Why the Cloud is the Future of Your Contact Center: A Decade in the Making

It is high time that the cloud drove the success of your contact center initiatives!

In the late 2000s, there was a lot of debate going on in the software world as to whether companies should move their software to the cloud. 

The opinions were divided. This included even some of the large ISVs that weren’t taking the software-as-a-service route seriously, and people were not willing to discuss a move to the cloud. 

Around this time, I met with a friend of mine who worked as Vice President of Marketing at a Spend Management software company. 

He said that they were moving their software stack to the cloud and were betting heavily on offering it as a service. He even went to the extent of mentioning that the only way software would be sold would be as a service in another ten years’ time. 

I was with an IT services company then, and we were conducting webinars on the pros and cons of moving to the cloud. However, we weren’t able to take a stand and say that this is the way forward. 

When I probed this friend further as to why they were betting so much on cloud delivery, he mentioned the benefits far outweigh any of the cons we speak about the cloud. 

Besides, he was talking about scale, which was possible only on the cloud. Moreover, on-premise software was the kingdom that only a few could afford, and it would never democratize the software industry. 

He was also very vocal about the security aspects of cloud delivery. While several organizations were wary of putting their data on the cloud, he said the kind of security the cloud providers offer can never be replicated on-premise. 

With the cloud, you can keep costs low, which allows you to scale. Once you scale, the kind of investments you make on the cloud gets staggered among multiple businesses that use the software as a service. 

So, it would be a win-win situation – for the provider as well as the consumers.

While most ISVs moved their software to the cloud, in the customer experience space, on-premise contact centers were the toast of organizations. 

Move it to 2018!

The conversation I mentioned above happened in 2007. But when I approached a bunch of customers in the BFSI segment to check out our cloud contact center solutions platform, the common refrain was: 

“You know what? We are in a regulated industry, and we can never move our data to the cloud.”

Whenever I spoke about how secure our cloud offering was and why they shouldn’t be concerned about moving their data to the cloud, my arguments were met with resistance.

They just did not budge.

However, all of these changed post-pandemic. Many in the BFSI segment wanted to move their agents to work from home and remotely, but their on-premise providers weren’t able to support this migration. 

The ones who supported them came up with a fat VPN bill.

We migrated thousands of agents to the cloud during the pandemic, and some of them looked at us as a stop-gap arrangement. But, they never went back to their on-premise systems. 

Here are four reasons why organizations love our cloud offering. 

• Security

This is the much-debated feature of cloud contact centers. So, I wanted to address this as the first reason. 

Most customers we work with agree with the fact that a cloud contact center is more secure than an on-premise one. The number of variables in the cloud environment is minimal compared to the on-premise scenario. 

Most cloud providers have top-notch security experts – who design and manage their security practices. Besides, they are proactive in addressing all kinds of security vulnerabilities.

Imagine having a vulnerability database to manage your on-premise contact center infrastructure internally. It would take a lot of effort and money to have those kinds of resources. 

This is only feasible with cloud providers like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. 

• Compliance 

How often have you lost a contract with a customer because your call center operations are not in compliance with industry standards and regulations? 

You don’t have to worry about it with cloud infrastructure. 

Most cloud providers comply with industry standards and regulations like GDPR, TCPA, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, ISO, STIR/SHAKEN process, and Regulation – F among others.

Imagine the amount of effort you will have to invest in becoming compliant with all of these regulations. 

• Pay-per-minute 

How often have you paid the agent license fee and you couldn’t find an opportunity to make use of the license? 

Your needs keep varying at your contact center, and you would ideally love the flexibility to scale up and down the resources easily. But your on-premise systems don’t allow you to do that. 

With the cloud, you can scale up and down per your business needs at the click of a button. Besides, you only pay for what you use. 

Nothing more. Nothing less.  

You don’t have to provide any contractual commitment, no minimum guarantees, and you pay for only the minutes that you consume as a part of your business. 

• Anywhere, anytime access 

When was the last time you interviewed a great resource, but they turned down the offer because they didn’t want to move to the city where your contact center is located? 

The cloud truly supports remote agents, work-from-home agents, and agents on the move. All you need is working Internet connectivity and access to a browser, and you are good to get cracking with delighting your customers. 

Today, most contact centers have either moved to the cloud or are in the process of moving it to the cloud. 

What has triggered this shift? 

While the pandemic forced most organizations to look at the cloud favorably, they aren’t forcibly staying loyal to the cloud infrastructure. 

Organizations have realized the benefits of the cloud and have understood the flexibility and scalability it provides at a fraction of the cost they would have otherwise spent. 

We are a true blue cloud contact center solution provider, and we haven’t had a customer churn in the last eight years of our operations in India.

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Interesting Related Article: “3 Ways Your Business Could Benefit From a Cloud Call Center“