When the COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to shut their doors last year, organizations were faced with a sink or swim situation.
With in-store service no longer an option for serving customers, businesses had to make the quick switch over to their contact centres to be the face of their companies. Unfortunately, not every business was ready for this sudden change –– especially when those that were dependent on legacy on-prem contact centre solutions had to find workarounds to keep their service running.
Now that the economy in much of the world is starting to return to normal, smart companies know that they have to become more adaptable. And that means streamlining their technology stack and adopting solutions that will help them keep their customers happy and buying even when they get thrown a curveball.
We are now seeing a rise in these organizations moving to cloud contact centre solutions that are flexible for the hybrid working environment and offer a wider range of features like IVR and AI. In making the move to a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), companies are working to integrate their contact centres into a Microsoft Teams environment with Direct Routing powering their voice infrastructure. This allows them to take advantage of features like viewing presence, integrating calendars, and improving overall efficiency across the organization to help customers resolve their calls the first time.
Making any one of these transitions would be a heavy lift for any organization as it requires navigating at least three different vendors. Choosing the right partners to guide this journey is essential.
To gain a better understanding of some of the challenges involved in making this move, UC Today spoke to CallTower and Five9, two leaders in this space who have partnered to offer Native Direct Routing to Microsoft Teams along with an industry-leading CCaaS solution.
Looking for Partners That Play Well with Others
According to CallTower’s Chief Revenue Officer William Rubio, one of the biggest challenges for companies in going through the integration process comes from working with multiple vendors.
For starters, the vendors might not have the right integrations that actually work with one another. If the solution providers do not have a strong relationship between themselves and familiarity with the other’s products, then it can easily devolve into time-costly finger-pointing when issues arise.
“Customers can get stuck between vendors ping-ponging them back and forth over who is responsible for fixing problems,” says Rubio.
CallTower and Five9 have eliminated this communication gap with deep ties between the two solution providers. “We have a dedicated Five9 technical account manager who sits with our customer success team at CallTower,” Rubio says, explaining that CallTower gives customers end-to-end service.
In cases where an issue might be outside of their ability to handle in-house, Rubio says that they have no problem finding the right address for a quick resolution.
“As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we have a strong relationship with Microsoft as well as with Five9, so we are able to give customers the 24/7 one-stop-shop support that they need,” he says.
A Collaborative Integration Process –– Getting Started with CCaaS
Rubio tells UC Today that Gartner has reported that only 10% of organizations had implemented a cloud contact centre as of September 2020. However, they expect this number to rapidly rise to a whopping 50% by the end of 2022.
This will mean that a lot of companies are starting to weigh their options for moving forward with a CCaaS solution.