This article was written by Lee Allum, who is vice president of marketing at Noble Systems, a leading contact center solutions provider.
“Once primarily the realm of deployments of 75 agents or fewer, [cloud-based contact center] solutions are increasingly gaining adoption in environments with up to several thousand agents.”—Gartner Magic Quadrant
For channel partners, the continuous rise of cloud-based contact center solutions shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s all the functionality of a traditional on-premises system without the infrastructure costs or maintenance.
Like any other cloud-based solution, a cloud contact center offers the speed and agility to keep up with rapidly-changing business demands and technology features available. And as a result, the market for cloud-based contact center solutions is expected to grow to nearly $21 billion by 2022.
This market is just too valuable for channel partners to ignore. Your customers will be looking for ways to adopt cloud contact centers, giving you an opportunity to capitalize on new business.
But not all cloud contact center partners are created equal.
The following tips will help you get involved with cloud contact centers and start capitalizing on this growing market opportunity.
1. Focus on Discovery and Assessment
The benefits of cloud computing are invaluable to your customers. Everyone wants on-demand scalability, faster deployment speeds, and ROI-friendly solutions.
However, you can’t sacrifice contact center functionality for cloud benefits. That’s why the discovery/assessment phase of any customer relationship is so important. You gain a complete understanding of customer pain points and what they need from a contact center solution. And with that information, you can tailor a cloud contact center deployment to their unique situation.
With many cloud contact center solutions, features are limited to the point that you don’t have much flexibility in deployment. In those cases, the information you take from discovery and assessment won’t be put to good use.
But with an enterprise-grade cloud contact center solution—one that mirrors all the features your customers expect from an on-premises system—you have flexibility to deliver superior customer experiences.
2. Work with a Platform-Agnostic Partner
To capitalize on the cloud contact center opportunity, you need to find a technology partner that can offer the best possible experience for your customers.
Your enterprise customers won’t be creating a contact center from scratch. They’ll likely have a wide variety of telephony and unified communications platforms in place already and a new cloud contact center solution will have to fit into the mix.
Unfortunately, many cloud contact center providers deliver closed, proprietary systems that aren’t interoperable with other communications systems. Finding a partner that offers open, scalable, full-distributed technology will give you a competitive advantage over other channel providers that can’t easily integrate with existing solutions.
3. Consider the User Experience in Multiple Environments
Just because you’re embracing the rise of cloud contact centers doesn’t mean on-premises infrastructure disappears. Each situation is unique, and when examining your current setup, you have to ask yourself, “will I need to expand or reduce the number of agents or how do I account for seasonal growth – will my infrastructure allow for that?”
The reality is that you’ll be deploying communications solutions in all-cloud, all on-premises, and hybrid environments.
But as you’re mixing different environments, it’s essential that the UX of contact center solutions remain the same. If every environment comes with a different UX, employee productivity will suffer.
As you evaluate potential cloud contact center providers, be sure to consider how different environments impact user experience—and, more importantly, how your customers will feel about it.
4. Remember to Ask About Compliance Safeguards
Despite continuous advancements in cloud technology, there will always be inherent security concerns when you’re shifting from on-premises to cloud deployments. It’s no different in the context of cloud contact centers.
Because customer data will be stored in the cloud, you need your cloud contact center provider to guarantee compliance safeguards. You should expect guaranteed 100% uptime in the SLA as well as a hosting environment that offers security/privacy features like PCI-DSS compliance and SSAE-certified data centers.
Customers will have different compliance demands depending on their industry. However, if you choose the right technology provider, you’ll be able to address any data protection concerns they might have.
5. Evaluate Vertical Expertise and Applicability
“Cloud-based solutions are finding their way into even the most risk-averse verticals, such as finance and healthcare, for which the importance of customer/patient data security cannot be overestimated.”—ContactBabel
No matter which verticals you serve, there’s an opportunity to sell cloud contact center solutions to your customers. It’s just a matter of finding a technology provider that can fit within the unique demands of various industries.
For example, certain industries you serve might require more advanced disaster recovery capabilities included in the contact center solution. If you choose a partner that can’t meet those requirements, you could miss out on valuable business opportunities.
6. Trust the Track Record and Reputation
Beyond technical capabilities, it’s important that your cloud contact center provider has a track record of success in this market. As the technology matures and the market grows, more and more providers will come into play. Newcomers may promise to give you everything you need—but when your own reputation with customers is on the line, you need a provider you can trust.
For three decades, Noble Systems has been delivering solutions that build performance and productivity, improve the quality and effectiveness of customer contacts, and reduce costs. Our solutions have been recognized across the industry for their leading-edge technologies, range of features, and superior performance and reliability.
And that track record of success hasn’t changed with Noble Enterprise Cloud.
If you want to learn more about how Noble Systems can help you capture the channel market for cloud contact center solutions, contact us today to start a conversation.
Lee Allum is Vice President of Marketing for Noble Systems, a global leader in the customer communications industry, providing innovative solutions for Contact Center, Workforce Engagement, and Analytics technologies. Tens of thousands of agents at client installations worldwide use Noble platforms to manage millions of customer contacts each day.
