Contact Center: Guide to Selecting the Right CCaaS Vendor (Post-Crisis)

Disruption means unexpected change — forcing IT leaders to brace for a new reality. For contact centers, it meant keeping things moving by transitioning on-site agents to remote work during early COVID-19 days. Cloud became the key to remote working technology. Until the end of 2019, only 13% of U.S. contact center agentsOpens a new window worked remotely. In mid-April this year, with the outbreak at its peak — the number jumped to 71% with larger companies embracing the remote work model, a survey by ContactBabel Opens a new window indicates. In recent times, contact centers have become the lifeline for healthcare organizations, e-commerce, financial services, and more. Remote contact centers are even playing a pivotal role in virus management by supporting telehealth Opens a new window and enabling critical patient appointments.

The change is indeed dramatic — traditionally, contact centers, a driving force in customer experience management, were rooted in the on-premise model. The health crisis meant rapidly evaluating business strategies and transitioning people, processes, and systems for work from home reality and equipping them to succeed. In the midst of this fast-moving pandemic, virtual contact centers are front and center of digital transformation, rendering essential services.

Deloitte executives Andy Haas and Tim McDougal emphasize Opens a new window this is a tipping point for contact center leaders who will need to redefine Service Delivery Models (SDM), weigh right-shoring strategies, double down on virtualization capabilities, and build a long-term roadmap for automation and AI. Organizations that pivoted to cloud contact centers benefitted from the speed to scale the cloud offers.

For those that did not (that number is very high), the crisis exposed gaps in legacy, outdated call center infrastructure, and the multi-vendor contact center infrastructure model. Austin-headquartered Serenova, one of the leading CCaaS providers, estimatesOpens a new window approximately 90% of global organizations currently use an on-premise solution for their contact centers. Industries across the board, from airlinesOpens a new window to financial services and e-commerce, were unprepared to handle the surge in call volumes amid the unfolding crisis.

Analysts believe COVID-19 is the moment for contact center leaders to embrace cloud and automation and reshape contact center strategies for the future.

Against this backdrop, the article explores:

• CCaaS By Numbers: COVID-19 Will Shift Buying Priorities
• 4 Trends to Show How Pandemic Will Reinvent CCaaS
• Contact Center Game-Plan Revisited: Questions Tech Buyers Should Ask
• 5 Mission-Critical Priorities for Tech Buyers Post-Crisis

CCaaS By Numbers: COVID-19 Will Shift Buying Priorities

1. 62% will move from on-premise to cloud over the next 18 months, per Cisco Global Contact surveyOpens a new window 2020

2. 80% believe AI will become a must-have, underscoring more technology buyers will evaluate the adoption of AI, per Cisco survey

3. Only 13% of businesses are able to use a full omnichannel contact center offering due to cost considerations and time-to-deploy

4. 89% of consumers want to protect personal data, affirming ITDMs will make a big push for cloud security and lean onto next-gen tools like biometric authentication

Learn More: What is a Cloud Contact Center? Opens a new window

4 Trends to Show How Pandemic Will Reinvent CCaaS

1. Uptake of CCaaS model

COVID-19 will accelerate the shift from on-premise to cloud. Deploying CCaaS tools will allow companies to flex their response efforts and build resilient business continuity plans. In the words of Mark Strassman of LogMeIn, what we thought would take years to happen, has taken a matter of months as companies of all sizes and industries discovered the value of cloud-based technology. Genesys and ContactBabel research reports during the pandemic, there has been a jump in the use of cloud, especially in mid-sized and large contact center operations to support large-scale remote work and business continuityOpens a new window .

2. Remote Contact Center workforce

As contact center leaders adopt new ways of work, the shift from purpose-built contact centers could become permanent. The crisis served as an opportunity to build a work at home (WAH) model, which necessitated digitizing and automating existing business processes, such as scheduling, monitoring, and training. Gartner analyst Opens a new window emphasizes continuing the “WAH strategy can deliver long term benefits of business continuity, improve cost and margin realization, and improve both top-line and bottom-line results.” Remote workforce strategy can also bolster the quality of service (QoS) and productivity achieved by remote agents. Additionally, CCaaS vendors are broadening product portfolios with value-added services that can improve security, governance policies, and create better outcomes Opens a new window for remote workforce.

