Top Reasons To Embrace Cloud Technology

Modern customer contact centers employ technologies that allow them to talk to a large number of customers from one center. Customer contact centers need to be innovative. In fact, call centers have been adopting innovative technologies for some time. Most centers already support call recording, automatic dialers, and sophisticated routing.

In most cases, the company owns both the software and the hardware and hence they have complete control over the technology they use. While several companies still prefer to own the technology, this approach has several drawbacks. First, purchasing equipment is costly. Second, proper maintenance will be difficult without expert guidance.

Many industry analysts feel that the need to own the technology is actually holding the industry back. But this should change when the cloud technology becomes more popular. Cloud services eliminate the need to own expensive hardware. Moreover, it allows customer centers to improve the quality of their services.

A recent report published by Gartner confirms that when call centers use cloud-based technology, their total operating cost reduces. Furthermore, most cloud solutions permit the integration of several channels.

Customers themselves have already embraced cloud technology. Apple customers enjoy the benefits of the cloud-based service iCloud. It allows them to store their data in the cloud and access it from any device they like. The popularity of cloud services will only increase in the coming years and then firms that do not possess the same capability will look outdated.

If cloud technologies are better why should businesses obsess with the idea of owning technology? This can be attributed to the natural conservatism present in the IT field. That also explains why IT departments are unwilling to adopt wholesale changes without assurance of the benefits.

There are some other reasons as well. IT professionals are responsible for ensuring that the technology will provide the desired results and that it will be constantly available. Consequently, they seek control over the technology they use.

Fortunately, cloud technology advanced so much during the last few years that service availability is no longer a cause for concern. In fact, several providers of cloud services now guarantee 99.99% service availability.

Moving your customer contact centers to the cloud has several benefit:

·         Cloud technology allows the consolidation of contact centers across different sites. This improves overall efficiency and reduces operating costs.

·         Cloud technology also provides the ability to utilize data from various sources. This helps frontline agents to serve their customers more efficiently.

·         Greater flexibility is another advantage. Cloud services allow you to scale your operations up or down. At any given time, you only pay for the services you use. When your requirements increase, you can upgrade to a higher plan. This flexibility helps save money.

·         You get access to expensive software and hardware without having to invest in them. Since the equipment is owned and operated by the service provider you do not have to worry about maintenance either.

 

·         When you use cloud services, you can upgrade to newer technologies as they arrive.

Hopefully, when a heavyweight analyst like Gartner confirms these benefits, and assures companies about the availability of impressive services, we will see many more organizations adopting cloud technology in the coming years.