Contact Center-as-a-Service: What the Contemporary Enterprise Needs to Know
As companies are coming under greater pressure to deliver consistently exceptional customer experiences, they are increasingly turning to contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) solutions. Enterprises can tap into their many benefits to improve customer service, enhance bottom lines, optimize their contact center operations, enjoy the flexibility of a scalable deployment, and more predictably manage costs. When setting out to improve customer service, a cloud-based contact center can be a powerful asset.
Customer Service: A Top Priority
Customers expect excellent customer service from the brands they do business with, and they're quite willing to leave if these expectations aren't met. According to Conversion Research, 54 percent of millennials report abandoning a brand because of poor customer service, while 50 percent of Gen Xers and 52 percent of baby boomers have done the same. Customers desire quick, helpful responses to their queries, regardless as to whether they use the phone, text, chat, or social media to engage with brands. If they don't get responses promptly, they tend to move on to the competition.
Given this reality, it's no surprise that many enterprises consider improving customer service to be a top priority. Success or failure in this realm has a direct impact on the bottom line. The cost of acquiring a new customer is much higher than the cost of retaining an existing one, and satisfied customers generate greater revenue over the long run. In fact, according to a study from Bain & Company, just a 5 percent increase in customer retention rates can generate up to a 95 percent increase in profit, reports Forbes. That's why it makes smart business sense to invest in a high-performing contact center.
Why Contact Center Services Deliver Better Customer Service
Cloud-based contact center services can help enterprises improve the customer experience, thus driving greater revenue. High-quality customer service begins with the contact center professionals themselves. Contact center-as-a-service solutions offer many ways to empower them while maximizing their talent. Far from a simple tool or piece of software that call center representatives use to engage with customers, today's contact center services provide a wealth of opportunities to enhance other elements of the operation.
Cloud-based contact centers provide supervisors with convenient dashboards for training and monitoring their staff, jumping on a customer call if needed, or simply listening in to monitor employee performance. Afterward, they can tap real-time metrics and historical performance data to review what's going well and what could be handled even better, continually optimizing the mission-critical business processes upon which a successful customer experience relies. Supervisors can use the insights gleaned from such analytics for better talent management, identifying valuable front-line agents who deliver an especially excellent customer experience and nurturing their professional growth so the company can benefit from their expertise even further.
A CCaaS solution allows the business to right-size its operations essentially on demand, growing or contracting as needed without delay.
Contact center services can even empower teams and incentivize them to excel. Gamification allows representatives to set metrics and objectives that can be shared with the rest of the team. They can engage in friendly competition with their colleagues to win more deals in less time, helping them feel more connected with their peers than they otherwise would in what can sometimes be an isolating call center environment. Successful representatives can earn badges and unlock virtual rewards, gaining the satisfaction and recognition of a job well done. In turn, the business benefits from the achievements of its staff, who become even more motivated to deliver a quality experience that delights the customer.
How Contact Center-as-a-Service Lets Enterprises Grow at Scale
Contact center services also present enterprises with the opportunity for unlimited scalability on demand. Unlike premises-based solutions that require considerable upfront capital investment and a high degree of advance planning, businesses can deploy cloud-based contact center solutions rapidly and flexibly, responding to changes in the market with agility and ease. The scalable licensing models that cloud-based contact centers offer can be useful when a company needs to increase staffing for a particular campaign or seasonal initiative. This is much easier to accomplish in a short period of time with CCaaS.
A CCaaS solution allows the business to right-size its operations essentially on demand, growing or contracting as needed without delay. It's also beneficial from a financial perspective, since the expenditures are far more predictable and manageable than would be the case in an on-premises scenario. Cloud-based contact services also simplify the process of compliance management, making it less burdensome and more efficient.
Enterprises know they have no time to lose when it comes to improving their customer experience and locking in customer loyalty for the long term. Investing in a cloud-based contact center can be a powerful way to do just that, greatly enhancing the quality of customer service while making the most of the flexibility and scalability that CCaaS offers. In doing so, they can ensure better agility and competitiveness now and in the future while bringing a healthy boost to the bottom line.
Contact Vonage Business to learn more about how a cloud-based contact center can benefit your company.
