Nearly six in ten (57%) of contact centers in the UK will operate in the cloud by 2022, according to Mordor Intelligence. That’s up from 39% in 2018.
Going by Diffusion of Innovations theory, that puts Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), around about the point at which an early majority becomes a late one.
Either way, it’s safe to say that CCaaS is no longer at the forefront of innovation in and of itself. After all, the market for cloud contact centers is growing at a compound annual rate of 25% because everyone sees the cost and operational benefits of replacing major CapEx with easier-to-manage OpEx.
Better agility, more predictability, lack of vendor lock-in, and lower total cost of ownership.
But just because it’s become the norm, doesn’t mean that CCaaS is devoid of innovation. Yes, cloud may be the new status quo for provisioning, well, just about anything. But as a framework, it is still very much in its infancy. And innovations from the 2.5% living on the bleeding edge continue to come thick and fast.
By freeing contact center heads and managers from the tyranny of long hardware and software cycles, hosted delivery drastically cuts the lead time on innovation. And that frees up businesses to take bigger technological leaps you would deem too risky in the stale world of legacy infrastructure and capital investments.
The bottom line is that it’s much easier for your business and your contact center to stay innovative once you’re in the cloud.
Cloud contact center innovations
This is a topic that’s near and dear to us because we’ve helped bring many of them to the mainstream via our global voice network, which powers contact centers across the gamut.
From cloud-native disrupters like Uber to multinational institutions such as CHR Hansen. Not to mention the CCaaS platforms you know and love… NICE inContact, Genesys, and New Voice Media to name just a few.
So what are some of the recent innovations the cloud has brought to the contact center?
- Instant Provisioning… On-demand phone number and voice service provisioning, all in real-time. Compared to minimum lead times of a few days all the way up to a few months dealing with legacy carriers.
- Global Reach… Without a mess of different legacy providers to manage and handhold in every country you need service.
- Centralized Service Management… Speaking of service, it’s about time you could manage all of the coverage your contact center needs through a single pane of glass.
- Automated Telecoms… And with APIs that let you integrate and automate your contact center telephony however you need to
- Accelerated Scale… All of which helps you take your operations further into new markets faster and cheaper than ever before.
What does the next innovation look like?
Ironically considering the proliferation of developer-friendly, API-based cloud comms solutions that are out there, the modern telecoms market still has some way to go before it’s a truly open ecosystem.
But we firmly believe that this is the next big innovation for cloud communications and contact center.
Because when every platform across your comms stack is fully interoperable with any other, that’s when you’ll finally have the control required to fine-tune the best-fit solution for your business.
Just as the rising tide lifts all boats, the open ecosystem improves market access for everyone, making it easier to adopt innovative products thanks to the confidence that they will be compatible with existing solutions.
For our part, we’re dedicated to delivering this ideal by ensuring that our telecoms coverage can be easily integrated into any CCaaS or other communications platform you might use.
Speaking of contact center innovation…
Did you know that building your contact center comms stack your way is incredibly easy now? Bandwidth MaestroTM empowers you to create, connect, and compose call flows with pre-built integrations and insights at your fingertips.
