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Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

Contact centers are a critical link between customer and brand, providing support, answering questions, resolving issues, and building the relationships that result in a loyal consumer base. However, as technology has advanced, customers have come to expect more from their interactions with brands – leading to a need to apply technology for a better customer experience.

This has resulted in a growing interest in Contact Center as a Service, or CCaaS. CCaaS is a multi-tenant deployment model in cloud-based environments from which contact centers are hosted and managed. This is a framework that businesses can use to transform contact centers and provide a superior, omnichannel customer experience – no matter where the customer, or the contact center, is located.

CCaaS: The Future of Contact Centers

The contact center of the future will rely on optimizing technology to ensure a cohesive omnichannel experience. Market research indicates the contact center software sector is expected to reach over $90 billion by 2028, growing at a steady CAGR of 21.1%.1 Despite this staggering statistic, only 1 out of 10 contact centers were fully-cloud based in 2020.2 Growth is inevitable. According to Gartner, over 50% of contact centers deployed in 2020 will be through a CCaaS model.3 2021 survey results reported that now every 4 out of 10 contact centers are fully cloud-based, an increase from the previous year.

Forcing thousands of employees into remote work, the COVID-19 pandemic played a huge role in accelerating the preference for CCaaS by both providers and users. At a time where trust was on edge, it became more important than ever to deliver strong customer experiences, while still providing a safe work environment. Transferring from on-premises legacy systems to cloud-based systems was critical to making that possible for companies across the globe.

In addition to enabling remote work, CCaaS has various benefits, such as reduced downtime, increased productivity, improved cybersecurity and data handling, better historic customer data, and faster processes.

Contact a CCaaS Expert

Benefits of CCaaS Solutions

Compared to its on-premise alternative, CCaaS solutions provide substantial benefits to companies. These include, but are not limited to: 

Accommodate Customer Expectations  

Customer service is critical and businesses must deliver experiences that meet customer preferences to succeed. As the old adage goes, “the customer is king.” If that saying was coined in 2021, it would probably sound like, “the customer is king… and constantly changing its preferences.” Modern-day customers now expect a variety of features and tools, such as chat, email, text, and video to communicate with customer service representatives. By using cloud-based environments for contact centers, companies unlock a level of flexibility that is unachievable using traditional methods.  

Improve Employee Engagement

In Lenovo’s 2020 Evolving World of Work report, their research found contact center managers increasingly seeing the value of employee engagement — in terms of its impact on both [workforce optimization] and the bottom line from a cost-optimization standpoint.4 With CCaaS in place, agents have everything they need right in front of them to do their job successfully. Because everything is consolidated, agents don’t waste time trying to find different programs or searching for what they need to service a customer. Call history, billing history, sales data, and other information is at their fingertips, making their job easier and less stressful.   

Secure Sensitive Data

It’s arguable that CCaaS solutions can improve many areas of data privacy and cybersecurity postures, especially in comparison to traditional solutions. With cloud capabilities, companies benefit from stronger data privacy and security safeguards. 

Power Data-Backed Decisions

While the initial investment may seem overwhelming, a move to the cloud can yield significant cost savings in the long haul. With the cloud enabling analytics, leadership is empowered to make informed decisions based on up-to-date data. In its 2021 State of the Contact Center Report, Calabrio shares that nearly 70% of cloud-powered contact centers say that cloud-based solutions are helping them improve their analytics capabilities — for both customer and employee data.5 Not only will this help internal decision-making, but it will also help businesses develop more customer-centric processes. 

Challenges to CCaaS Implementation

Thinking About Migrating to CCaaS? The opportunities with CCaaS are exciting, and a move in that direction is a matter of when rather than if. However, a customer experience transformation through a CCaaS implementation is not a decision to be taken lightly. From start to finish, the process involves time, resources, and a firm commitment to review vendors and cloud-based platforms. 

However, many organizations delay or put off a CCaaS migration until it becomes overwhelming. Much of this derives from uncertainty. Common barriers to cloud adoption in contact centers include: 

  • Poor alignment between contact center business units and IT 
  • Overwhelming number of CCaaS solutions on the market
  • Lack of technical decision criteria 
  • Legal/regulatory uncertainties 
  • Lack of resources (budget, IT expertise, staff time, etc.) 

