Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) | A Comprehensive Guide

Senior Writer: Paras Kela

Reading Time: 6 Minutes

Published : September 30, 2023

Are you tired of inefficient inbound call management and technical glitches in agent-customer interactions? If yes, adopting a contact center as a service platform (CCaaS) can be a turning point in your business.

Also, 85% of customer service agents wish to work remotely full-time without returning to contact center offices. Introducing a cloud-based CCaaS can help agents do that, reducing agent turnover.

Are you interested in learning more about a CCaaS platform? This guide covers the intricacies of CCaaS–its working mechanism, benefits, and points to consider when choosing the best platform. Let’s take on this journey together!

Pro-tip

You cannot afford to give your customers an average experience or not promptly cater to their inquiries. So, remember to always deliver the best customer service experience by having a medium that facilitates smooth agent-customer interactions, like powerful CCaaS software. Also, your results will be as good as your chosen platform so choose the one that closely matches your requirements and goals.

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What is Contact Center as a Service? 

Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) is a cloud software that facilitates contact center agent-customer interactions with zero reliance on traditional call center equipment. It gives users access to its cutting-edge functionalities by charging them on a pay-as-you-go or subscription model.

With this contact center software, you can easily centralize all customer touchpoints–website chats, inbound/outbound calls, emails, and more–enhancing the focus on each customer journey point.

CCaaS provider maintains and hosts this scalable software, eliminating the need to incur expensive hardware and in-house IT team costs. So, that was your answer to what is CCaaS and what does CCaaS stand for.

You May Also Read : Comparison of Best Call Center Softwares

How Does Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) Work?

CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) software facilitates friction-free agent-customer interactions across email, call, and text via a single online platform. 

• It makes this possible by empowering agents with high-utility features like 360-degree customer view and conversational AI. Such features give agents insights into customers’ past interactions and suggestions to handle a query effectively, consequently improving customer satisfaction.
• This contact center as a service software also works wonders for top customer service managers and leaders by giving them access to contact and call center reporting and analytics features. Leaders can leverage such features to gauge critical insights into agent performance, track customer service processes, and determine individual and operational inefficiencies.
• Remember, CCaaS (cloud contact center) software workflow design and smart call routing systems are enough to ensure the best customer issue resolution and agent performance.
• Also, CCaaS platforms have call center automation features to reduce agents’ time drainage in performing operational tasks. For instance, its AI-powered Interactive Voice Response and chatbots handle frequently asked questions automatically by extracting historical data or giving customers relevant self-service options.

There are so many more features, like automatic call distribution and VoIP call recording, that you’ll come across when you adopt robust CCaaS software.

Cloud-Based vs. On-Premise CCaaS Solutions

Cloud-based CCaaS (cloud contact center software) and on-premise CCaaS solutions are far distinct. But because people often get confused about which one to opt for, here’s an unbiased differentiation between the two to inform your decision –

The Top Benefits of CCaaS Solutions

60% of companies will start using CCaaS solutions (contact center software) by 2025. This is because of the heap of benefits it brings to businesses. Here are the top 6 benefits of CCaaS solutions –

1. Cost-Effectiveness

CCaaS solutions involve zero additional cost of traditional contact center elements like IT department, hardware, maintenance, and more. Its usage-based pricing model–pay-as-you-go only adds to its cost-effectiveness.

2. High Scalability

Such solutions come with a feature stack divided into different plans wherein the higher pricing means more features suitable for catering to growing business needs. So, as your business grows, you just need to add a few features in clicks or shift to a better plan.

3. Enhanced Team Flexibility

Modern contact center solutions are highly flexible, allowing your teams to work from their preferred location and devices. This is possible because this software syncs all the conversations from different channels with real-time notifications.

The best part? Employees are likelier to stay because they get their flexibility at work. Reduced employee turnover also enhances your brand image and makes more employees interested in working with you, giving you a richer pool of talent.

