3CLogic's Contact Center Blog

If you need proof that contact centers are far different today than they were several years ago, just think of the term itself. Call centers that focused on phone-based support eventually transformed into robust departments that interact with customers on channels such as email, SMS, live chat, and more. The modern contact center emerged.

The research is clear – the customer experience is essential to the success of any business and is a key differentiator for earning a consumer’s business.

Customer experience (CX) is the sum of all interactions a customer has with an organization, whether that be when they use the product or service, when they email the help desk for support, or when they come across the company on social media. Contact centers and their agents are uniquely positioned to influence the customer experience, as they interact with customers one-on-one.

As contact centers increasingly shift from on-premise to remote operations, it’s critical that enterprises adopt the following principles to ensure they deliver great customer experiences when their agents and teams are distributed.

After dealing with outdated systems that no longer meet current customer expectations and business demands, 62% of today’s customer service centers have plans to move to the cloud within the next 18 months. However, migrating to the cloud is not as simple as flipping a switch, especially if an enterprise has already invested in an on-premise telephony infrastructure. Whether an enterprise is simply in need of basic functionality or is ready to take the leap to a fully hosted cloud contact center platform, here are a few deployment options to consider:

As remote work becomes the new norm due to COVID-19, it has only served to exacerbate the inefficiency that comes with non-integrated systems and on-premise technologies. According to a recent survey, only 10% of employees are able to establish a complete view of the relationship between their company and customer without toggling between several different platforms. Not surprisingly, many CIOs are turning to a few key providers to streamline operations to improve employee productivity and the overall customer experience. Among those at the top of the list? Microsoft.

As the technology used to power contact centers has become more advanced, organizations around the globe are beginning to form a less rigid definition of “center”, enabling a large percentage of their agents to work remotely, or “work from home”. They are also increasingly relying on multiple sites for their customer engagement initiatives. In fact, just a short twelve months back, 53% of respondents managed customer engagements through one or zero contact center, a number that has since fallen to 51%, and is predicted to shrink to 39% in twelve months. Interestingly enough, the number of contact centers with more than five locations is steadily decreasing—while 16% had more than five locations twelve months ago, only 14% do I the present, and only 13% will in twelve months. The sweet spot appears to be in the 2-5 range.