#contactcenterworld, @ccs4cx

Author: Chidiogo Emmanuel, Digital Communications, Call Center Studio

Deciding whether to use Cloud PBX or Cloud Contact Center depends on your business’s primary needs.

While several people will argue that Cloud Contact Center is the way to go, that opinion is relative and subject to a company’s goals. A company needs first to analyze its processes before making a best-fit decision.

In this article, we’ll get to understand the cloud contact center and cloud PBX, as well as their differences.

First, let’s learn about the Cloud contact center.

Cloud Contact Center (also known as CCaaS) is a 360 call center software that provides cloud-hosted services, including telephony applications and other features such as messaging, CRM integration, social media interaction, etc.

All of the listed features are delivered in an Omni-channel interface for an enhanced customer service experience.

There are several cloud contact center providers; however, not all have the omnichannel feature. One of the key differentiating service factors between these providers comes from their telephony offering. Also, Cloud infrastructure like Google allows easy integrations and unlimited scalability, while others may lack such features.

Cloud telephony functionality can be in the form of Cloud PBX or Cloud Call Center.

Cloud PBX

Cloud PBX is simply a PBX system hosted on a cloud service without the added cost of infrastructure management.

A PBX (Private Branch Exchange) is a private telephone system used within a company or organization to communicate internally (within the company) and externally (the outside world), using different communication channels like Voice over IP, ISDN or analog.

The Cloud PBX may use telephone hardware or a computer integrated telephony or softphone system to execute the phone calls. Cloud contact centers offer all the features of Cloud PBX and more. Let’s take a look at the features of Cloud PBX.

Screen pop-ups

For agents managing calls from their IP desk phones or softphones, a screen pop-up shows a caller’s details alongside interaction history for personalized customer experience. With the information, agents can take the necessary actions required to provide a first-time call resolution.

Find me-Follow me

Find Me-Follow Me is a feature that enables phone calls to be received at different locations on different phones or devices.

An agent can map both their IP desk phones and mobile phones to a DID (Direct Inward Dialling) number – that way, when they receive a call, both their desk phone and mobile phone rings, and the agent has the choice to answer from any device.

This feature enhances agent productivity.

Direct Inward Dialing (DID)

Direct Inward Dialing (DID) is a feature that allows a company to map several numbers to a trunk line without requiring a physical line into the Cloud PBX for each possible connection.

A company may have 50 listed customer care numbers to the public that could be reached over ten physical telephone lines (these are the "trunk lines"). This allows seven simultaneous calls with a busy signal for additional inbound calls until one of the calls is completed or can leave a voicemail message.

DID creates room for the departmentalization of calls for accurate call routing that delivers personalized and improved customer experience.

Click-to-call

With a click-to-call feature, the stress of manual dialling is eliminated, alongside the possibilities of dialling errors.

Agents can move from call to call with just a single click regardless of the application they’re working with. The additional functionality of screen pop enhances the first-time resolution of customer needs.

Click-to-Call also provides the facility to record calls and also upload call notes automatically. The sales team can call more leads with increased efficiency, resulting in more closed deals and revenue.

Collaboration features

Agents can collaborate with their supervisors or other agents through screen sharing, call transfer, or call conferencing to serve the customer correctly.

How about Cloud Contact Centers?

As earlier stated, Cloud contact centers include all the above-listed features plus more offerings. Check them out below.

Public API for Quick Integration

Not all Cloud Contact centers have an Open API for quick integration. However, it is essential to choose a complete cloud solution that does, as it saves time and cost.

A cloud-based contact center allows quick and easy integration with other applications such as CRM software, Payment solutions, Chat solutions, and many more. With an omnichannel interface, agents can have a unified view of interactions across all channels for enhanced and exceptional customer experience.

Detailed Real-time Reporting & Analytics

Effective reporting and analysis of data help a business understand customer needs.

With the right cloud contact center provider, you get built-in Google BI & Analytics for real-time monitoring, contact history, and graphical custom reporting for fast insight into your team’s performance.

The supervisor not only gets valuable insights on call reports like call dropout rate, abandoned call rate; But also gets agent level information like the average handling time, shrinkage rate, first call resolution rate.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)

Unlike Cloud PBX, a cloud call center can route calls to agents based on different criteria – skill-based routing or VIP calls.

With skill-based routing, Call center agents have become more specialized.

When a customer calls in with a need relating to a specific field, agents with the best-fit skillset get a first-hand look at such requests, thereby improving personalized customer experience.

ACD allows the management of different queues for different campaigns. The sticky agent feature allows the connection of a customer call to a particular agent based on the caller preference.

Customizable Advanced Dialers

With a customizable dialer, you can increase the efficiency of your agents. Functionalities such as the predictive dialer initiate outbound call from a contact list automatically and sequentially.

A predictive dialer uses predictive statistical algorithms to place outbound calls based on agents’ availability and each call’s duration.

With this feature, the dialer can forecast the next call’s length due to AI-powered machine learning.

Depending on the type of campaign, a complete cloud contact center offers you the option to customize the predictive dialer to call each number on a list per available agent, thus acting as a progressive dialer.

A progressive dialer is also useful when the communication regulations do not allow for Predictive dialer use.

Added features can be implemented with a CRM integration to run a Preview dialer where the agent can see the contact history ensuring excellent support. With a click-to-call feature, the stress of manual dialling is eliminated, alongside the possibilities of dialling errors.

Use of AI

Cloud contact center solutions best complement artificial Intelligence (AI).

Chatbots help streamlines B2C interaction and enhances efficiency in resolving customer requests, improving customer experience, and minimizing operational cost.

According to a report by MIT Technology, 90% of businesses report faster complaint resolution with bots.

Also, AI-powered IVR is equipped with Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), Speech to text (STT), Text to Speech (TTS), and Google Dialogflow features to enable the personalized conversational experience.

Sentiment analysis enhances customer experiences through understanding the caller’s intent and gauging their emotional state.

With conversational IVR, customers can interact with your system using their voice and words, rather than their fingers.

Cloud PBX or Cloud Contact Center…Which one suits your business needs?

Like earlier stated, the answer to this question depends on the goals of your business.

Although both solutions help a business streamline customer interactions, Cloud Contact Centre Software outperforms Cloud PBX on the front of enhancing customer experience.

The Cloud contact center provides scalable personalization features to meet and probably exceed the demands and expectations of the modern-day customer and improve agent efficiency.

#contactcenterworld, @ccs4cx