3. Coupling AI and Analytics

AI is high up in the tech pecking order with cloud and has delivered significant productivity gains to agents. Use cases span from reducing time and costs associated with agent training to improving contact center management by listening for key words and populating relevant information for the agent. AI can also increase customer experience with intelligent call routing — route calls to the most qualified agent, basis the customer’s preferred language and skill level. Accenture recommends shoring up virtual agent capabilities to support COVID-19 requests or growing BAU volume in the post-pandemic world. An actionable takeaway for business leaders should be to build automated support and double down on virtual agents (voice-based/text-based) that can handle the same intents as human agents. Technavio predicts integration of chatbots to get better turnaround times will become a key business imperative through 2024.

4. Democratization of CCaaS

Among all the things COVID-19 is — it also has been a blessing for enterprise communications players that are rushing to deepen product portfolios. Leading vendors are democratizing the CCaaS market by making the most-used CCaaS features accessible to SMBs with cost-effective solutions that eliminate the cost barrier to entry. For companies that thought CCaaS was out of reach, vendors like LogMeIn have rolled out quick-to-deploy solutions, providing SMBs an easier path to continuity in the cloud.

Learn More: Guide to Evaluating UCaaS ProvidersOpens a new window

Contact Center Game-Plan Revisited: Questions Tech Buyers Should Ask

After the remote working rush, here comes the next challenge for digital leaders. With organizations worldwide looking ahead to a “return-to-normal”, the CCaaS buying landscape is set for a change. We list down top questions business leaders need to factor in for CCaaS deployments.

1. How to be better prepared for disasters and other events?

Before the coronavirus swept the globe, disasters and events manifested in the form of unplanned data center outages or weather events and earthquakes that disrupted services. Without a doubt, the #1 question for large organizations will be how to be better prepared for unforeseen events and ensure business continuity.

2. How to evaluate best-of-breed vs. full-featured solutions?

The most important question leaders need to brace for are deciding between full-featured best of breed solutions or building a customized solution from the ground-up that requires an internal team of developers. According to LogMeIn’s Opens a new window Mark Strassman, only 13% of businesses are able to use a full omnichannel contact center offering due to cost considerations and time-to-deploy.

3. How to build security and compliance at scale?

By now, it is clear that GDPR and CCPA are delivering its desired impact with organizations recognizing the need for compliance as an ongoing process. ITDMs will need to develop a strategy that weaves privacy Opens a new window considerations into every aspect of business operations. TrustArc’s Hilary Wandall, General Counsel and Chief Data Governance Officer says the strategy should address future worst-case scenarios, including how organizations will proceed to re-open and what must be done to adjust to remote work models.

4. How to weigh the cost of investment and measure financial impact?

With tech spending shrinking, technology investments will come under the scanner and ITDMs will have to carefully examine the potential ROI Opens a new window and bottom line on CCaaS investments. It starts by factoring in implementation costs vs. benefits realized — such as reduced infrastructure (hardware and IT maintenance) and operational costs, improved web chat /voice conversion rates, reduction in customer abandonment, among others. Business leaders will need to thoroughly evaluate the business value and put in place a framework to calculate the baseline ROI achieved.

Learn More: Top 10 Meeting Software Solutions in 2020Opens a new window

5 Mission-Critical Priorities for Tech Buyers Post-Crisis

In the pre-pandemic stage, the key business priority was upping customer experience across chat, email, SMS, or voice. Organizations wanted contact center software that could provide a full 360° view of the customer. The shift to modernizationsOpens a new window usually happens when existing contact center infrastructure reaches the end-of-life period, and business leaders look to add new functionalities and digital channels to address three core areas ― reduce costs, up agent productivityOpens a new window , and enhance omnichannel leading to improved customer experience. But as organizations worldwide grapple with COVID-19, one thing is clear — contact center modernization attempts will go beyond seamless customer journeys with a single, real-time view across customer touchpoints. Business leaders will have to factor several changes such as a wide range of emerging scenarios spanning new demands placed by customers they support, adapting to new compliance regulations which may kick-in post-crisis, factoring in a renewed push for data privacy, and hardening existing Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Opens a new window programs.

We take stock of key CCaaS vendor considerations post-crisis:

1. Agility & Scalability

What’s more important in the post-pandemic landscape — business agility and scalability, and this should be rooted in strategy. For established organizations with rigorous business processes, it can be challenging to hit the ‘reset button’. The current situation will compel contact center heads to revisit governance policies, securityOpens a new window controls, BC/DR plans, and organizational structure to promote remote work. Analysts suggest rebooting old processes, and implementing the tooling needed to become more resilient and better positioned to transition to the ‘new normal’.

