Should You Adopt a "Call Center in the Cloud"?

A cloud-based call center is – depending on who you ask – either the rapidly approaching future or an undeveloped, unsecured and disparate solution. Some extoll the streamlined efficiencies, lower cost and alluring mystique of virtual call centers, while others preach caution and patience while the technology develops.

Specifically, a "call center in the cloud" features all contact center services – call routing, live chat, IVR, PBX integration, email, click-to-call, etc. – seamlessly integrated on a web-based platform that can be accessed from any internet-ready location. The benefits – enhanced user experience, live data tracking, lower costs – have enormous potential. With this model, a company might not even need a call center building.

"Rather than incur a large capital expenditure to stand up a center or centers, a company can use and pay for only the hardware and supporting software applications needed," Tony Zmudzin, director for outsourcing consultancy TPI, told Stephanie Overby, a Senior Editor at CIO Magazine.

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Overby recently polled outsourcing analysts and consultants to get their opinions on the readiness of call centers to go skyward. She found considerable hesitation.

"No single software vendor has yet to really demonstrate a fully-integrated solution that can be described as a full-service contact center," said Phil Fersht, founder of outsourcing analyst firm HfS Research. "It’s the difficulty of integrating this multitude of applications into one full-service solution that makes this almost impossible in the near future."

This perceived impossibility is why vendors also push cloud-based solutions for individual call center services in addition to a fully-integrated "call center in the cloud" option. Liveops, Global Response, inContact and Transera are all major players in these type of cloud-based solutions for companies. These individual, niche services on the cloud can greatly enhance the efficacy of a call center.

Cloud-based solutions have been widely available for IT-based applications for a number of years. It is only in the last year or two that the technology has been applied to communications. Thus, as Jon Arnold explained in an article on the United Communications Strategy website, "the cloud must prove itself in many areas."

The technology needs to be scalable, Arnold wrote. Overby agreed, concluding that current cloud solutions might be good options for small and midsized companies, who have simple call center needs. Arnold emphasizes this point, noting the difficulty of using cloud solutions for multiple channels of contact – email, live call, online chat, etc.

And with a large call center, a switch to the "call center in the cloud" could relate in a dispersed call center. So, although live data tracking may be easy, "large enterprises face ongoing logistical challenges in managing a decentralized infrastructure, especially when serving a global customer base," Arnold wrote.

Security issues should also be foremost in organization’s mind, but Arnold and Overby stress different angles of the issue. Arnold mentioned the necessity of "assurances about security and data integrity," while Overby referenced Zmudzin’s concerns regarding a call center system failure on the cloud.

"If there is a failure, it is very visible because it is customer-facing," he said. He explained that a cloud-based call center requires, "a more detailed planning phase and demands a deeper strategic capabilities analysis."

Overby emphasized that a company conduct important self-analysis prior to any cloud-based solutions decision. How much has the company already invested in their call center technology? According to Fersht, a company that has already sunk considerable money into call center software and hardware will see little benefit from adopting the cloud.

Finally, an organization must consider the robustness of its internal tech team. Part of the cloud will be managed in-house, a change from traditional call center solutoins where all management aspects are contracted out, Zmudzin explained.

"Companies must have the right management skills to succeed in that kind of hybrid environment," Zmudzin said.