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.