4 steps to get from on-premise to a cloud (or hybrid) contact center
How to create interoperability across third-party apps and solutions
Ways to build a future-proof, flexible contact center
Is your modern contact center stuck using inflexible on-premise systems? With the right migration process, you can break free of CX limitations, integrate critical third-party solutions like a pro, and simplify your telephony without sacrificing resiliency.
In this quick guide, you’ll learn how the Global 2000 enterprises are embracing complexity in pursuit of simplicity, investing in customer experience, and modernizing their contact center stack—all without disruption.
Did we say easy? Whoops! But follow this guide, and it won’t be so bad.
CX leaders are realizing the value of the cloud, from innovative new features to better agent and customer experiences. While getting from on-prem to the cloud (or somewhere in between) is a daunting journey, there are ways to turn it into a turbulence-free first-class flight.
In this quick guide, you’ll learn how the Fortune 1000 are shifting CX to the cloud to build their contact centers, their way.
Your migration journey
At a glance, your journey to the cloud should look something like this:
Choosing to BYOC with Bandwidth made our entire cloud migration process stress-free. It was incredibly complex, but Bandwidth simplified it dramatically.
There’s an integration available for nearly every major UCaaS/CCaaS platform our organization needs, which opens the door to even more savings and efficiency.
Ryan Kurpiers
Infrastructure Operations Manager
But before we begin…
Picking your Contact Center platform before you set out on your migration seems like the obvious path forward—just like booking your hotel before jumping on your flight. However, you don’t need to know which CCaaS platform you want just yet—and if you pick the wrong one, your journey might be a little bumpier than anticipated.
To prevent vendor lock-in, leading enterprises are picking their carrier first, then their Contact Center platform. With a platform-agnostic telecom provider, you can move to and around the communications cloud and free your inhibitions (Alexa, play Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen).
Step 1: Unbundle your CCaaS and telecom
Most CCaaS providers allow you to power telephony in two ways:
Bundled Telecom: the all-in-one model that often includes per-user pricing plans.
Unbundled Telecom: bringing your own carrier for telephony, often with usage-based pricing plans.
To bundle, or not to bundle?
Depending on your enterprise’s size and requirements, either could be the right choice.
Bundling
The advantages are pretty straightforward: buy a license and make sure it has the calling plan attached for your users. From there, you’ll receive one point of contact, one bill, and (typically) one flat fee associated with your seat price.
Unbundling
However, for large, complex enterprises, there’s a lot more you can achieve by unbundling with a Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) solution. In fact, more and more enterprise contact centers are choosing to unbundle. Why, you ask?
Why BYOC?
Better migrations with flexible scheduling, cohort building, and options to rollback
Flexibility around third-party integrations to solve gaps between the cloud and on-prem needs (more on this later)
High call quality and uptime with a geo-redundant global network
A direct line to innovation and quality troubleshooting for transparency, faster response times, and product development
When it comes to shifting your contact center to the cloud, it’s always better to be over-prepared and cautious (kind of like getting to the airport 4 hours before takeoff). After all, your revenue depends on it.
Step 2: Audit your current comms stack
Next, analyze your current contact center infrastructure to understand everything that this migration will impact. You have to do this yourself, but your carrier can guide you through and create joint project plans to help you out.
This seems obvious, but many enterprises that have grown through mergers & acquisitions have phone numbers all over the place.
by locating your IVR recordings or making new ones. Then, document those flows so you have everything needed to set up your new cloud platform
to configure emergency address network elements, if needed, such as wireless access points, ports, and switches.
Step 3: Test voice and emergency calling
Test, test, and test again—especially when it comes to your contact center. For your inbound voice, make sure you perform voice testing across inbound, outbound, IVR call flows, holds, transfers, and failovers.
For emergency services, make sure you:
Test endpoints with Bandwidth’s 933 to cut down on live 911 calls to PSAP
Test live notifications at the time of each 911 call
Perform live 911 testing of primary and secondary SBCs
Notify PSAPs in advance of live testing
PRO TIP
When setting up and testing emergency calling, always consult with your legal team to ensure compliance. It’s incredibly important to get this right because correctly routing your emergency calls can lead to a life-saving impact during workplace emergencies.
At Bandwidth, we set up 933 call routing policies so you can verify location information without performing live 911 testing. And with regulations like Kari’s Law, which requires notifications at the time of 911 calls, and RAY BAUM’s Act, which requires address line 2 information to be included at the time of each call, creating a compliant contact center is complicated.
Porting is one of the oldest telecom challenges and can unleash communications chaos if handled improperly. Disconnected numbers can disrupt customer calls, interrupt revenue, and create a domino effect of bad news. So what do you do?
A 3-step process to avoid number chaos
By setting up a parallel path between your on-prem and cloud telephony, you can keep traffic flowing to your existing on-prem setup even as you port your numbers.
Consolidating your numbers with a cloud-native carrier gives you control over every step of the process, and your phones will continue working as usual.
Notice that porting doesn’t mean migrating—because we’ve separated these steps on purpose, you can roll back to your existing systems and everything will still work!
Our customers didn’t understand why ports were so difficult. One of the great things about Bandwidth? It just isn’t. Their number portal is very easy to navigate—there’s no comparison.
James Broadstone
Senior Telecom Project Engineer
PRO TIP
Manage your move with departmental, geographic, or systems-based cohorts to make training and issue resolution easy and addressable. Your future self will thank you.
Step 4: Design your contact center for success
As an enterprise contact center, you’re almost always looking at a one-to-many or many-to-many migration. You’re not just moving from Avaya to Genesys—you’re also migrating the 15 other third-party solutions to the cloud (or trying to build a hybrid ecosystem).
Now, it’s not enough to just build a contact center. Your customers expect fast, effective support the first time a problem arises, and business decision-makers expect a best-of-breed, cohesive, contact center ecosystem.
Need expert help?
The secret to achieving all of this PLUS migraine-free migration is to find a modern carrier that can get you where you need to go now, and years in the future (wherever that may be).
