Why Move to a Digital Cloud Based Contact Center?

A cloud-based contact center solution can help you improve agent efficiency and offer quality customer support when unexpected situations arise. Here’s everything you need to know to get started.

A cloud-based contact center uses cloud technologies, applications, and services to bring scalability and flexibility to your customer support.

Unlike on-premise solutions and traditional call centers, a cloud contact center is accessible via a good internet connection, with no need for on-premise hardware.

You can learn more about the differences in our guide to on premise vs cloud contact center, but in a nutshell, a cloud-based contact center provides the following as standard:

The global pandemic forced every aspect of our lives online, underscoring why contact center digital transformation is a business imperative (not a “nice to have”).

It also showed why cloud technologies were key to an effective work from home contact center.

As we progress towards a world free of COVID-19, what’s clear is that the shift to digital channels is here to stay. So too is contact center agents’ desire for flexible and remote working options.

A cloud-based contact center addresses both these needs, ensuring a better customer support experience for your customers and your agents alike.

Over the years, many companies continued to use an on-premise contact center since it’s historically been a secure, stable solution.

But the pandemic highlighted their limitations, especially when it comes to flexibility and adaptability, as companies rapidly shifted to work from home models to keep their employees safe.

Those who switched to cloud contact centers realized that they could maintain the same level of security while also providing the same level of customer support from a remote location.

Here are three key benefits that come with having an omnichannel, cloud contact center.

With a contact center in the cloud, your agents can continue to provide superior customer service from the comfort of their homes. They will be able to stay connected, no matter where or when they log on.

Using a cloud contact center solution such as Conversations gives your managers insight into real-time analytics, so they can continuously track customer query resolution and agent productivity.

What’s more, when a cloud-based contact center is available via a mobile app, such as the Infobip Conversations mobile app, your agents can provide real-time, cross-channel support – direct from their own smartphones.

This empowers them to provide customer support remotely, on the go, 24/7.

During customer service spikes and emergency situations like COVID-19, your agents need to be able to handle incoming queries while minimizing complaints and keeping customers onboard.

By redirecting customers to contact your agents through digital channels, such as WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, and Live Chat, your cloud contact center allows agents to handle more than one query at a time – something they can’t do with phone calls alone.

And, by using customer context cards, your agents can access relevant customer information – including purchase history, loyalty status, and general demographics, making it easier to provide personalized support, fast.

Introducing these new channels will also improve your overall customer satisfaction, as you offer support over the apps customers prefer to use.

Your agents have access to full conversation histories and are able to switch between channels in a single view – making it easier for agent takeover while improving first contact resolution and average handle time.

Frequently asked questions represent a large portion of customer enquiries, perhaps even more so during the global pandemic as people demanded accurate information quickly.

These common, non-complex queries are ideally suited for a customer service chatbot that’s designed to understand intent and connect people with answers, around the clock.

Automated customer service is a great way to reduce response times and allow your customers to self-serve their issues and get real-time answers. Integrated with a digital cloud contact center, your agents have access to full chatbot conversation histories and can easily take over to handle the more complex issues.

An AI chatbot or keyword chatbot helps control your agent workloads and will provide customers with the fast responses they’re looking for.

The global pandemic showed us that being flexible and able to continue providing superior customer support, whatever the situation, is your competitive advantage in times of uncertainty, and in our “never normal” going forward.

For more tips on how to prime your contact center for success, check out these articles on:

To help you be there for your customers when they need it most, we’re offering our digital cloud contact center solution, Conversations, free of charge for the first 60 days.