#contactcenterworld, @Calabrio

Calabrio, a customer experience intelligence company, uncovered new data regarding contact centers that shifted operations to the cloud during the pandemic.

In a study entitled State of the Contact Center 2021: Cloud is Here. What’s Next?, the company found that a majority of businesses that adopted cloud platforms in the last 12 months believe they are leveraging their cloud investments to their full potential. This includes using cloud-based platforms to enable a remote workforce, sharing critical information across teams more easily, and collaborating and managing agent productivity. The survey of 273 contact center leaders digs into the cloud’s full potential and identifies the next shift for the cloud-smart contact center.

Among all respondents, three-quarters of managers agreed that moving to a cloud-based infrastructure allows organizations to be more strategic and business-oriented, even throughout the pandemic. The pandemic was clearly a catalyst for cloud migration, as two-thirds of contact center migrations to the cloud – full or partial – occurred in the past year.

"In response to the pandemic, brands resorted to defensive strategies to survive. The migration to the cloud was a product of those strategies. However, now that contact centers have evolved and the industry looks to the future, companies are realizing they have a new weapon at their disposal. With cloud solutions integrated into their contact centers, brands can be more proactive, strategic and offensive-minded in 2021. While the migration to the cloud was meant to keep brands’ floors intact, cloud-based solutions will now allow them to push their ceilings higher than they imagined," said Tom Goodmanson, president and CEO of Calabrio.

Nearly three-quarters of contact centers in this study now use a partially or fully integrated cloud solution, yet half of the respondents still feel limited by their current solution and are looking to introduce new or alternative cloud-based platforms that add value to their current architecture. This suggests that while many contact centers believe they are leveraging their cloud solution to its full potential, there is still room for just as many brands to grow.

Other key takeaways from the study show that the next phase of cloud transformation will enable companies to be more strategic, for example:

• Growing Reliance on Analytics with an Openness to Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Half of contact center managers believe that moving to the cloud has improved their ability to use intelligent analytics to manage the business, including insights to support agent and customer interactions. Contact centers running in the cloud are also more likely to trust AI (75%) than their on-premises counterparts (61%).
  
  
• Creating Employee Engagement – Today, 60% of contact centers believe the cloud has increased employee satisfaction and engagement within the organization. According to one manager, securely storing customer account data in the cloud has made it easier for employees to access information across the organization regardless of their location.
  
  
• Ability to Innovate and Adopt New Tools – Contact center managers who have fully adopted cloud platforms are more open to trying new tools as they navigate their digital transformation. For example, 56% are more willing to try social tools, 55% are more willing to try business intelligence software, and 47% are more willing to try new chatbot technologies.
  
  
• Seeing is Believing – For those that have transitioned to the cloud, the experience has created a positive outlook on the new technology and they are more likely to see the additional benefits of the cloud over those with on-premises solutions. For instance, over half of contact center managers with integrated cloud solutions believe they have positively impacted employee and customer data analysis.

Evan Kirstel, B2B technology thought leader concluded, "The benefits of the cloud contact center are so numerous that it is now impossible to overlook them. That is why more and more companies are adopting this model. Many are driven by the urgent need to embrace digital transformation, others a need to be more flexible to adapt to the post-pandemic landscape. A cloud platform is the most obvious choice in almost any circumstance. It provides higher security, improves efficiency, allows for faster business process optimization and supports digital transformation initiatives."

#contactcenterworld, @Calabrio