Elevate Your Customer Service to the Clouds

This is the perfect place to clear up a misconception — cloud isn't all or nothing. Many customer service leaders make the assumption that they need to move all the component applications of their 'suite', often called Workforce Optimization, to the cloud at once.

While the obvious starting point would be infrastructure replacement (after all, the cloud notion emerged from CAPEX and TCO reduction), it is actually the hardest one.  Contact center infrastructure, such as core ACD and PBX applications, have long life cycles - of 10 to 15 years - between major architectural changes. This means that many customers have been locked into older premises-based products for decades. Add to this, conservative contact center managers who depend on the performance of their applications to meet their service levels and who need a strong justification to disrupt their operation with new technology. 

Finding the sweet spot

The 'sweet spot' lies in the contact center software, as CRM and WFO technologies are also shifting to the cloud. Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company, found that 15% of decision-makers who implemented customer service and support software have already replaced all or most of their on-premises customer service applications with software-as-a-service solutions.

Most service providers have recording, quality and performance management solutions, analytics, and other applications, well

But the 'sweet spot', to start with the process of moving into the cloud is with WFM solution.

When a service provider is moving their Workforce Management (WFM) solution to the cloud, they can easily expand it to cover both the contact center and business operations, sharing the solution across the entire service organization.