On-premise contact centers are inflexible, innovation-averse, and expensive to maintain.
Yet, many businesses – especially large organizations – have resisted migrating to the cloud.
Last year, one Gartner analyst even estimated that two-thirds of organizations still utilize legacy contact center systems.
But, make no bones about it; CCaaS is the future, and businesses in the public cloud leveraging the latest AI and digital innovations will most likely differentiate through CX.
Thanks to this potential, Frederic Laziou, CEO of Puzzel, suggests that the industry is experiencing “a second wave of cloud migration, especially in compliance-sensitive industries like financial services and utilities, where the need to harness these new technologies is critical.”
Nevertheless, moving from a highly customized on-premise base and starting again remains a daunting task.
Thankfully, following best practices like the three below will hold enterprises in good stead and start to quell any lingering nerves.
- Go Cloud-Native & Accept Nothing Less
There is a lot to think about when selecting a CCaaS platform provider. For instance, brands must consider their sector-specific expertise, referenceability, ecosystem, key partnerships, financial stability, etc.
However, the significance of selecting a cloud-native CCaaS platform – like Puzzel – is often overlooked. After all, these platforms have many benefits.
First off, cloud-native platforms are more scalable. That’s critical, especially for extensive enterprise CCaaS transformations.
In addition, a cloud-native vendor can continually drop in new channels and AI capabilities, which will ultimately result in a much more regular release cadence.
Brands may also work on top of a cloud-native platform, using APIs to customize the product and spread customer data across the enterprise in a much simpler fashion than with an archaic CCaaS platform.
Such archaic platforms – which consist of monolithic stacks of software in the cloud – are still on the market, and brands must be wary to avoid them.
- Lift-and-Shift Is a Wasted Opportunity
Many contact centers try to lift the systems and processes they have today and shift those to the cloud. Yet, that adds layers of unnecessary complexity.
After all, on-premise systems have often survived 15-20 year implementations. In that time, IT has likely bolted on many new features and integrations.
As they did so, these on-premise environments became increasingly complicated while many older capabilities lurked in the background.
Given this, businesses should embrace a more streamlined approach. Don’t take the 200+ features from the on-premise system. Instead, consider: how many of these does the team use on a daily basis?
In doing so, the contact center could whittle those 200+ capabilities down by 70, 80, or perhaps even 90 percent.
With that foundation, service leaders can utilize a solution – like Puzzel’s CX platform – to define new, improved contact center experiences.
Why Puzzel? Because it offers a library of default flows – with automation – that enable businesses to design and build their new contact center more quickly.
These flows may also be industry-specific and assist service leaders in reimagining the service experience.
For many mid-market companies, which lack the resources of larger enterprises to navigate complex transformation projects, these flows are invaluable.
After all, as Laziou noted, “Some may feel stuck, unable to leverage emerging technologies to future-proof their business.
“For these companies, choosing the right CCaaS vendor is essential—one that can serve as a strategic partner and scale with them over the long term.”
- Challenge the Conventional Contact Center IT Mindset
Over the years, IT teams within on-premise contact centers have had to adopt a mindset of: don’t touch it; it’s working just fine.
From there, they can spend excessive amounts on maintenance contracts.
Yet, the mentality of IT teams within a cloud-based contact center must change. After all, most CCaaS offerings are fully managed and operated by the provider, which saves IT significant time.
As such, they have the opportunity to move on from being masters of maintenance and instead become champions innovation. If they don’t seize that chance, the value of the CCaaS investment withers.
Playground environments within the CCaaS platform can help to inspire that innovation, allowing contact centers to build on their baseline flows (established in point two).
In doing so, they can bring a new vision for service experiences to life.
To support this aim, the contact center should partner with a CCaaS provider that thinks more expansively about customer experience and how – through innovation – they can pull the contact center into the broader organization.
Puzzel: Championing These Best Practices
Puzzel is a cloud-native CCaaS platform utilized by some of Europe’s “customer experience leaders” and best-known enterprises.
As a long-term proponent of improved case management and an expanded CCaaS proposition, it has a head start on some of the trends transforming the space.
That platform breadth is particularly key. After all, Puzzel doesn’t give companies a baseline CCaaS solution, it provides the safety net of a broader suite that inspires innovation in and around the contact center.
To learn more about the Puzzel CX Platform, visit Puzzel.
