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What is the status of the cloud in the contact center? Is it taking off like other areas of the org?
As cloud takes off in sales, erp, etc....what is happening in the contact center? Are contact center moving to the cloud to support their technologies?
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4 Answers
I agree and disagree with Chris. While I do agree that many contact centers are very traditional (for good reason!) in adopting new technologies, I do see that the cloud will continue to be a driver in contact center technologies over the next five years. As companies get ready to replace their existing infrastructure, cloud solutions are becoming more and more competitive with traditional premise based solutions. The ability of a cloud solution to be dynamically sized as your business needs change provides a high level of value. Why invest in a premise base solution that may be sized too large (and too costly) or sized too small (large cost to expand) when a cloud solution can provide you with advanced features that an organization cannot otherwise afford?
There is also value for companies who do not want to add the expertise to their organization that is necessary to manage a complex, premise based solution. The use of a cloud based solution can allow for the leverage of experienced contact center technologists for small organizations that have the need to make changes rarely. Cloud solutions can also give fully redundant disaster recovery capabilities that many smaller organizations simply cannot afford. Why have two switches in two locations when you can use virtual agents on a cloud based switch?
Cloud solutions can also make an important impact to the balance sheet. By selecting a service provider rather than a premise based solution, companies can move costs associated with non-core competencies to the OpEx, rather than CapEx, side of the balance sheet - thus showing to investors and stockholders that capital investments are being made in the core competency - not operational costs.
In other words, I believe that cloud based solutions are the next big thing in contact centers...and predict we will see dramatic growth in this sector in the next five years.
It depends how you define 'contact center' - if you mean it in the traditional sense (i.e. a 'center' where all of your agents sit) then the answer is no. That market is very conservative, very traditional and very cost-conscious - and for the most part still uses traditional on premise technology.
However, in 'virtual' contact center environments - where the agents are remote, often working from home, and sometimes offshore - the cloud plays a huge role in provisioning and enabling those agents. I wrote a Focus Brief on this topic a few months back - see http://www.focus.com/briefs/customer-service/virtual-contact-centers--why-the...
Just to clarify my comments in light of Michelle's points - I agree that there is a powerful value proposition for Cloud-based solutions in the Contact Center. However, the question was about the 'status', not the 'future' - so I answered it in light of my experience working with many Contact Centers that still, for the most part, tend to prefer traditional in-house as opposed to hosted/Cloud solutions.
The bottom line is that, despite the clear value, Contact Centers are technology laggards and very few have truly embraced Cloud-based solutions. As an enthusiast and advocate for Cloud-based solutions, I would love for Michelle's comments to be correct, and for the next 5 years to be the dawn of significant adoption of Cloud-based solutions in the Contact Center. However, experience has (so far at least) taught me otherwise. I was among a number of consultants, analysts & pundits who were making very similar predictions 10 years ago - and it hasn't yet happened on a large scale.
The one exception - where there has been significant adoption - is in outsourced & offshore contact centers because it enables those providers to more easily integrate with their clients, and provides capabilities which can more easily scale up or down depending on their clients' demands. It also provides these outsourced providers with both cost and operational advantages over the in-house centers they are seeking to supplant - so perhaps it is the rise of offshoring and outsourcing that will finally drag the in-house contact center market - probably kicking & screaming - into the Cloud era.
With the emergence of SIP technology, IP based networks, aided by concepts of virutalization, cloud is finding its place aggressively.
From an India context, the emergence of rural-markets as a BPO destination, is driving the need for a cloud based architecture. We see BPO organizations setting up their private-cloud architecture, which extends itself to all these remote locations at no major expense.
Cloud is here to stay -whether in contact centre or otherwise, I see a dominant adoption in the enterprise apps consolidation as well using Cloud Architecture.
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