I have been talking to multiple customer experience (CX) leaders in the past 7 years, and I have realized one thing: contact centers are the backbone of the customer experience businesses offer their customers.
Let us be honest.
For most CX leaders, contact centers have been the silent hero or a daily headache.
Pre-covid, there was an overwhelming preference towards on-premise contact centers. The common refrain was that it keeps them in control of their data and its privacy. They didn’t want to be a part of the cloud infrastructure.
However, most of these challenges were unfounded, as cloud contact centers typically offer better data security than on-premise contact centers.
Most often than not, I have heard CX leaders stuck with on-premise contact centers wondering, “Isn’t there a better way to do this?”
That’s when they started turning towards ai powered advanced cloud contact center software. The advent of the pandemic expedited the transformation from on-premise to cloud contact centers, as it allowed them the flexibility of working from home and remote locations easily.
I have worked with contact centers across domains for more than 20 years now, and I can confidently say that cloud contact centers are the smart choice for cost, performance, and scale.
Let us walk through why that’s the case.
What makes cloud contact centers different and better?
The biggest challenges that CX leaders faced when using on-premise contact centers included:
- Heavy reliance on hardware, complicated infrastructure, high maintenance, and absolutely zero flexibility.
- You had to literally move mountains to add a new agent, update software, and launch a new channel.
With cloud contact centers, you can easily flip that narrative. Here’s why they stand out:
- There are no heavy upfront costs. You pay-as-you-go, either by minutes or monthly charges. You don’t have to worry about CapEx.
- You can ramp up and down the number of agents at the click of a button per your business needs.
- When you talk about deployment, you are talking hours and days, and not weeks and months. Most of our deployments happened within 24 to 48 hours.
- Your agents can work from anywhere. All they need is a working Internet and access to a browser. You can use desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.
- No issues related to physical and logical security. There is no need to worry about upgrade patches. The cloud solution providers manage all of it and ensure quality of service.
- With an omnichannel contact center communication, cloud contact center platforms offer built-in capabilities that give your agents a single view of your customers across all channels and interfaces.
- It is compliant with most security standards and regulations like GDPR, TCPA, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, Reg-F, FDCPA, DoT, and TRAI.
Indian businesses already get it.
We have been operational in India for the past eight years, offering our cloud contact center solutions to customers across verticals.
Let me talk about two real-world use cases that we have been a part of.
BFSI – Going remote in under 48 hours
One of the largest banks in India wanted to move more than 1000 agents to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They were stuck with an on-premise contact center solution, and their provider asked for a minimum of 4 months to make this transition. The other alternative they had was to procure expensive VPN licenses and connect to their on-premise contact center. The bandwidth requirement for this was heavy, and the heavy broadband infrastructure at agent homes did not permit this.
That’s when we helped them move their entire contact center operations to our cloud platform. We made them operational within 48 hours without dropping service quality and violating compliance rules.
Healthcare – 400% increase in call volumes
A diabetes chain had 100s of inquiries every day, and they were missing out on almost 60% of their inquiries as they did not have the necessary systems in place to handle the call volumes.
We helped them route all their incoming calls through our cloud platform. It had the facility to route the calls to the call center when the front office people were busy. It provided complete visibility of the patient call history and compliance with standards and regulations.
Within three months, we have grown the patient call volume by 400%. This resulted in better patient experience and increased revenue for the healthcare facility.
What is driving cloud contact center adoption?
Trends don’t lie, and the data is very clear.
The Indian cloud contact center market is projected to reach USD 7.5 billion by 2033, growing at over 21% CAGR.
Why is this so?
Here are the factors that drive this adoption:
- SMBs love the cloud for its affordability and zero lock-in. Now, you can compete with enterprises and make it a level playing field.
- Omnichannel and AI features are driving adoption.
- Post-COVID-19, the ability to have remote workers and hybrid working have become must-haves, which favors cloud.
- Built-in security, maintenance, and the ability to comply with global standards and regulations are pushing the adoption.
Why ClearTouch?
Do you have options when it comes to cloud contact centers?
Definitely, Yes.
However, here are some compelling reasons why you should consider ClearTouch as the primary option.
Reason #1: We are a pure-play cloud solution provider. We have never had the on-premise option as a part of our offerings. For the past 25+ years, we have been offering only cloud solutions. That makes us understand the cloud better than most other providers.
Reason #2: We don’t ask for any minimum commitments, no lock-in period, and no hidden costs. It is a plain per-minute pricing that keeps things transparent for you.
Reason #3: We offer a fully managed service. You don’t need to staff your IT team to manage your contact center infrastructure. We handle everything from upkeep to security and compliance.
Reason #4: We have the Indian mindset when it comes to providing service. We comply with TRAI and DoT regulations, as well as global standards and regulations. Also, our support is available 24x across email, voice, and WhatsApp. Our SLAs are in hours and not in days, and that has ensured zero customer churn in the past eight years of our operations in India.
Reason #5: Our platform supports omnichannel capabilities and has AI capabilities that allow you to address compliance, misselling, training needs, and sentiment analysis in real time.
Reason #6: Our deployments are done typically within 24 to 48 hours. That makes it easy for organizations to derive benefits immediately.
Reason #7: 200+ customers in India. 1500+ customers globally. Clients across BFSI, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, BPOs, and eCommerce. We have proven credibility in helping you offer better experiences to your customers.
What I have noticed in the past eight years of our operations in India is that once a business switches to a cloud contact center solution, there’s absolutely no looking back for them.
They keep adding more capabilities that make their lives and their customer’s lives easier.
As a CX leader, if you are looking at a platform that would help you deploy and scale faster with predictable costs and built-in compliance, you should definitely look at cloud contact center solutions.
That being said, you should look for a partner who understands India and the cloud while delivering the expected results.