All the above bullets boil down to one thing: a knowledge gap. Since a CCaaS implementation is such a big decision, with dire consequences if it goes poorly, ensuring you have the in-depth CCaaS knowledge onboard is critical to success.  

Major Players in the CCaaS Game

The public cloud service market is expected to reach $623.3 billion by 2023 worldwide.6 For CCaaS specifically, it is projected to reach $27.8 billion in 2023, as opposed to $11.5 billion in 2018.7 As CCaaS becomes more of a necessity, the number of CCaaS service providers is substantially growing.

Leading CCaaS vendors are:

  • 8×8
  • Amazon Connect
  • Avaya
  • Five9
  • Genesys
  • Nice CXone
  • Sharpen
  • talkdesk
  • Twilio
  • Vonage

With so many credible options on the market, it can be difficult to evaluate the many with different strengths and weaknesses of each. As a company, you will only conduct a CCaaS transition once. This is where a knowledgeable CCaaS expert can provide valuable support – helping to bridge that gap using their experience conducting a large number of successful CCaaS transitions.

The Nitty Gritty: How CCaaS Supports Customers

In a 2019 report, Gartner identified four pillars of exceptional customer service: 

  1. Use digital applications to enhance efficiency
  2. Prioritize and improving the digital experience 
  3. Gain control over web content and websites
  4. Meet increased demand for internal accountability9 

As a key component for defining and delivering CCaaS, any solution should offer certain features and functionality to meet the requirements of all four pillars.

Elements that are effective in meeting these pillars include:

  • Automatic call routing/distribution
  • Workforce engagement 
  • Universal call routing/queuing
  • AI, Chatbots in support of customer queries and transactions
  • Proactive customer communications
  • Organized and searchable data  
  • Leverage CCaaS to reimburse customer support
  • AI software can now analyze customer history and behavior in real-time

CCaaS provides benefits that companies will reap the rewards of for years to come. With customer experience and remote working more important than ever, the time is now to migrate. However, we understand that it’s a large undertaking. The good news is – you don’t have to do it alone.  

The Business Case for a CCaaS Consultant

A regular company only completes a CCaaS implementation once. But at ACLIVITI, assessment, and evaluation of CCaaS solutions happens every day. With so many vendors and solutions involved, it can be challenging to develop the best CCaaS strategy for your company’s unique needs.  

Backed by 10+ years of CCaaS experience, ACLIVITI developed a proprietary framework and scoring system, allowing organizations to assess their capabilities and operational maturity. The scoring system includes comprehensive assessments of:

  • Financial analysis and planning 
  • Platforms and technologies
  • Vendor capabilities and offerings 
  • Workforce management
  • Third-party productivity tools 

ACLIVITI combines findings from these assessments with industry best practices and benchmarks to develop a CCaaS roadmap that is specific to your business. This roadmap can then be used to guide CCaaS strategy. ACLIVITI is by your side from ideation to implementation, helping you leverage CCaaS to improve agent and customer experiences, manage workforce engagement and transform data management.

Contact ACLIVITI and navigate this mission-critical IT decision with a trusted advisor by your side.   

 

  1. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-contact-center-software-market
  2. https://www.calabrio.com/press/state-of-contact-center-2021-cloud-is-here-what-next/
  3. https://searchcustomerexperience.techtarget.com/definition/contact-center-as-a-service-CCaS
  4. https://news.lenovo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Technology-and-the-Evolving-World-of-Work_Lenovo-IDG-Global-Research-Report_FINAL.pdf
  5. https://info.calabrio.com/state-of-the-contact-center-cloud-is-here/
  6. https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/cloud-adoption-statistics/
  7. https://searchcustomerexperience.techtarget.com/definition/contact-center-as-a-service-CCaS
  8. https://www.dmgconsult.com/dmg-consulting-releases-2018-2019-cloud-based-contact-center-infrastructure-product-and-market-report/
  9. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-02-11-gartner-identifies-four-imperatives-that-customer-ser