One of the most striking technological enhancements to businesses over the last two decades or so has been the modernization of their customer or client interfaces. The most ubiquitous of these has been the call center, created to retain and grow customer bases. Contact center software like Contact Cloud is what automates the handling large volumes of both incoming and outgoing calling, faxing, form tracking, texting, live chat and other communications.
What is a Contact Center Software?
Contact center software empowers firms to manage customer interactions across platforms. Its primary purpose is to address new customer inquiries (new sales leads) and current customer queries. It also gives management actionable data on customer journeys and their pressure points so that strategies can be rolled out to enhance customer satisfaction. Everything from call tracking and lead tracking to customer sentiment becomes easy and measurable with contact center software.
Contact center software is a significant tool in the CRM or Customer Relationship Management protocol of a firm. In an era of smartphones, most customers interact with a company or brand primarily over their mobile or internet devices and therefore, companies need to invest in the right contact center software and make sure that it’s constantly upgraded to meet the rising challenges of greater digitization.
On-Site and Cloud-Based Contact Centers
Customer engagement centers are divided into two primary categories, on-site and cloud-based. In an on-site customer contact center, the infrastructure is located in the client’s office as part of their existing operational systems. The customer service executives would be located on the company premises as they handle queries and complaints. Onsite Contact Centers require several expensive severs, security protocols and an IT manager to ensure that everything is working at all times. With these systems it’s much more difficult to set up remote teams or work from home employees in a secure scalable way.
In a cloud customer contact center, calling agents can be located in a single office location, or spread around the world. All customer communications are handled utilizing software like Contact Cloud that runs via the internet. With a cloud call center, there is no need for a company to physically host a computer server or handle additional security protocols, as this is all handled by the software provider while all data stored in the internet. This takes a significant time and financial load off of the company, freeing them to focus on their core competencies. Additionally, scaling to remote employees or work from home staff, is much simpler without the added hassle or expense.
Advantages of Cloud Call Center
With cloud customer contact centers, there is a greater optimization of resources. Enterprises don’t have to invest in a physical infrastructure to service their customer or client base. When opting for a cloud call software, an enterprise saves a substantial amount of money that could be then used elsewhere. Importantly such an investment would also save a considerable amount of time as physical infrastructure and its allied software systems will not be possible to set up quickly.
Cloud customer contact software is also immensely agile. Based on the pace of growth, the software and its systems will be able to accommodate greater customer interactions. In a physical on-site model, this would mean incurring new investments. The usual wear and tear associated with physical infrastructure are also absent in cloud software and this saves enterprises maintenance expenses on a routine basis.
Cloud call software also brings in much-needed accountability to customer communications. Using comprehensive data, enterprises will be able to increase productivity, which in turn will improve customer relationship across the spectrum. Redundancy can be ruled out with cloud call center software as resources are not indiscriminately devoted to customer care. Finally, as the entire system runs in the cloud, cloud call software is always an eco-friendly option to the physical systems.
Why Small Businesses Should Opt for Cloud Call Center
Whether you are a dentist’s office needing to manage a volume of calls and schedule appointments, a local political campaign office who needs to quickly set up call center quickly to get your message out or a startup unsure of how fast you will be able to scale, cloud calling software like Contact Cloud can help reduce your stress and help you get started quickly with little worry. One of the most popular misconceptions is that cloud call centers are intended for only large companies with big customer bases. In fact, considering their advantages, they are a boon to small and medium businesses across sectors or even simple employee enterprises.
With just an internet connection and a computer, your business could suddenly be more customer friendly. There’s no need to hire someone to work the phones and no need to invest in expensive hardware. Everything will be managed and stored in the cloud and you will be able to focus on the most important parts of the business. In short, getting a cloud call center software doesn’t incrementally improve a small business, it exponentially improves it.
Contact Cloud allows you to configure each tracking source to be either first touch or last touch attribution, offering marketers complete flexibility when creating and attributing new campaigns.
