RINGCENTRAL RINGCX
Cloud contact center
Transform your customer experience with our AI-powered platform packed with cloud call center features and functionality for your other channels, too.
Voice, video, 20+ digital and social channels
Real-time AI agent assist
Advanced reporting and analytics
What is a cloud contact center?
A cloud contact center is an internet-based facility that handles all inbound and outbound customer communications for a company.
The software solution offers a comprehensive suite of tools and applications, allowing you to deliver outstanding levels of customer service. With just one platform, you can manage multiple channels, including voice, SMS, email, and social media.
Cloud contact center vs cloud call center
The above is the key difference between a cloud contact center and a cloud-based call center. Where the latter is focused solely on telephone-based interactions, a cloud contact center caters for all the communications channels which customers may wish to use to converse with you.
While it’s important to understand that distinction, it’s equally worthwhile to know that cloud call centers—and call centers in general—are arguably a dying breed. Very few businesses will now operate a center that only caters for telephone calls. While cloud call center is a term still widely used, the best cloud call center today is invariably actually a contact center.
How do cloud contact center solutions work?
Unlike traditional contact centers, cloud-based contact centers operate from a remote location. The core infrastructure is hosted in data centers that are managed by a third-party provider like RingCentral.
This gives companies increased freedom and flexibility, eliminating the need for cumbersome physical hardware, costly storage facilities, and unpredictable maintenance costs.
Instead, agents connect to the contact center over the internet from any location and device. Customers can also connect via the internet through various digital channels, including audio, video, web chat, email, and social media.
Does your business need a cloud contact center platform?
Many of today’s contact centers still run on old infrastructure and call center software. They simply can’t keep up with the way customers and businesses now communicate.
A cloud contact center is the modern alternative, using the latest in communications technology.
If your business still depends on legacy systems, you’re likely feeling the pain of their limitations. You may not be able to add new channels (such as email, chat, or in-app messaging) or easily update your basic call routing structure.
Perhaps you’ve adopted a cloud solution or two, but they remain siloed from the rest of your solutions and can’t work together. It’s hard to help customers when your technology works against you.
A cloud solution gives you the freedom and flexibility to meet the growing needs of your customers while supporting employees and scaling your business.
Cloud call or contact center vs. traditional infrastructure
Cloud-based call center technology, and by extension contact center solutions, differ from traditional, on-premises setups in many ways. Scalability, reliability, ease of set up and use, and the breadth of available features are just four of the main ones:
Scalability of your workforce and operations
Legacy solutions require voice modules, expansion I/O cards, additional software licenses, and other add-ons. But cloud solutions allow you to instantly scale workforce teams to meet the ebb and flow of customer demand.
Operate a seasonal business? Need to respond quickly to an aggressive price offer from a competitor? It’s simple to add or reduce the number of agents as needed.
Say goodbye to purchasing additional software licenses that sit idle, buying unnecessary servers and storage, or adding IT personnel to support extra software. With your call center systems in the cloud, your company only pays for what it uses.
Service reliability and availability
There’s a common misconception that premises-based call center systems offer greater reliability than hosted solutions.
But in reality, today’s cloud contact center solutions provide you with the highest levels of availability, reliability, and disaster recovery.
Leading solutions house the infrastructure in geographically redundant data centers and guarantee uptime as high as 99.99%.
To further boost overall reliability, data centers are staffed with highly trained experts who manage the system 24/7 and perform all the latest upgrades and updates on your behalf.
Ease of set up and use
A cloud-based call center phone system or even a more holistic contact center tool is typically far easier to install, set up, and implement than the traditional alternative.
Cloud call center technology is software-based. That means what you get is straightforward, out-of-the-box installation. Setting up your lines, users, routing and more is done with a few clicks or taps on your existing devices. Unlike with on-premises systems where you’ll likely need to install physical lines and hardware.
Cloud call center providers know that ease of use is vital, too. That’s why contact center solutions like RingCX are designed to be intuitive and have a very shallow learning curve.
Features available now and in the future
A contact or call center cloud solution will likely give you a much broader feature set and range of functionalities than an on-premises alternative.
With cloud contact center software, you can manage all your communications channels on one interface, saving loads of time app-hopping. Even with cloud call center services that are truly telephony only, you’ll get more advanced call management options and the chance to more readily integrate your system with your customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Cloud contact centers are also more readily adapted and improved over time. As technologies like AI and predictive analytics improve, software gets updated with exciting new features.
What are the benefits of cloud contact center solutions?
So, those are the practical differences between traditional, on-premises setups and the cloud-based contact center alternative. What, though, does that actually mean for your center and your business? Here are some of the tangible benefits you could enjoy by adopting the best cloud-based call center software or contact center platform:
For companies using premises-based call or contact center systems, it can take weeks—or even months—to deploy new technologies for customer communications, such as messaging, social, chat, and email capabilities.
With a cloud contact center, you can add capabilities on the fly, allowing agents to immediately act on new opportunities. Plus, you can easily pilot new sales tools and other systems before making a long-term commitment.
Without costly investments in redundant hardware and software licenses, premises-based call center systems simply don’t provide the flexibility and scalability needed to adequately handle disaster recovery.
This can potentially leave your company offline for hours, days, or even weeks. You could even experience longer downtimes as you scramble to install new hardware and software or source new vendors.
