Taking the CCaaS Revolution to the Next Level

Tony Lorentzen at Nuance discusses how to bring intelligence – and investment protection – to the CCaaS revolution.

Over the last few years, we’ve witnessed the accelerating transformation of the contact centre, with brands using digital and voice-powered technology to bring their customer engagement visions to life. That includes the shift of contact centres to the cloud.

Doing so enables enterprises to quickly increase agility, reduce costs, and focus on serving customers instead of managing infrastructures.

The New Cloud Imperative

The promise of lower TCO and greater flexibility makes it easy to see why so many contact centre leaders are moving to the cloud. The business case is so compelling that the global CCaaS market is growing at an impressive 23.1% CAGR and expected to be worth $44.8 billion by 2025.

It’s never been more important for contact centre leaders to determine if partnering with a CCaaS provider is the right approach for their organisation and if that provider enables more agile and responsive operations. CCaaS investments also should deliver longer-term ROI with future-proof solutions that can be adapted and expanded as needed via the cloud.

However, too many cloud contact centre platforms are focused on taking advantage of current market demand – and customer IT budgets – without a clear commitment, demonstrated ability, and domain expertise needed to address current and future needs.

Contact centre leaders simply can’t afford – financially or competitively — to wait for or chase promised benefits at the expense of customer satisfaction.

Finding out months or years down the road that a selected provider cannot deliver needed solutions over time is troubling enough. Finding that out after having discarded investments in existing on-premise infrastructure is even worse.

Avoiding the Potential Pitfalls of CCaaS

The difference between success and regret comes down to taking a careful and detailed look at the provider platforms and experience, especially in vertical and highly specialised markets. There are a few common mistakes to avoid:

• “Rush to the Cloud” vs. Optimise for the Cloud

An IVR that’s been optimised over 15 years, for example, can’t simply be rewritten to run on a new CCaaS platform. There must be careful planning and a clear understanding of how and when existing applications will be optimised for the cloud.

That includes setting explicit expectations that the cloud solution will match or exceed on-premise system performance.

• Insufficient Integration Expertise

Integration issues can arise during migration that can interrupt customer service and lead to higher call volumes and lower customer satisfaction. This is more than a case of tolerating migration hiccups.

Even a 1% drop in IVR containment can equate to lost savings and issues with contact centre staffing. That’s especially true for IVRs that have been highly tuned for vertical use cases. Successful integration requires a combination of carefully planning, technical expertise and domain experience.

• Vendor Lock-in

The added flexibility and cost-savings expected when moving to a CCaaS provider can be negated if new applications lack portability. Think ahead to what might happen if you need or want to change providers due to market or technology changes, strategic realignments, M&A, or other events.

Waiting for a vendor to catch up to your needs or going through a migration do-over is costly in multiple ways. What’s more, partners that offer multiple platform types will find it easier to help customers migrate solutions when they can leverage one common set of AI services.

• Expectations vs. Experience

The sheer demand for cloud migration and the number of offerings can lead some enterprises to believe that all CCaaS providers can deliver everything they had in on-premise infrastructure to engage, serve, and sell effectively.

Elite CCaaS providers will be clear upfront about how and how well they can meet your specifications. Nearly all CCaaS providers offer call routing, customer engagement, and agent workforce management.

But the devil is in the details, especially regarding their capabilities in advanced natural language processing that companies need and expect for automated and seamless omnichannel brand experiences.

Author: Guest Author