Why businesses are moving to cloud-based contact centers

The only real consistency in the technology world is that it’s always under a constant state of change.

And an enterprise that wants to focus on customer service needs to remain agile in order to rapidly adapt to changes in business and operational needs.

Think about it. Video rental shops didn’t adapt and have, for the most part, been replaced by streaming services. Several brick-and-mortar retailers failed to adapt to evolving shopping habits and have found themselves struggling to keep up with Amazon and other online retailers.

And likewise, for businesses that want to provide a better CX, modernizing their contact center is essential. And in most cases, the cloud provides the best options.

If you’re anything like 92% of businesses worldwide however, you’ve already reached the next step in telecoms adaptation and are using cloud-based technology in one way or another.

What does the industry say?

Investment-wise, industry research points towards an increase in spending levels and rate-of-growth over the next few years for cloud-based contact centers:

• Research from Statistics MRC shows the global cloud contact center market growing from $6.2 billion in 2016 to $31 billion by 2023.
• Market Research Future projects global growth from $6.5 billion in 2017 to $24.1 billion in 2023.
• MarketsandMarkets projects growth from $6.8 billion in 2017 to $20.1 billion in 2022.
• All three sources show an expected CAGR of around 25% during their forecast periods.

But what does this change look like?

It’s easy to see that there will likely be an increase in cloud contact centers but it’s difficult to picture how that will look for the everyday business. For now, the most common migration scenario would be a contact center where:

• Remote agents are used to keep up with growing traffic volumes
• A requirement for a consistent set of capabilities wherever agents are located
• Increased need to add outbound calling for proactive forms of customer engagement

Given these challenges faced by contact centers, a change towards a cloud-based model provides an ideal solution considering its ability to:

• Allow people to work from anywhere
• Provide an identical platform for all users
• Add outbound calling functionality

Going forward, the pressure to improve CX will only get greater, and the longer contact centers wait, the more likely it will be that their decisions will become reactive and possibly lead to hasty plans.

So what’s the plan?

As a cloud communications partner, Bandwidth possesses all the necessary capabilities needed to serve a global customer base, including:

• Ability to support voice and messaging
• Provide global reach in the countries or regions where your customers are based
• The ability to reach SMS-capable mobile numbers
• Coverage provided for VoIP, toll-free numbers and local numbers in the countries you need to support.
• Compliant wherever your customers are
• Service reliability
• A consistent end-to-end CX regardless of where the customer is located

If you’re interested in assessing whether or not you’re ready for the move to a cloud-based contact center, take a look at this report by NoJitter that identifies key criteria for contact center decision-makers to follow when choosing the right partner for cloud-based communications.