3 Key Benefits to Virtual Contact Centers

Increased pressure from market trends – not least of which is the increasing importance of cloud technology – is precipitating rapid change to contact centers, an integral part of any business’ customer service and outbound telemarketing efforts.Rising infrastructure, utility, and technology costs are pushing contact centers to decentralize their workforces while maintaining robust activity reporting and data analysis to ensure compliance as well as productivity. What were once unified, high-volume telephone communication hubs are now specialized organizations for high-volume, multi-channel marketing and customer support communications.

There are more changes to come: as cloud technology continues to improve, the contact center of the future will be a system of connected processes that serve as the nerve center for all customer interactions instead of a physical building.

Lower costs, more productivity agents, and better service are all possible with cloud contact centers. Here are three ways the cloud-based contact centers of the future will be better:

Cloud based contact centers are more cost effective.

Even during the hay day of traditional contact centers, the capital costs required to start and maintain one were significant. There was the huge building itself, plus the utility costs to keep it running and all its agents connected. It’s also expensive to maintain necessary hardware for a physical contact center, including replacing it as needed, as well as to license, deploy and update required software. Cloud-based contact centers, of course, eliminate almost all of those costs, turning capital expenses into more flexible operational ones that can fluctuate as business needs do.

Cloud based contact centers are more flexible.

Cloud contact centers provide more than just cost flexibility. Without cumbersome hardware, it’s easier for cloud contact centers to handle spikes in inbound customer communications, as well as manage and scale to accommodate large, ever changing outbound sales and marketing campaigns. When dialing systems are not tied to a physical building, it’s much easier, and less expensive, to hire new staff to handle uneven workflow.

Furthermore, using the cloud makes it easy to add new channels for your teams to field customer communications through, like social media or text messaging. Only with cloud-based software solutions can a contact center centralize communications across all channels and deliver more cohesive interactions with customers and prospects.

The cloud offers new advantages for more effective contact center management.

At a basic level, cloud contact centers eliminate downtime for system upgrades, but there are wide-reaching ways cloud technology can create opportunities to improve the productivity and effectiveness of any contact center. The cloud enables contact centers to both allow current employees to work from home, further saving on infrastructure costs and creating happier employees, and gives companies the ability to hire top performers no matter where they are located.

Each year, contact centers are hiring 30% more remote workers than the year before to take advantage of higher retention rates and attract top performers when hiring remote agents instead of relying exclusively on local talent. In addition, cloud-based sales intelligence software can deliver the same robust reporting tools contact center managers are used to for the remote work force.

Contact centers will only become more important as consumers use a wider variety of channels to communicate with brands and develop more complicated preferences for how they want those brands to communicate with them. Cloud technology will make it possible for businesses to not only survive these growing complications, but to turn them into competitive advantages.

Learn how Gryphon’s cloud-based sales intelligence and marketing privacy solutions can complement your virtual dialing platform and fill any technology gaps to make your contact center more compliant and productive.