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If there’s one thing the COVID-19 pandemic taught us, it is that the way we run our contact centers has changed forever.
Several customers of ours were forced to migrate their contact centers to the cloud almost overnight just to keep serving their customers. Thousands of businesses moved to the cloud during this time.
Some made the transition smoothly, while others found themselves wrestling with unforeseen challenges like data integration issues, workflow disruptions, agent training, and adoption issues.
However, businesses have seen the benefits of the cloud and have started to look at cloud migration as a permanent solution. This has allowed them to take a step back and look at this migration strategically.
The cloud is very powerful only when you move to it the right way.
In this article, let us look at the good practices for migrating your contact center to the cloud, the pitfalls to avoid, and how we have successfully guided businesses through this journey.
Why migrate to a Cloud-based contact center?
Before diving into the how, let’s talk about the why. You choose cloud for several reasons, and some of the important ones include:
Scalability
Do you experience massive spikes in call volume during holiday sales or when you run specific promotional campaigns?
With cloud contact centers, you can scale up the number of agents at the click of a button and scale down just as easily when the event ends. You get to avoid the cost of permanent infrastructure and the hassles associated with the implementation and rollout.
Flexibility
Imagine you are a healthcare provider, and your remote-working paramedics and nurses have to support patients from different regions as a part of your teleconsulting initiatives.
With cloud contact centers, your nurses and paramedics can work seamlessly from anywhere without setting up any additional hardware. All they need would be a working Internet along with access to a browser.
We have helped multiple healthcare providers with our platform to offer teleconsulting services during the pandemic.
Cost efficiency
Let us assume you are a debt collection agency, and you have about 60 agents doing collections.
Imagine the number of servers, backup servers, failover, redundancy, and the associated infrastructure.
You would spend an enormous sum on the infrastructure besides spending on resources to manage the operations and security of this infrastructure.
With the cloud, you pay for only what you use as a subscription. This would allow you to reallocate your savings to other areas like analytics and intelligence.
Innovation
Rolling out any innovation is easier with the cloud infrastructure. What if you want to add AI-powered chatbots to your customer service infrastructure? It would be much easier with cloud contact centers, both in terms of implementation and adoption.
Most cloud contact centers support API integrations that make it easier to add the bells and whistles per the business requirements.
Security and Compliance
- How do you manage the security vulnerabilities in your contact center platform?
- Do you have access to a database on known vulnerabilities?
- How do you take care of the physical and logical security aspects of your contact center?
- How do you manage operating system-level vulnerabilities?
- Who manages your upgrades and patches?
- How do you ensure compliance with standards and regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FDCPA, Reg-F, TCPA, CCPA, STIR/SHAKEN, FedRamp, DoT, and TRAI?
In an on-premise setup, you need to have state-of-the-art security expertise to manage all the security needs mentioned above and top-notch infrastructure and processes to ensure compliance with standards and regulations.
All of these come at a premium.
With cloud contact centers, your providers ensure all of these security needs and vulnerabilities. Besides, most cloud contact center platforms are already compliant with various standards and regulations, which you can use as a part of your subscription.
However, despite these advantages, migration to the cloud isn’t always smooth sailing.
What pitfalls should you guard against while migrating your contact center to the cloud?
Data complexity
What kind of data do you have as a contact center?
You would have a humungous amount of data in the form of call & screen recordings. You would have customer interaction data in your CRM and helpdesk software. Besides these, you would have historical data and customer profiles.
You would have to migrate all of this data to the cloud without any data corruption issues by properly mapping the file formats.
How do you go about doing this?
Conduct a data audit before migration and classify data based on relevance, sensitivity, and frequency of use.
Partner with a provider who offers structured data migration plans and pre-migration testing.
Poor integrations
When you migrate your contact center to the cloud, it is not a simple migration almost always.
You will have to factor in the existing integrations you have with CRM, helpdesk, and order management software.
When it is not tightly integrated, your agents spend the majority of their time toggling between multiple screens, leading to slow response times and frustrated customers.
How do you handle this?
Map out all existing integrations and identify potential gaps. Ensure that your cloud platform provider supports API integrations that can connect with all of your existing systems. Besides, see if they already have pre-built integrations with industry-leading CRM, helpdesk, and order management software.
Inadequate training
Assume that you migrate your contact center to a cloud platform and you don’t train your agents on effectively using it. What would happen?
Your agents would struggle to navigate the new system and the related workflows, which would result in increased handling times, leading to long wait times and customer complaints.
Ensure that your cloud platform is intuitive to use with self-service information available within the platform. Besides, ensure that the provider offers tailored onboarding and continuous training as a part of the offering.
Ignoring security and compliance protocols
Your security is only as good as your weakest link.
How do you ensure that you follow all the security and compliance protocols?
Ensure that your cloud provider can implement a robust security framework, including data encryption, access controls, and regular audits. See if the platform is compliant with GDPR, TCPA, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and other regulatory standards.
Lack of a contingency plan
What if there is an outage during the migration? Would you miss your customer calls and lose sales?
As a process, you should define rollback strategies, backup protocols, and failover systems before starting the migration.
Check with your provider if they would ensure minimal disruption through phased migrations and 24/7 support.
Success story
We migrated 1000+ agents of a leading bank to our cloud platform within 48 hours during the pandemic and ensured that they supported their customers without any disruption.
The bank evaluated our platform on the following parameters.
- Data security and information security
- Compliance with PCI standards
- Vulnerability assessment of the platform
- Process compliance and the ability to configure their workflows
- Robustness of the platform
- Legal compliance with DoT norms
We began the migration after they were satisfied with the evaluation. We implemented outbound and inbound campaigns, and we also enabled collections through third-party agencies with our platform.
Why is ClearTouch the ideal cloud migration partner?
A few reasons include:
- We have been a pure-play cloud contact center solution provider for the past twenty-five years. We service more than 1500 customers across 150 countries and handle 2+ billion calls.
- We have migrated 1000s of agents in the last 8 years of operations in India to the cloud without any disruptions.
- Our cloud implementation is done within 24 to 48 hours, which ensures business continuity and exceptional customer experiences.
- Initial customizations and integrations are a part of our implementation, and we do not charge anything additional.
- Our platform is compliant with GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FDCPA, Reg-F, TCPA, CCPA, FedRamp, STIR/SHAKEN, ISAE 3402, and other standards.
- Our platform is built with enterprise-grade security to safeguard customer data at every stage.
- Our platform supports API integrations that allow you to integrate your contact center with best-of-breed IT systems. We have pre-built integrations with industry-leading CRM and helpdesk software.
- Insightful analytics, intelligence, workforce automation, list management services, and voice bots are a part of our platform.
- From pre-migration assessments to post-migration training, we handle every aspect of the transition.
With 24/7 support with the confidence of addressing 95% of queries in the first call positions us as an ideal partner for businesses looking at migrating to the cloud.
Migrating your contact center to the cloud is more than just a technical upgrade. It is a strategic move to future-proof your contact center.
It comes with its own set of challenges. However, the right partner can help you get through those challenges easily and unlock the full potential of the cloud contact center.
Migrating your contact center to the cloud is a sure-shot way to elevate your contact center experience.
Get ready to enhance the experience.