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Why you should look at the Cloud
from both sides now
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Will you find the
silver lining?
“Contrary to their
cost advantage driven
by better customer
experience- cloud-based
contact centers incurred
greater IT staff costs
compared to traditional
Aberdeen Group
Overview
a refresh or upgrade
of these systems.
Assuming you are not
moving everything to
the Cloud (including
agents, management
reports, back-office
operations, and all your
customer data), the
new interface between
your business and the
Cloud will pose some
challenges.
Cloud Considerations
Moving your contact center technology to the Cloud is
definitely worthy of a thorough investigation to assess
the short, medium and long-term benefits or issues for
your company. It certainly has benefits for many, but not
for everyone. In the medium term it may be more cost
effective, and more adaptable to your business needs but
over 5+ years maybe not. How many companies are still
operating 5-year-old technology? Probably most of us!
While there may be considerable benefits, the transition
from on-premises solutions to a hosted or SaaS solution
is rarely painless, and can often have hidden costs and
therefore the decision needs to be weighed carefully, as
it may be a correct decision for many but painfully wrong
for others.
Transitioning some or all of your IT and telephony systems
to the Cloud may be the right strategy for your business,
but are you sure that this shiny new technology model
has a silver lining? Will things look as shiny once you are
inside the Cloud? Many companies - early adopters of the
Cloud - found that their business needs did not line up
well with the operational SaaS constraints.
help you understand the risks of this transition, so as to
help you plan accordingly.
Every Cloud provider is different, and every contact center
is different. Choosing the best provider for your contact
center is not easy, and you may want to get specialist
help with that decision. But all Cloud solutions have some
things in common, so here are some headline points to
consider, no matter who you choose to host your key
systems.
What will Change?
Usually, a contact center Cloud solution will include
telephony, IVR and routing applications, and customer
data systems. These are among the most rapidly changing
technologies, and a move to the Cloud often involves
Companies that are really well organized and work on
planned and orderly roll outs of applications and offers
have the best cloud experiences. Companies that have
great variability and lots of last minute changes tend to
be frustrated with cloud experiences.
Telephony
A major benefit of Cloud solutions is often the move from
TDM or older VoIP telephony to full SIP telephony. While
this is generally a good thing, it does usually involve
changes to your networks, control and processes.
Telephony from the Cloud will impact your data
networks. You may need extra bandwidth or another
vendor supplied network with its security considerations.
You will certainly need some quality of service control
to ensure that telephony traffic is not delayed, causing
unacceptable pauses or loss of quality in telephone calls.
You should look closely at your network performance,
and identify bottlenecks or peak periods: even though
these do not impact your business now, they may cause
problems when your telephony changes.
Number schemes may change. SIP trunk number ranges
may not be the same as your current numbers. If any
internal processes (routing, reporting, call handling or
data lookups) depend on particular inbound or outbound
number ranges, these may need to be modified. In some
cases, callers may need to dial a different number to
reach your business (e.g. callers from abroad who dial a
geographic number).
Calls will be delivered to agents in a different way. This
may lead to delays in the audio path, changes in the way
agents need to answer a call, or issues with integration
to the agent desktop. If moving to the Cloud involves
a change from local data and screen-pops to a remote
CTI solution, the responsiveness of the agent desktop
may decrease. There are solutions to this, but you may
need to upgrade your agent desktop to e.g. an HTML5
architecture to avoid delays.
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IVR and Routing
What Will Stay the Same?
Because telephony is provided in the Cloud, it often
makes sense to locate IVR and routing solutions in
the Cloud too. However, this is not as simple as it may
seem. If your move involves a change of IVR or routing
platform, how easy is it to replicate exactly the behavior
of your current platform? These old systems are seldom
well documented and have over the years grown in
customization and complexity. The new version may be
functionally the same, but the customer experience may
be very different from before.
“Research shows that
cloud-based contact
centers are far more
likely to implement and
monitor crucial processes
and technologies
that drive improved
performance, compared
If you take this
opportunity to refresh
or upgrade your IVR or
routing applications,
make sure you budget
time and money for
testing and teething
problems. Remember
how long it took to
get these applications
Aberdeen Group
business?
Consider keeping your existing platform running until you
are sure the Cloud version is ready for your customers.
PSS can help with extra testing resources, and with
maintaining any legacy systems.
CRM and Back-End Systems
There are many good reasons for storing customer data
in the Cloud, and even for hosting back-office processes
remotely: scalability, robustness, and the feature-rich
solutions offered by companies such as Salesforce or
Oracle. At some point, there needs to be an integration
between the Cloud and your in-house systems, and this is
often overlooked.
How will data from Cloud-based call processing be
delivered properly to your agents? If the new processes
are different, agents may need additional training and
supervision. If the integration with Cloud processes
introduces delays, this may increase agent-handling time
(AHT), adding cost and affecting customer satisfaction
(CSAT) scores.
If your IVR or routing applications depend on back-end
data, via database dips or lookup services, there may be
delays in accessing this data from the Cloud, affecting
the customer experience before the call is put through to
an agent, perhaps resulting in an increase in dissatisfied
callers and additional stress for agents.
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of service: ideally they should experience improved service
as a result of any changes you make. But this is often
not the case. One of the most important considerations
in outsourcing or hosting technology and services is
this: how will it affect the customer experience? Cloud
they do not have the expertise to understand and
optimize the customer experience.
The agent experience is important too. Unless you are
outsourcing your agents, or relying entirely on remote
agents, your Cloud solution will deliver calls to your
existing agent teams. How long does it take to train
each of those agents? If the agent experience changes,
that can have the same adverse effects as changing the
customer experience. Agents adapt quickly, so a good
change, especially with proper training, can improve
service levels.
