The cloud is a lot of things to contact centers. It’s a way to deploy a solution across multiple contact center locations and even agents and managers working from home. It’s an insurance policy against power outages and other weather-related disasters. It’s a way to achieve a truly multichannel customer experience without the hassle of integrating legacy equipment. It’s also a more affordable model for many contact centers that cannot, or don’t wish to, splash out big money upfront for seats they might not even use.
As it turns out, even federal government contractors see the benefits of the cloud for contact centers. net.America Corp, a management and information technology consulting firm serving the federal government, recently deployed a cloud-based contact center solution from Interactive Intelligence Group Inc., after its previous cloud-based solution had been ruled too cost-prohibitive to update and unable to accommodate new feature requests. net.America’s goal was to improve the customer experience it offers and employ the work-at-home agent model when required.
The new solution has attained those goals, and more. After the implementation of the Interactive Intelligence CaaS solution, net.America says it has increased agent productivity, improved customer service and reduced costs.
"Interactive Intelligence CaaS has given us enhanced contact center features and increased scalability -- and all without bogging us down in the cost and complexity of on-premises servers and equipment," said net.America CEO Clare Hines.
Another goal of the implementation of a cloud-based solution was to achieve easy integration between a cloud-based solution and net.America’s third-party customer relationship management (CRM) software: a goal that the project has achieved admirably, says Hines.
"Prior to deploying Interactive Intelligence CaaS, we were unable to integrate our contact center system with our CRM system," she said. "This meant our agents often had to toggle between at least two computer screens, which needlessly extended call times. Interactive Intelligence CaaS, however, easily integrated with our CRM system so now our agents are 'popped' a single screen with all the information they need, which in some cases has reduced call-handle time by up to two minutes per call. This has increased agent productivity and enabled us to serve customers faster."
The achievement of the ability to use remote and home-based agents was particularly key for net.America, which worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the days following Hurricane Katrina. The company has more understanding than many of the importance of being able to operate a fully functional contact center from wherever agents happen to be.
According to Hines, there was an alignment of IT cultures that helped net.America make the decision to go with Interactive Intelligence…an important, if intangible, consideration when companies adopt a cloud-based solution.
"We're an early adopter of cloud solutions in general," said Hines. "Likewise, Interactive Intelligence hangs its hat on innovation and saw the value of the cloud before most contact center vendors. As a result, we knew we were getting a mature cloud solution that was reliable, secure, and feature-rich - and with the added benefit of moving to an on-premises deployment if we wanted. Now that's what I call true investment protection."