The Real Push to Cloud Contact Centers Will Take Place in 2012, Says Interactive Intelligence

While the industry press has been talking cloud-based contact centers for a number of years now, a majority of contact centers all over the world would appear to have not gotten their “feet wet” yet, so to speak. But 2012 just might be the year that the real push begins to migrate contact center functionality into the cloud. 

At a recent contact center trends and priorities Webinar hosted by unified IP business communications solutions provider Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) and TMCnet, 44 percent of the Webinar's 660 attendees indicated that they would be looking to migrate their call center operations to the cloud in the near future, with an additional 13 percent having already done so.

Art Schoeller, the principal analyst at Forrester Research (News - Alert), and Joe Staples, Interactive Intelligence's chief marketing officer, named cloud migration the most prominent of 2012's seven key contact center trends at the quarterly Web event, called, “2012: Key Contact Center Trends and Priorities for the Upcoming Year – How you can be ready,” citing increased flexibility and faster deployment times as crucial influencing factors.

While Staples (News - Alert) noted that many contact centers have been hesitant to expand into into the cloud due to issues of security and control, he assured attendees that, despite reduced requirements in terms of staff and IT infrastructure, the functionality offered by cloud-based systems is in no way compromised as a result of its off-premise locale.

Schoeller noted that the adaptability of cloud-based solutions can help businesses to significantly improve the customer experience, while at the same time cutting costs.

Another important trend for 2012 will be improvement of the customer experience, said the Webinar hosts. Staples and Schoeller both called on businesses to run their operations with the convenience of the customer, rather than their enterprise, in mind.

Research backs up this increased focus on the customer experience: analyst group Forrester has reported a 360 percent increase in the number of job titles containing the term “customer experience” since 2008. Customers, more empowered with choices today, are demanding a high quality customer experience as their right. This includes more Web and self-service offerings, as well as full mobile integration.

The move to mobile was also a trend discussed at length during the event, with both speakers emphasizing the importance of catering to the needs of today's on-the-go generation. While many companies do currently offer a form of Web-based self-service offerings for mobile devices, true integration with the contact centre environment has yet to take place.

According to Staples, companies would do well to make the leap from self-service to truly holistic consumer help by utilizing the technology present in today's smartphones. He also asserted that mobile applications could be better linked to contact center operations, which would improve the mobile customer experience significantly.

The integration of social media into the contact center was also discussed as a relevant issue for 2012. Despite the power social media wields, it's still poorly understood and utilized by most contact centers, which tend to operate the two functions in separate “silos.”

Some of the other issues identified as important to the contact center in 2012 are the increasing move towards virtual, home-based agents and a simplification of telephone end-points in favor of computer-driven systems.