A bad change, such as more dissatisfied customers
or slower back-end processes, can lead to agent
dissatisfaction and breed bad behaviors. It is crucial for
your business that any changes to the agent experience
are well understood in advance, and any bad changes
are avoided. Once again, this is often not considered by
Cloud providers.
“Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP)
trunks are far
more widely (60%
vs.31%) adopted by
cloud-based contact
centers versus
traditional internal
contact centers.
Aberdeen Group
The final thing which
will stay the same is your
business need for accurate
reporting. Management
reports inform your
business strategy, and
in many contact centers
detailed reports dictate
important aspects of daily
operations, such as staffing,
billing, outbound calling,
and purchasing decisions.
With a move to the Cloud,
at least some of the raw
data behind these reports will change: inbound numbers,
agent extensions, queue details. Even if only the names
change, there is a need to modify the report generation
process, and possibly to interpret reports differently.
This can be a tricky process, and getting it right is crucial,
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Blueprinting to Avoid a
Cloud Disaster
As part of the decision process in moving to the Cloud,
Step Zero is to understand and document all the current
business processes, points of integration, operational
and management reporting that must remain in place.
You really must know what you have, and how it affects
your business, before you can assess the benefits of
transitioning to the Cloud.
In order to truly understand the cost and time frame to
make the transition, knowing where you are starting
from is the most important step. Some businesses talk
do not want to simply replicate the same way of doing
things from generation to generation, but in either case
each function must be accounted for and be included in
the transition plan.
“Contact centers that
use a cloud-based
infrastructure are 27%
more likely (70% vs.
55%) than their peers
to be integrated with
Aberdeen Group
This blueprinting
process can be time
consuming and is
seldom the first thing
Without the blueprint
there is no way to get
accurate proposals,
nor any way to score
the proposals and set
expectations.
It can be useful to use an independent third party,
preferably with a good understanding of your business
and a broad knowledge of contact center technologies,
to help you create and review the blueprint which will
form the starting point for your transition plan.
Understanding the Business
Impacts
As with any other change project, the business impact
must also be calculated:
Disruption to normal operations
The corporate landscape of Cloud providers is another
potential risk:
What will happen if your Cloud provider is acquired
by another company?
What if that company happens to be one of your
competitors?
strategic business decision, of course, but you should
make sure you are aware of all the risks, and consider any
alternatives.
An Alternative Approach
While there is no doubt that Cloud solutions are
maturing and can present a very viable solution for
many enterprises, there is an alternative and equally cost
effective solution in many cases.
If your reasons for considering a move to the Cloud
include the end of life of your current solution, the lack
of effective support from the solution vendor, or the
costs of maintaining and optimizing the performance of
existing platforms and applications, it is certainly worth
considering an alternative which brings many of the
same benefits as the Cloud without the cost and pain of
transition.
A fully managed, outsourced support service is an option
designed to lower costs, improve customer service,
meet business objectives and enhance overall efficiency.
Managed services offer a unique option that provides
both reactive and proactive operational support, as well
as continuous optimization of any customer interaction
solution.
“Findings reveal
that-cloud based
contact centers indeed
deliver quantifiable
business results.
However, companies
need to adopt a
broader perspective
to understand its true
Outsourcing support
and maintenance of
your existing systems
can represent a
significant cost saving
over vendor support
and maintenance costs.
Delays to other projects
The risk of unforeseen issues, which reduce or delay
revenue.
Aberdeen Group
There are many other risks involved in a move to
the Cloud. Data security, data back-up and recovery
processes, and regulatory compliance are all no longer
within your control, yet your business is still responsible
for the consequences of failures in any of these areas.
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How PSS Can Help You
As an independent integrator of contact center
technologies, PSS has a deep understanding of contact
center technologies.
PSS is able to provide an objective view of business
strategy and cost-benefit analysis of technology change.
The business is motivated by customer service, not by
selling upgrades or new technology. We pride ourselves
on giving you the best advice for your business.
We help you consider all the options:
Maintaining your existing systems
Writing off that investment and moving to the
Cloud
Investing in a new on-premises solution, perhaps as
a managed service
If you decide that the Cloud is the right solution for you,
PSS can support you through this technology transition.
We are vendor independent, across a wide range of
technologies.
PSS has conducted a large number of successful
transition projects in large and small businesses, and has
developed a methodology for these projects in order to
minimize cost, maximize business benefits, and mitigate
the risks involved in transition (over 60% of our projects
in 2013 were Cloud transitions).
PSS has experienced staff across the full range of contact
center technologies, from ACDs to XML. We offer a
blueprinting service to ensure you cover all your key
business functions and operational processes.
We can help you consider your options, plan your
transition, keep business as usual services running while
you bed in the Cloud solution, and safely decommission
any systems no longer required.
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Alternatively, a PSS managed service offers most of the
advantages of a Cloud-based model without any of
the disruption and costs associated with moving to the
Cloud. Our ProPSS service manages the entire contact
the infrastructure remaining on premise.
Enterprises can realize substantial cost savings in several
ways without moving to the Cloud. PSS can provide
expert recommendations for reducing the cost of existing
vendor support and maintenance agreements.
With decades of experience PSS can prolong the useful
life of contact center systems. If there is substantial life
left in your current solution, moving to the Cloud may
dramatically increase medium-term cost. In addition,
financial experts point to hidden costs such as write-offs
of IT assets, penalties for existing contract termination,
additional (sometimes significant) consulting fees, and
the cost of delays for integration of custom IVR and other
applications. The total cost of change is often much
higher than expected.
and risks, why not have a chat with PSS. Our reputation
business, whether transitioning to new technology or
maintaining existing systems.
Contact
US: 877 289 7770
UK and Europe: 0800 012 4054
Email info@psshelp.com
Keep in touch with PSS Help