The recent Forrester Consulting study commissioned by SuccessKPI “The Frustrating Journey to Cloud Contact Center Success” revealed some interesting insights about the adoption and optimisation of Cloud Contact Center-as-a-Service (CCaaS) across different global regions.

While contact centers across APAC, LATAM, and the EU/UK have diverse strategies and environments, the study revealed that 79% of respondents globally agree the right cloud toolset is critical to optimisation. Expected benefits of optimising with cloud toolsets include:

• Improved quality management (64%)
• Increased incremental revenue (57%)
• Improved agent efficiency (50%)

In addition, respondents expected to see reduced agent churn due to the improved agent and customer experience.

While a significant majority of contact centers surveyed in the United States (US) (58%) and United Kingdom (UK) (42%) have transitioned to the cloud, they fall behind in optimisation, which dramatically impacts contact center / CX performance.

Some of the reasons include:

• Limited internal talent with new technology
• Complex internal IT landscape
• Executive support

There is much opportunity for businesses in these regions to bridge the gap for potential growth and efficiency gains. In fact, the UK contact centre market is projected to be growing at a CAGR of 7.6% from 2023-2031.

I have worked with hundreds of global contact centres and over the years I have seen a distinct approach in the UK to cloud contact center technology, balancing innovation with strategic optimisation.

In Germany, Europe’s largest and most advanced technology market, the Forrester Consulting study revealed that while only 14% have not optimized their CCaaS solution at all, 57% have done so but still see room for improvement. Among the areas for improvement, 53% of respondents across Central Europe as a whole desire more timely triggered alerts to crisis situations.

Apparently the most challenging aspect to CCaaS in Germany is the migration from on-premise to cloud. Only one in three operators (33%) said their migration was completely successful, indicating the need for specialized assistance when moving to a cloud-based contact center.

Despite slower progress in optimisation, Latin America (LATAM) contact centres, reported the highest success rate in cloud migration of 63% in the Forrester study.

An example of cloud success is Multi, one of the most diversified consumer goods companies in Brazil with 28 in-house brands, 22 licensed brands, 9 partner brands, and a portfolio of 7,000+ product SKUs. They’re dedicated to delivering an exceptional experience for their end consumers. SuccessKPI has enabled Multi to gain a deep personalized understanding of customer experience at scale by leveraging speech, text, and sentiment analysis to capture the sentiment, topics, and issues from consumer interactions. Then they transformed that knowledge into an improved experience as well as actions and processes for their customers. Multi also leveraged automated quality management to move from monitoring just 1% of calls to a full 100%.

Hear firsthand how Multi is delivering personalized experience at scale.

The State of CX: Asia Pacific report highlights the greatest challenges facing APAC companies’ customer experience function today are:

• Improving effectiveness of self-service technologies (bots, AI)
• Managing quality and productivity with remote/hybrid working
• Keeping staff continually trained on new tools and protocols

We heard conversations about these challenges on the ground at G-Summit SEAsia. Kulachart Ngernpermpoon from Genesys and I hit the stage to share some of the innovations National Telecom is bringing to CX. They are transforming their contact center operations with automated QM, reporting designed for smooth cloud migration, and implementing multi-language speech and text analytics.

Real-time business intelligence, automation, and sentiment analytics are among the most sought-after capabilities in CCaaS.

The right cloud toolset is crucial for CCaaS success, as echoed by 79% of respondents globally. While contact centers across APAC, LATAM, and the EU/UK have diverse approaches, shared goals of optimisation are loud and clear in the cloud contact center industry.