Top 10 Features to Look for in a Cloud Contact Center

Are you eager to know the features of a cloud contact center? If yes, then you’ve come to the right place.

Modern-day businesses must efficiently manage customer interactions and support services to beat competitors. This is where the cloud contact center comes into play.

Cloud contact centers not only help businesses respond to every customer request but enhance staff productivity as well. Along with that, there are many other features of a cloud contact center, which we will explore in this article. So, let’s get into it.

What is a Cloud Contact Center?

A cloud contact center helps large organizations communicate with their customers or clients smoothly. It’s a kind of contact center that is hosted in the cloud and provides exceptional customer support to businesses.

Since it isn’t tied to a physical desk, you can manage all incoming and outgoing communications from virtually anywhere. It goes a level ahead of the on-premise contact center, eliminating the requirement of costly infrastructure.

Cloud contact centers support multiple communication channels so that agents can have a conversation with customers or clients by phone call, email, or instant messaging. Customers and clients can also get in touch with the business using their preferred communications channel.

Contact centers also route calls and messages to the right department or agent so that customers or clients can have a prompt solution to their problems.

A cloud contact center is a centralized hub to smoothen all customer interactions across different channels regardless of the location.

Benefits of Cloud Contact Center

There are many benefits of a cloud contact center compared to an on-premise contact center. These are as follows:

• High scalability: Contact centers are likely to experience a larger volume of calls frequently, and in such cases, additional agents can be assigned. Hence, it allows unlimited scalability to meet the higher demands.
• Affordable: It is relatively cheaper as it operates through the cloud, so there is no need for physical infrastructure and hardware setup. Cloud-based solutions are provided as a subscription service, allowing organizations to avoid heavy costs.
• Supports omni-channel communication: Cloud contact center supports omni-channel communication. This way, companies can offer a seamless, high-quality customer experience across a variety of channels like email, chat, or phone.
• Enhanced customer experience: To improve customer experience, cloud-based solutions use AI-powered chatbots. It provides customers with quick solutions to their queries, and at the same time, agents get more free time to deal with complicated issues.
• Robust security: The cloud contact center protects customer data, complies with privacy regulations, stops unauthorized access, and protects intellectual property. Also, cloud-based solutions offer backup and disaster recovery capabilities to help businesses recover lost data.
• Get insights into call tracking and analytics: A cloud contact center provides you insights into all the call-tracking data and analytics. This way, you can keep track of all the incoming and outgoing calls.

Top 10 Features of a Cloud Contact Center

Businesses nowadays make use of cloud-based call center software, offering them the ability to support multiple communication channels to fulfill customers’ needs. 

1. Robust AI

Nowadays, cloud contact center solutions make use of speech-based virtual agents to deal with customers’ requests. Interactive voice response (IVR) is one of the AI-powered technologies, which is an automated phone system with the ability to route calls.

It uses ACD (Automatic Call Distribution), and it allows customers to have a conversation with a computer first before being redirected to an agent.

It is similar to a virtual receptionist who deals with customers by greeting them.

Not only that, but the addition of AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) in the IVR engine betters the cloud contact center. This is done by diving deep into the customer issues by checking past details. Based on that, issues are identified and rectified.

Furthermore, some of the software integrates intelligent searching and sentiment analytics to analyze the state the customer is in. It helps the customers to put in more trust and enhances personal bonding.

These AI-powered features minimize call volume, enhance customer satisfaction, and reduce agent’s overwhelming tasks.

2. Automatic Call Distribution

Automatic Call Distribution is a telephony system that receives incoming calls and automatically routes them to the relevant agents with expertise-based routing or other distribution methods. 

ACD routing automatically connects the call to the right agent without the caller having to dial a different number. 

Since it reaches the concerned agent in no time, the customers’ wait time is reduced, boosting your customer satisfaction rate. 

ACDs collaborate with computer telephony integration (CTI) systems or IVR to route incoming calls to the appropriate agent smartly. ACD aims to manage large call volumes and increase the efficiency of contact centers. 

3. Multi-channel Support

Cloud contact centers make sure customers get in touch with businesses through their preferred communication channels, such as email,  SMS, voice calling, chat, and social media. It enhances the customer experience, as customers can choose the channel that they feel comfortable with.