What you should expect from CCaaS vendor:

• Can a third-party partner’s network infrastructure support large-scale remote agents?
• Can the vendor deliver 99.99% (four nines) when it comes to network reliability and performance?
• For remote implementation, is there a standardized process for evaluating network performance?
• What kind of support vendors deliver in shedding contact agents/seats or adding based on customer demand?
• How will onsite project management and technical support change in remote implementation?
• Can the vendor provide a complete turnkey solution which can be integratedOpens a new window with any application or database and is scalable for global deployments?

2. AI and analytics capabilities

For most contact center environments, AI, analytics, and automation had been on the roadmap for some time. However, the crisis will make business leaders embrace automation faster to capture critical customer information and provide insights to lower average agent handling time, faster call resolution, thereby increasing sales. “We believe AI has the power to make workers more efficient by removing some of the mundane tasks and allowing humans to focus on the high-value and creative things that a machine can’t do. Given the high rate of agent turnover, onboarding new agents is a constant and often requires long timeframes before new agents are prepared to take calls. AI can also increase the customer experience with intelligent call routing and can take customer inputs and then route calls to the most qualified agent (e.g., based on preferred language and skill level needed,” Strassman shared with ToolboxOpens a new window . Accenture analysts advise deepening virtual agent capabilities to support growing volume and maintain productivity in remote environments.

Contact center clients will need to work with service providers to increase the maturity of AI Opens a new window solutions. Consider these new and existing AI capabilities to better serve customer demands:

• Machine Learning to help interpret unstructured data — interactions, identity potential trends and opportunities for optimizing CX
• Analytics and reporting to give more visibility in customer journey, and boost upselling
• Using AI to optimize workforce optimization and improve QA process

3. Cloud Security

Reinforcing security infrastructure will become increasingly important post crisis. CCaaS vendors have heavily invested in security development lifecycle and protecting end-user data. For example, LogMeIn provides a comprehensive security framework that covers all facets of security — development lifecycle, vulnerability managementOpens a new window , security operations, incident response and threat intelligence, security engagement and awareness, GRC (governance, risk, and compliance), and offensive security. But cloud security is essentially a shared responsibility — service providers manage infrastructure and applications, clients will be tasked with managing data and user access control. Cloud-native, multi-tenant architectures that deliver more scalability will become prevalent in remote work environments.

What CCaaS customers should look for:

• Rigorous technical security practices backed by multiple levels of firewall protection
• Intruder detection systems (IDS) to safeguard against threats
• Data encryption used both in storage and in transit
• Additional layers of user authentication and PAM
• Policy on user access control and external audit trails

On the remote workforce end, business leaders will have to rethink technical architecture to support and secure them.

4. Compliance & Privacy

Regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and PCI DSS still apply whether agents work in centralized contact centers or remote work environments. Analysts predict effective self-service will become prevalent as new regulationsOpens a new window will compel businesses to enforce stricter compliance rules, taking employees out of the loop. There will be an uptake of automated IVR processes, especially in the financial services industry, where agents handle queries related to payment cards. With regulations swinging into action, companies have already started processing minimum personal data of users to avoid non-compliance. Additionally, user demands are compelling businesses to adopt more transparency related to personal data.

Additionally, remote work at scale will also determine new privacy and controls for agents. Business leaders will need to revisit privacy policies and build scalable programs to operationalize it for remote agents.

5. Service Dependencies with Resellers & Integrators

In this highly competitive landscape, most CCaaS resellers and integration partners have multiple vendor relationships. The multi-vendor environment can sometimes lead to disruptions in services and limit the scope of deployment. Potential buyers should thoroughly evaluate the reseller’s relationship with vendors, technological capabilities, dependencies on other vendors, accreditations and compliance standards followed. When working with integration partners, CCaaS buyers should also consider whether they can meet the usually covered Service level objectives (SLOs) such as uptime, network reliability, customer support and response time.

Wrapping Up

While the cloudOpens a new window will reduce many of the technical challenges around infrastructure deployment and slice maintenance costsOpens a new window , CCaaS vendors should observe how clients fit technology into remote work environments and adapt it to different contexts to deliver differentiated solutions that can address specific needs and challenges in the future. On the other end, business leaders will be tasked with setting up governance structures that guide the organization and usage of the software.

Do you think remote work will reshape contact centers? Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!