Transitioning your on-premises call center to the cloud creates enormous opportunities for growth and innovation. Some businesses have near and long-term plans to move to the cloud. According to our recent global survey, 62% of contact center executives plan to implement a cloud contact center within the next 18 months. And their top three reasons for doing so are ease of management and scale, software currency, and continuous feature delivery. What is a cloud contact center?
These are just a few of the many benefits that cloud technology brings to a business including flexibility, security, capex versus opex, IT efficiencies, and access to innovative technologies that are only available in the cloud.
However, only 15% of all contact centers globally and 9% of all large contact centers with over 250 agents have transitioned to the cloud. What is behind these low numbers?
A practical and unique approach
Swapping out your existing contact center infrastructure investments is most likely not an option. This can be risky, costly and extremely disruptive to your business and your customers.
Cisco takes a practical approach to help our customers make this important transition. This uniquely enables our customers to create better agent and customer experiences by taking advantage of technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, cloud data analytics, and more while leveraging their on-premises contact center investments.
Mindfulness minimizes risk and disruption
Your contact center is one of the most interconnected applications in your enterprise, with dozens of integrations to multiple systems. It is multi-threaded and highly dependent on reliable real-time communications with your customers. In fact, this is one of the reasons many have not yet moved their contact center to the cloud. Our global survey indicates that the top reason for this dynamic is the potential for business disruption, particularly for larger contact centers.
Consider all the action that’s happening at the agent desktop which is the focal point for customer service applications. Being mindful of how a cloud transition will impact your agents’ ability to serve your customers effectively and in a timely manner is of utmost importance. The costs and risks could be high if your agents’ experience is not considered. Our survey indicates that the average cost to onboard an agent is between $10,000 and $20,000 per agent, and the average time to onboard an agent is 2-4 weeks. Often times these dynamics are not considered when creating a cloud contact center business case.
So how do we get there?
If the cloud is your contact center destination, there are practical steps that should be taken. Join me for this insightful webinar to explore the best practices that maximize the value of your contact center investments, and minimize risk and disruption to your business as you prepare to move to the cloud.
Join our webinar today, and read our eBook to learn more about the latest cloud contact center innovations.
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