Contact centers are rapidly moving into the cloud, freeing them from the expenses and constraints associated with legacy, premises-based contact center solutions. The cloud represents a massive opportunity to the contact center industry, enabling efficiencies and capabilities previously out of reach for many businesses. But migrating to the cloud isn’t something that can happen overnight, and hybrid solutions offer a convenient way to bridge the gap.
According to research from MarketsandMarkets, the cloud-based contact center market is expected to hit $20.93 billion by 2022, growing at an astounding 25.2-percent CAGR from 2017’s $6.8 billion market. The company found that adoption is being fueled by an increased need for contact centers to improve the consumer experience as well as a rise in the number of organizations using contact center solutions. Cloud-based offerings are particularly attractive to SMEs, offering a host of features previously out of reach due to the high price point of legacy, premises-based solutions.
Of course, larger and more established contact centers continue to make up the bulk of the marketplace and because of that, hybrid solutions are particularly attractive. These businesses are also interested in taking advantage of the cost savings and efficiencies of cloud-based offerings, but need a slow and steady migration path to the cloud. Hybrid contact center deployments can take particular technology elements and services that are readily moved to the cloud and offload them, leaving more complex processes on premise until a later date.
The key to getting the most out of a hybrid cloud contact center solution is to choose a reliable cloud partner with a proven track record of migrating customers affordably and seamlessly. A good cloud solutions provider will also offer omnichannel capabilities, which are extremely important in today’s customer-driven environment. And cloud solutions enable scalability of agents and resources on the fly, in ways that are simply not feasible or cost effective in legacy solutions.
Ultimately, a hybrid approach to cloud migration makes sense for contact center organizations that have established premises-based solutions. By taking an incremental approach to cloud adoption, contact centers can realize the benefits of new cloud services while leveraging their existing equipment and systems, enabling them to enjoy the best of both worlds while also embracing the cloud.