Kathy Gibson reports from Gartner Symposium – Within Africa, the contact centre has been a very slow in moving to the cloud – but that move is starting to happen.
Deon Scheepers, sales operations manager: Africa at Interactive Intelligence, warns that there are some challenges that user organisations need to be wary of when moving their contact centre environments into the cloud.
“There is no doubt that the key technologies are social, mobile and cloud,” he says. “But there is a massive amount of disruption that is relevant in businesses, and especially in the contact centre.
“Customer service is a company’s key differentiator, but companies have to balance it with budget and cost control. Meanwhile, the customer is changing completely as a result of disruptive technology – and the new generation of customers want to communicate via different channels.
“We see that the contact centre must start evolving because the business needs it to add more value – to start owning the customer, adding value and generating revenue.”
Meanwhile, the self-service channels like social, Web chat, Web call back and others are exploding,” Scheepers says.
“Customers are forcing contact centres to move into this space – and they are driving the pace at which these changes have to happen. Customers expect these new channels to happen almost in realtime.”
To crown it all, customers jump around between devices and channels, which causes a disconnect as customer dissatisfaction.
“So within the contact centre you end up with various difference systems and communication channels, and there’s a challenge to integrate it all,” Sheepers says. “As a result, only 25% of South African contact centres have a single view of the customer.
“Because business requirements are changing faster than the contact centre technology is able to, cloud starts looking like a viable option.”
We are seeing a rapid growth in contact centres moving to the cloud, Scheepers says. In South Africa it’s still early days, according to Frost & Sullivan, with fewer than 5% of local contact centres currently hosted in the cloud. This is expected to grow to over 20% in the next two years – a massive jump, says Scheepers.
At Interactive Intelligence, about 35% of all new EMEA orders are for cloud contact centres, a number that is growing rapidly.
Scheepers points out that the move to cloud computing is not so much about cost saving, but the increase in agility and speed are driving adoption. But the ability to address and manage the multi-channel environment is another big driver for the contact centre market.
We are seeing that the reasons customers go to the cloud are: increased flexibility; faster deployment time; focus on the business versus build-out of it infrastructure; to improve reliability; there’s a lower initial capital investment; reduced cost; and to improve customer service
experience.
“The improved customer experience is arguably the most compelling,” Scheepers says.
Cloud contact centres help companies move away from outdated cumbersome IVT systems, with incremental upgrades providing constant technology refreshes.
Meanwhile the cloud provider is better able to handle multi-channel communications and add new channels more effectively.
“Importantly, cloud solutions tend to allow better integration with other systems like CRM and social media, while management is easier and more efficient in the cloud world.
“The bottom line impact of a cloud-based contact centre is improved customer experience, and agent productivity, with reduced maintenance and costs together with improved flexibility.”
Surveys also show that the total cost of ownership is much better for both small and large contact centres when they are moved to the cloud.
Scheepers points out that when moving to the cloud, administrators should consider both the business and IT strategies to ensure they are aligned. When selecting a vendor, trust is an important consideration, along with issues like stability, reliability and security.
“Make sure you evaluate vendors on various criteria and that you trust them to deliver,” he says. “Make sure the cloud service caters to all the capabilities that you need – or may need in the future. Also ensure there is an interface whereby you can communicate with other cloud providers as well.”
Moving to the cloud would usually be the result of a desire to gain the customer service advantage in your market, or to offer additional services and options to your customers.
The cloud is an attractive option for companies where IT is battling to meet all the businesses needs with its current resources and expertise, where current systems are nearing end of life, or where there is limited capital budget available.
It has the added bonus of empowering the business with additional capabilities.
Some of the concerns about moving to the cloud include security, a preference to keep it in house; current systems are not sue for replacement, reliability concerns, integration challenges, not familiar with cloud solutions.
A world class supplier like Interactive Intelligence needs to ensure that security and regulatory compliance Is up to scratch, along with reliability, with guaranteed service levels of 99,999%, with a 24/7 NOC.