The Case for the Call and Contact Center

Nowadays, people expect instant communication and connection in nearly every aspect of their lives. For this reason, the call and contact center has never been more necessary than it is now in the business realm. Companies that aim to provide best-in-class service are implementing cloud-based call and contact centers — and reaping the benefits of contact center best practices.

Everyone Wants a Piece of Your Time

First off, you might be asking why a cloud-based call or contact center needs to be a consideration. As it turns out, there are a few good reasons. Perhaps most important is the simple fact that modern businesses operate in an era of technological change, with the sheer growth of the managed services industry is evidence enough of this. According to Grand View Research, the U.S. cloud managed services market is expected to grow at a 15.4 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2025.

Enter the modern, cloud-based call and contact center: A communications solution built from the ground up to address precisely these expectations. After all, who has the time or resources to maintain 24/7 text, chat, and social media services for your growing list of clients, all while scaling your company's growth? And that's not even considering the constant need to keep up with the ever-flowing fountain of technological innovation.

What's needed is a single platform through which to manage the multifaceted, always-on communication that your customers expect.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of all this efficiency is the cost savings that come with it. In some cases, organizations cut as much as 36 percent from their traditional call and contact center costs.

Call and Contact Center: Peas in a Pod

What makes a call center different from a contact center? The distinction is actually quite simple. A modern cloud-based call center operates on voice over IP, or VoIP, technology and typically involves only voice communication. A contact center, on the other hand, is a call center with more features and modes of communication, such as chatbots and instant messaging, to offer different communication solutions for different use cases.

What benefits could these two technologies possibly have for your organization? As described at the beginning of this article, quite a few. It all starts with customer satisfaction. Thanks to a bevy of technological innovations, modern cloud-based contact centers offer social media integration on par with the phone in your pocket.

That may be a seemingly trivial feature at first, but when you look at how your users interact with the digital world around them, the implications will become more clear. Depending on the user, they might prefer contact via email, text, social media, or any number of other methods. It's also possible that a user may initiate contact through social media, but then need to pick up the conversation via old-fashioned telephony.

The Power of Flexibility

Modern cloud-based contact centers are nothing if not flexible. They give your customers the freedom to choose how and when to communicate. Best of all, being a managed service itself, all these features come without the burden of management usually attached.

In fact, you don't even need humans on the other side of the screen. Modern, cloud-based contact centers with bundled chatbots let AI take the wheel and provide instant feedback for customers. And don't let the idea your customers chatting with a computer give you the willies; according to Ubisend's 2017 Chatbot Report, more than a third of surveyed customers — 35 percent — wish more companies would use the technology.

But it's not just about the customers; your organization benefits from the increased efficiency, too. Efficiency when deploying new call centers thanks to the cloud foundation. Efficiency when handling customer contact from anywhere, with interactions ranging from a handful of calls, texts, and chats, to billions of interactions over a reliable MPLS network. And finally, efficiency when managing it all from the convenience of your smartphone.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of all this efficiency is the cost savings that come with it. In some cases, organizations moving to cloud solutions save considerably comparted to traditional call and contact center costs. Between efficiency, cost savings, and increased customer satisfaction, organizations with a cloud-based contact center in tow are empowered to deliver better customer interactions and drive revenue growth.

When it's all said and done, cloud-based call and contact centers give you the power to connect with your customers more freely. They can also help cut costs, improve efficiency, and future-proof your investment with flexible APIs.

Contact Vonage Business to learn more about how cloud-based communications can aid your company.