Customers can ask for guidance and support via multiple channels like text messaging, email, etc.

4. Real-time Analytics and Reporting

Cloud contact centers offer real-time data and analytics so you can monitor and track key metrics. To be more specific, you can check metrics such as call volume, wait times, agent performance, and much more.

Other than that, it also provides you the ability to record talks with the customers and monitor call activities. 

A robust dashboard system gives the contact center a clear perspective regarding which area needs more attention in real time.

Getting the best cloud contact center software for your call center gives you a brief idea of customer behavior, and you can act accordingly. This way, you can provide the best customer experience possible.

5. Integration with Third-Party Tools

For additional features, businesses can integrate their contact center with other third-party technologies. 

The cloud contact center solution you choose should allow you to integrate with your favorite CRM systems, ERP, social media platforms, and other tools.

By integrating with these tools, a cloud contact center offers an enhanced customer experience. 

On the other hand, it isn’t possible to integrate with other systems in the case of on-premise contact centers. 

6. Low Pricing Structure

This is extremely beneficial for small or mid-sized businesses since they do not have to spend big amounts on technological investments. With cloud contact center solutions, your business runs smoothly without having to worry about infrastructure and technological spending.

Cloud contact center solutions include dedicated pricing models and monthly or annual subscription fees.

On-premise contact centers cost you a bulk of money on physical infrastructure and hardware setup. Also, it can’t handle big call volumes even after spending that much money which isn’t the case in cloud contact centers.

7. Disaster Recovery

Since disaster is inevitable, you should be prepared for it. On-premise contact centers have a greater risk of hardware failure or any other kind of disaster because you’ve to host and maintain the servers. 

Cloud-based solutions have multiple places to host data, and most importantly, the data is stored in the cloud, it’s recoverable. Some of the service providers also provide built-in network redundancy and automated data. 

Also, cloud solutions don’t shut down even if you lose power in your building. Most importantly, the data can be accessed from anywhere with the help of credentials.

8. Expertise-Based Routing

With the help of expertise-based routing a contact center can redirect the incoming calls to the right agents.

It allows your business to control the flow of calls so the appropriate agent picks up the call. With skill-based routing, no matter which communication channel they choose, they’ll get forwarded to the right person to solve their queries. 

Thus, it enhances customer satisfaction and engagement.

9. Workforce Management

You need to create effective schedules for chatbots and agents to optimize your business’s workforce.

It helps you track employees’ activities to ensure that they are working the required hours and the amount of annual leave and breaks taken.

Contact centers carry out this procedure to have the right people and expertise to quickly manage customer interactions.

This is done so that they can fulfill their customer needs and resolve them as quickly as possible.

10. Agent-friendly Interface

With the omnichannel routing capabilities, agents can get all the customer data and their problems from a single dashboard. 

Besides that, the multi-channel support allows agents to connect with customers across different channels such as social media, live chat, and SMS.

By providing agents with access to customer information, a cloud contact center contributes to providing solid customer service. And create stronger relationships with customers.

Conclusion

With the evolution of digital customer communication channels and the ever-growing needs of customers, traditional contact centers are of no use in fulfilling the needs of modern businesses.

Cloud contact centers are fitted for businesses of any size and are a smart go-to option for maximizing the customer experience. 

It allows businesses to manage customer interactions via multiple channels (email, chat, social media). 

Better flexibility, scalability, and affordability are some of the key features of a cloud contact center. This allows businesses to provide top-quality customer service from anywhere.

FAQs

What are the features of a cloud-based contact center?

Cloud contact centers offer a wide variety of features that are not available in on-premise contact centers. These are omnichannel support, advanced routing algorithms, call recording, integration with other technologies, etc.

What are the features of an omnichannel contact center?

The omnichannel contact center supports multiple communication channels, and its features include seamless connection, efficient routing, robust integrations, and many more.

What are the main benefits of cloud contact centers?

Some of the benefits of a cloud contact center are as follows:

• High scalability
• Robust security
• Supports omnichannel communication

What is the architecture of a cloud contact center?

Call center architecture means the entire system is set in place so that the call center can meet customer requirements by providing services.