By housing all infrastructure and critical data in a remote data center, a properly architectured contact center provides superior business continuity.
Because the cloud works wherever there’s an internet connection, employees can use smartphones, laptops, tablets, or desktop computers to access the contact center from virtually anywhere. In the event of a disaster, your agents can instantly move over to mobile devices or softphones on their home computers or temporary work quarters.
Few IT organizations can afford the resources or time to acquire the latest security measures that meet today’s increasingly strict privacy regulations. Maintaining strong physical security across many business locations—each with its own on-premises system—isn’t practical or cost-effective.
With the best cloud-based call center solutions, companies have access to greater security measures to protect customer contact information and other data than with traditional premises-based systems.
A trusted provider like RingCentral typically houses all customer data in secure Tier 1 data centers with strong physical and network security managed by highly trained on-site engineering specialists.
Essential cloud contact center features
Contact centers that place a lot of outbound calls can benefit from auto dialers. Whether your team is making a sales call to a lead or reaching out to fundraising partners, these tools will make the process significantly more efficient.
The most common outbound dialers include:
- Preview dialer: Shows call information to an agent ahead of time so they can choose to accept or skip the call.
- Progressive dialer: Calls phone numbers one after another, automatically disconnecting calls that go unanswered.
- Predictive dialer: Makes multiple calls at once based on predictions of which agent will be free, connecting the call to a live agent when the customer or prospect answers
Integrating different apps and tools makes your agents’ jobs easier before they even say hello. Rather than repeatedly switching between legacy backend systems and contact channels, they can dig into customer details and previous interactions from one dashboard. This leads to reduced human error, improved customer satisfaction, and a personalized customer experience.
Integrations give agents access to vast storehouses of knowledge available in corporate systems, as well as third-party cloud services, such as Salesforce® and Zendesk®.
Screen pop-ups can further help keep agents one step ahead of customers by providing information about previous purchases, billing history, and other personal preferences.
Cloud contact centers transform your approach to quality management. With analytical tools and real-time and historical reporting capabilities, you gain valuable insights into every aspect of customer interactions.
Advanced analytics let you monitor the customer experience, using AI to analyze customer sentiment and agent performance across all channels. With these insights, optimizing your workforce becomes easier.
Using reports allows you to identify areas for training or upskilling agents and improving the customer experience.
How to choose the right cloud call center software
By now you’re likely convinced of the advantages of cloud call and contact center solutions over traditional, on-premises alternatives. Cloud call center solutions and contact center platforms are certainly the future of business communications. How, though, can you ensure you find the right software for your contact center? Here are some key considerations to keep in mind:
Current and future business needs
Cloud-based call center solutions aren’t all created equal. They have different feature sets, functionalities, and capabilities. The best alternative for one business may not be the best for another. That’s why your search for a new cloud-based call center solution should start with clearer defining your own needs—both now and in the future.
Think about the channels your customers expect and demand you be present on. Consider the volume of customer interactions you need to effectively manage. Understand how and how much you’ll need to train agents, and where those agents will be working from. Once you have a clear view of all that and more, you’ll be able to filter out any cloud call center solution that lacks must-have features.
Scalability and pricing plans
Most cloud-based call center software and contact center solutions providers offer a range of different pricing plans. Each will have a different feature set to suit organizations of varying sizes and with diverse requirements. When assessing call center cloud technology, think about which will suit you now and whether other options give you room for growth.
For example, perhaps right now a more inexpensive plan has everything you need. That’s great, as long as the contact center software provider also has more comprehensive plans which you could switch to as you scale. If there’s no room to upgrade and grow, will you be left searching for another new solution just a few months down the road?
Security and compliance
When you’re operating a contact center, you’re going to be handling customer data and other potentially sensitive information. The best cloud call center software is built with this in mind. Trustworthy providers like RingCentral apply stringent security measures and can boast a range of compliance certifications. That’s how you can tell that any provider takes data security and privacy seriously.
Cloud contact center FAQs
The main difference lies in the functionality and types of customer interactions. A cloud call center, including inbound call centers, focuses on handling inbound and outbound voice calls. Features include call routing, call queueing, and call analytics. Call centers are best suited for businesses that heavily rely on phone-based customer service or sales.
A contact center provides an omnichannel approach to customer communication. It encompasses voice calls as well as email, chat, SMS, social media, and video. Features include cross-channel analytics, unified agent dashboards, and integrations with platforms like CRMs. Contact centers are ideal for modern businesses with a multi-channel approach, such as ecommerce, retail, healthcare, hospitality, professional services, and financial services.
This will depend on your company’s needs, operations, and budget. To choose the best one for you, decide what features will make your team more productive and efficient. At the very least, a robust solution should be reliable, offer an intuitive interface, and take security seriously. But if you want to really get the most out of your contact center, look for a platform like RingCentral RingCX that offers additional functionalities, such as a unified app, pre-packaged deployment options, and AI-based Workforce Engagement.
Choosing a trusted CCaaS solution is the first step. The right cloud service provider will make migrating from a legacy system to a cloud contact center as easy as possible. They should offer guidance and support in installing new software and moving data and workflows over from old systems.
RingCX: An omnichannel cloud contact center solution for your business
A seamless solution to unleash the power of cloud business communications.