And now the forecast for Contact Centres: cloudy with outbreaks of cost savings!

paulm.scott — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 09:53:16 GMT

The drawback of using ‘cloud’ to describe a technology is the endless puns, cringing analogies and interminable references to weather. On the plus side, it does make it easy to understand the principles: it’s everywhere, up in the air, and always there. It might also explain the surprisingly rapid adoption of Cloud technology in contact centres which is expected to quadruple in the next 5 years.

Contact centre management have never been early adopters of technology. Indeed, if The Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report is to be believed, contact centres are normally at the back of the queue when it comes to technology innovation: 73% don’t have full integration of their channels and 40% sit outside the enterprise technology architecture, according to the Report. However, adoption of applications from Cloud platforms paints a very different picture.

Sixty five per cent of the Report participants already using hosted or cloud based technology, say its made it easier for them to get access to new functionality and for 64.8% its improved flexibility.

Commercially Cloud seems to make sense for contact centres too: 77.6% agreed that it’s helped reduce cost-to-serve, which is a principle success measure for many contact centres today.

One myth quickly dispelled about Cloud solutions is the belief it takes over completely from traditional on-premise solutions. This is very rarely the case. Indeed in the dozen or so implementations one large SI has completed for its clients none are operating a fully cloud-based solution, either for compliance and security reasons, or simply to ensure they don’t lose valued components of their technology infrastructure which is working.

All the indicators are for a bright future for contact centres, with sustained periods of high performance, albeit under a cloud!