Transitioning to the cloud is a smooth, secure, and easy process that can provide your contact center tons of benefits. To effectively transition to the cloud, however, you need a game plan and an effective guide to ensure a smooth transition. Your contact center needs to learn about your business’s particular needs, your customers’ expectations, and the type of services you anticipate delivering, for both current operations and future growth. Some guidelines your contact center should follow include:
- Evaluate your environment. Get your business and tech specifications in order first, documenting your requirements so that you can have an informed conversation with vendors as you shop for cloud contact center solutions. Know where you’re starting from, what processes you would have to transition, whether your network can handle the data communications needed, and whether you would need access to a remote environment.
- Choose your cloud vendor. Make sure the cloud solution can support your current processes and your foreseeable future needs. The architecture you choose should be able to support everything you currently do, as well as scale to accommodate growth and changes. Finding a vendor to host and service your cloud based contact center environment is not a one-off deal—your vendor will be working with you on an ongoing basis, so you need to make sure you find a team that works well with you. The customer experience applies to you, too. Don’t just evaluate cloud solutions; evaluate your experience with the vendor throughout the sales process.
- Use a stepped approach. You don’t need to start from scratch in the cloud— you can start slowly and build from there. To test the waters, try selecting a small team of agents to work with your new cloud-based dashboards and see how they perform. That way, you can address any bugs or process changes needed before you implement a cloud contact center at full scale. You might also turn your test agents into advocates if they like the new solution. Remember to measure and analyze all available data, so that you can develop hard metrics to prove the value of the change.
Vendor Evaluation Checklist
Your own customer experience with a cloud vendor plays an important role in your selection process. Use these questions to make an informed decision about a qualified vendor:
Communication Quality
- Did you speak to a qualified person on the first contact?
- Was your communication handed off to various teams, or did you stay with a primary contact throughout?
- Is the vendor willing to allow you to speak with its other customers?
Knowledge and Reputation
- What’s the vendor’s knowledge of the cloud space and the industry?
- How long has the vendor been in the business?
- How does the vendor calculate availability?
Integrations
- Does the vendor integrate with key CRM solution vendors?
- How is the vendor operating the solution and managing the further expansion of the solution?
- Does the vendor continually innovate?
Control over Telco
- Does the vendor have a partnership in place with telecom providers?
- What are the support contact options?
- How long does it take to get a response?
Solution Evaluation Checklist
Security
-
- What type of security certifications does it have? Does it have all of the required security certifications for your industry, like HIPAA, TCPA, GDPR, SOC 2, etc.?
Reliability/Availability
-
- How reliable is it?
- Is there any unavailability to be expected during maintenance intervals?
- What’s the disaster recovery plan?
- How easy would the software be to upgrade when new technology comes out
Control
-
- Will I be able to customize the solution and accommodate my business processes?
- How easy is it to manage?
- Are there customizable APIs to promote plug-and-play capabilities?
Scalability
-
- Was it built with the enterprise in mind?
- What omnichannel capabilities are provided?
- Does it support new, mobile digital channels?
Integrations
-
- How easy is it to integrate with one or more CRM systems?
Productivity
-
- Does the agent UI support my processes efficiently and effectively?
- Are all channels accessible from a single desktop UI?
- Which channels are supported?
- Are multiple calls routed to an agent at the same time?
- Can agents work in context and see a comprehensive interaction history?
-
- How do I track and understand how agents spend their time?
Architecture
-
- Does it support the locations of all of my sites?
- How much of it was architected for my requirements, and how much was bolted on later?
- Is there an option to have a system running in a private cloud as a backup?
- Are international sites supported with low voice latency?
- Are all supported sites in compliance with local regulations? How often are updates released?
Cost
-
- Will I get the cost relief I am expecting?
- Will I be locked into the solution?
- Is the solution mature?
- Will I have to compromise on capabilities or purchase them later?
Control over Telco
-
- Will I have to compromise on capabilities or purchase them later?
Bright Pattern Omnichannel Cloud Contact Center Solution
Bright Pattern’s cloud-based contact center solution is the perfect solution for first-time cloud contact center implementers. Bright Pattern’s solution is based entirely on the cloud and provides high-quality support as well as plug-and-play APIs that allow your contact center to customize workflows and the agent desktop to suit your specific use cases. Bright Pattern has 100% uptime, and there will be no downtime, even during updates and maintenance times.
Bright Pattern’s cloud-based platform also allows your contact center to support the latest digital channels, like SMS, text messaging, messenger apps, chatbots, and more.
