
  • Highly robust and reliable operation to ensure 99.999 percent availability.

• A customer service strategy with a comprehensive approach
  • Customer service becomes key differentiator
  • Multiple customer interaction channels adopted
  • Conversion strategy implemented for all channels
  • Collaboration increased across all enterprise resources
  • Customer service enabled from the cloud.

• Customer service operation closely aligned with business objectives
  • Total cost of ownership (TCO) discipline is applied
  • Customer service evolution pace matches business culture
  • Business continuity is maintained as a top priority
  • Customer experience remains a top priority
  • Customer service evolution is treated as a journey and not an event.

Once an organization has clearly established its strategy for adopting the cloud call center, best-in-class applications can be selected to fit the business in stages. This approach ensures the company remains free of lock-in with any one vendor and migrates to the cloud with a strategy that fits the culture and the business. It also allows the company to continue to focus on protecting current legacy investments and delivering the optimal customer experience, regardless of where they are in the migration process.

The cloud call center from Genesys is a 100 percent software solution designed to transform the customer service environment without requiring a large investment or extensive maintenance costs. True enterprise-wide customer service is supported through an open, standards-based approach to customer engagement that allows for the optimal TCO.

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