Beyond the Hype: The Reality of Moving to Cloud Contact Centers   

The cloud offers compelling benefits for contact centers. Businesses can certainly reap benefits such as faster implementations, resource-saving deployments, greater flexibility, transformed processes, and overall experiences and outcomes.  

However, the reality is that moving your contact center to the cloud is not a simple lift-and-shift process that automatically brings better outcomes. Many organizations face hurdles with resources and complexities, leading to limited success in their CCaaS migration efforts. In a recent study by Forrester Consulting commissioned by SuccessKPI, 40% of respondents reported such limitations.  

The cloud presents opportunities to achieve many benefits including reducing hardware and software to manage, the ability to flex and scale on-demand, and built-in operational security features. It opens the opportunity to simplify how systems are modified and configured. This simplification saves significant IT resources. With the right strategy, greater redundancy and uptime and performance can be achieved in addition to savings.  

The cloud also presents potential challenges that can catch contact center leaders underprepared. Navigating these challenges is made easier by learning from the insights of previous cloud deployments.  

First, you need a meaningful understanding of what specific outcomes you are truly hoping to achieve. Next, you need the right toolset, resources, and strategy to achieve and measure those outcomes. While shifting people and platforms, the tools that you use are pivotal.  

An important blend of art and science goes into understanding people and performance, and how technology interweaves with it all.   

Key areas to prepare for:   

• The introduction of new data models and the need to blend different types of data across complex and various channels. This may include structured and unstructured data with drastically different needs and requirements.   
• Decisions between using APIs versus reporting frameworks can significantly impact your ability to connect the data you need for the outcomes you are trying to achieve.  
• New definitions and constructs that might be missing features that were included in adjacent on-premise technologies. Understand and plan for what you need to keep the business going while you embark on any kind of transformation.  
• New interfaces create skill and training opportunities and challenges for managers and associates.  
• The logistical and technology hurdles of managing remote or hybrid contact center agents who are no longer physically present for transition training and education. Most contact centers now are contending with this newly empowered hybrid workforce that no longer wants to be physically present to be trained and educated. A new set of training and retention tactics are needed.  

The cloud is one of the best decisions your business can make. But you need to do with an improvement mindset, a business mindset, and a cloud toolset able to navigate the complexity of the evolution.  

If done right, cloud toolsets can drive quality, revenue, and efficiency to your environment. The right strategy and toolset can bring you a unified analytics framework, advanced AI/ML technology business users can leverage, and leapfrog legacy workforce management and speech tools. In that same Forrester Consulting study, 79% of respondents agreed that the right cloud toolset is important to optimizing their CCaaS.  

Cloud toolsets play a critical role in facilitating a smooth shift to better outcomes for cloud contact centers. The ability to leverage the intersection of new APIs survey system, CRM system, in addition to your CCaaS system, the ability to automate and provide action and transactional services on top of your analytics framework makes the difference between lackluster or slow outcomes and truly transformational results.  The right toolset will help you synthesize data efficiently and enable real-time actionable insights along with the automation to put those insights to work. The same toolset can bridge operational knowledge and skills gaps and ensure better CCaaS deployments and outcomes. This turns what many have experienced as a frustrating or challenging cloud transition into a smoother, navigable journey with limitless outcomes.