With more than 40,000 calls per month, long hold times, overwhelmed contact centre agents, and frustrated customers, the reality for Ombudsman Services – the UK’s leading independent dispute resolution company – was challenging.
With a growing number of businesses and consumers relying on its specialist services, it needed to find a new way of working to create a more agile and scalable contact centre. Replacing its outdated, on-premise telephony system to a cloud-based solution has been a game-changer. Not only have agents been able to better manage the high volumes of calls, but also improve decision making and increase customer satisfaction. The flexibility of cloud helped Ombudsman Services introduce a dynamic home working environment that can cater for customer and organisational growth.
It’s clear that as organisations grow, and the bandwidth of contact centre agents can become stretched, making the limitations of legacy physical infrastructure visible.
Three reasons to flip the switch to cloud-based technology
1. Ensuring ongoing scalability and agility
The nature of cloud-based technology enables contact centres to scale seamlessly, preparing organisations for a boost in queries, especially during busy periods. By integrating learnings from prior engagements and well-established best practices, agents are able to connect customers to the right business units in a smart way. Cloud technology boosts this and aids faster, more efficient decision making and customer service.
For customers, this reduces wait times as the cloud solution will provide greater visibility of agent activity and call queues. This eliminates the risk of overstaffing, as the number of agents available can be adjusted quickly to meet operational demand.
2. Delivery of adaptive flexibility and security
Cloud-based infrastructure is far more dynamic than on-premise physical hardware for several reasons. Firstly, agents are able to tackle customer queries easier, through the deployment of improved features and channels like webchat, social media, email, and SMS.
Additionally, cloud promotes more flexibility in the way of working, regardless of location or device. Not only does this save costs, but it also gives agents more freedom, convenience, and work satisfaction.
Furthermore, because there are no physical devices, businesses receive more frequent updates that can be synced in the background. Whether these include security updates or product enhancements, these changes keep organisations at the cutting-edge of the latest technology. Regular maintenance in this way means that agents are never left in a situation where they must use legacy technology, and instead they can maintain full visibility and functional operations – even during emergencies.
3. Secure cost efficiency and savings
Organisations can avoid the costly investment involved with the installation and maintenance of hardware and server space that comes with on-premise systems. By choosing cloud, organisations only pay for the services used, without the burden of up-front capital expenditure, or annual check ins.
At a global level, businesses with a customer base spanning across countries can use cloud technology to provide support to multiple time zones. This eliminates the need to make costly investments in local centres around the world. Real-time translation and transcription allow organisations to deploy multi-lingual customer service, improving customer satisfaction. Our research found that this can lead to savings, on average, of up to 20% on contact centre expenditure, simply by moving to the cloud.
Ultimately, by eliminating the need for on-premise infrastructure, cloud solutions have made it easier for organisations to establish and expand their customer service operations. Furthermore, contact centres can adapt swiftly to fluctuating demands, and subsequently achieve an improvement in cost efficiency and revenue growth.
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