You know football season is right around the corner when coworkers start huddling over player stats and putting together fantasy drafts. And even if sports aren’t your thing, you can’t deny that in just a few short years, fantasy football has become a full-on mainstream phenomenon. Kind of like the cloud as a contact center platform.

A Level Playing Field

What started as a way to deliver business services and save some money has become a legitimate means of gaining significant business agility. Now, everyone is getting into the game. In a recent Network World article, Jeffrey Mann, Vice President of Gartner Research, said that the “cloud will increasingly be the default option for software deployment.” The article also tosses up a Gartner predication that “by 2019, 30% of the 100 largest software vendors will have adopted a cloud-only model.”

The Cloud Is Legit—but Is It Always the Right Choice?

Your contact center is a mission-critical business function. So if you move it to a cloud contact center, you’ll need the support of a global data center footprint, providing redundancy and failover for your cloud-based applications and distributed agents. Another big deal is data privacy and security—both extremely important to maintain customer confidence and regulatory compliance.

Beyond geolocation and security, look closely at your overall business goals. Most companies that make the move to the cloud are looking to do one or all of the following:

  • Deliver a new voice and digital engagement solution by replacing end-of-life technology or an outsourced contact center.
  • Drive greater financial flexibility and scalability by shifting from an on-premises solution to cloud agility.
  • Exchange outdated applications and multi-vendor technologies for a best-of-suite solution that supports better integration, engagement, and customer experience.
  • Expand geographic coverage to include new regions and agent groups.
  • Deploy a departmental solution or spin out an entire division complete with contact center capabilities.
  • Integrate with legacy systems or acquisitions, as well as CRM solutions.
  • Grow quickly and compete with much bigger companies, yet beat them on personalization and enhanced customer experience.

Choose the Right Vendor

In addition to greater business agility, a cloud contact center should simplify the agent and customer experience. So look at the interface. Be sure it’s simple and consistent throughout the experience—from the integrated agent desktop and supervisor portal through the routing design and analytics dashboard. Also, be sure that all the various customer channels are well integrated to provide good customer journey insight.

Start with a Scouting Report

In addition to vendor reputation and track record, you’ll want to see how and why companies in similar industries chose their vendor to provide a cloud contact center platform. These three examples are a good place to start.

Atom Bank

The UK’s first all-digital bank is available exclusively via online devices and backed by world-class 24/7 customer support. Instead of technology being a barrier to service, the bank chose a cloud contact center solution to act as a conduit to improved service. Here’s what it got:

  • Highly scalable solution to meet ambitious growth objectives
  • A combination of customer centricity and technical prowess
  • Cloud support solutions designed with security in mind while minimizing customer effort

Read their customer story and see video from their CEO here.

CarTrawler

This fully managed, online ground transportation solution provider works with travel partners in 174 countries. Customer service is critical to the business, and CarTrawler ultimately chose a cloud contact center provider based on rankings in the annual Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure report. The decision paid off in the form of:

  • High availability and uptime even in the face of power failures and other disruptions
  • Ability to support agents working remotely and scale to meet fluctuating demand
  • Easily implemented social media support
  • Real-time analytics for monitoring customer care trends

Read CarTrawler’s complete success story here! 

Red Hat

As a leader in open source software solutions, Red Hat established a global service department of 500 contact center agents. Senior management mandated to move infrastructure and service to the cloud to drive agility, scale operations, and shorten time-to-market. A cloud contact center solution allowed it to:

  • Reduce maintenance and management expense
  • Meet disaster recovery and business continuity requirements
  • Maintain improved control over call routing and business rules

Read RedHat’s success story or watch below:

Watch the Webinar and Come on in for the Big Win

No doubt, moving to the cloud is a big decision. That’s why you’re invited to watch the information-packed on-demand webinar Is It Time to Move Your Contact Center to the Cloud? Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Art Schoeller explains how a cloud contact center can be the key solution-set to improve customer experience, grow customer loyalty, and optimize global operations.

Watch our on-demand webinar and start making your fantasies a reality with a cloud contact center.