4. Higher Reliability

Imagine if your contact center experiences some issue – equipment failure wherein your customers are unable to connect with the support team and the sales team is having a hard time closing deals.

This will lead to a huge loss, right? CCaaS solutions promise 99.99% uptime, saving you from such situations.

5. Improved Customer Experience and Inefficiencies

CCaaS software has automatic reports, and contact and call center analytics feature that lets you dive into the critical metrics like missed/declined calls or downtime. Leveraging these metrics can help you gauge the inefficiencies and attention areas before they become reasons for loss.

For instance, if you notice repetitive customer issues, you lag in self-service options. With analytics, you can gauge your customer behavior and understand their pain points to deliver a personalized support experience. On modification of strategies, you can track if they’re working well.

6. Omnichannel Customer Experience

Do you know that 40% of customers expect to receive support from brands on their preferred channel? Yes, and that’s exactly what CCaaS aims to fulfill via omnichannel communication. Regardless of the channel your customers contact you on–email, social media, or phone, contact center as a service software help contact centers with it all.

Choosing the Best CCaaS Platform

Choosing the best suitable CCaaS software is truly important as it defines the quality of customer service contact centers‘ agents deliver to your customers regardless of the communication platform. Its simple omnichannel platform helps you manage customer requests, support tickets, and orders.

But how do you make the right choice? By keeping in mind the following points when making a decision –

1. Clearly State Your Business Goals

Don’t get lured by a contact center software or CCaaS platform offering many features or perks, and ensure the features match your OKRs (objective and key results). You have to be clear about your contact centers’ key goals and ideal communication platforms.

2. Check the Platform’s Scalability

Choose a scalable platform for your cloud contact centers that can accommodate new users seamlessly and has an easy user addition process. This is important because as your business grows, your customer base will expand, and to cater to their needs, you would need to add more contact center agents to your software.

With highly scalable CCaaS platforms, you won’t have to incur the costs of constantly shifting to new platforms.

3. Run an Integration Check

Don’t forget to check if your platform integrates with relevant apps extensively used in your cloud contact centers and has in-built email or CRM integration.

Knowing the required integrations is difficult because UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) can ideally replace some of your preferred apps. So, check what apps it can replace to decide your integration requirement.

4. Evaluate Compatibility With Available Support Options

Does the provider’s support options suit you? You must ensure in advance whether you’re fine with paying extra to access technical support or onboarding and if the process of contacting support seems feasible.

You May Also Read : What is Multichannel Contact Center? A Complete Guide

5. Gauge Your Comfort With Available Training Resources

There are CCaaS platforms for contact centers that most users don’t find easy to navigate and take time to learn and adopt. However, check if your chosen platform is understandable and provides decent learning resources for complex parts–dedicated success manager, training manuals, or pre-recorded videos.

This is important because the steeper the learning curve, the longer it takes to experience the platform’s success in your contact centers and reap its benefits.

6. Determine Your Industry-specific Needs

Does your business have existing or potential core industry-specific processes or legal obligations? Then, you must consider software for your contact centers that can accommodate those seamlessly.

Suppose you must adhere to PCI (Payment Card Industry), which protects data via high-grade IT security controls. In that case, you should skip the contact centers software that don’t have this compliance.

7. Consider Cost Fluctuations

When you start exploring your CCaaS software options, you’ll find that most of them charge contact centers per-user basis, which means more cost with additional users.

So, if you often experience a heavy flow of customer queries and have to hire additional agents to fulfill them, consider that while preparing your CCaaS (contact center as a service software) budget.

8. Evaluate the Supported Communication Channels

When choosing your CCaaS platform, evaluate if it can properly manage your customer’s preferred support channel.

Suppose your contact center receives customer queries over texts and has a skilled set of contact center agents to cater to them. In that case, you must check if your chosen CCaaS software has a dedicated texting app with helpful features. If not, skip it and look further.

Wrapping Up 

CCaaS platforms truly empower contact center agents by offering access to a powerful stack of features to reduce manual effort and deliver personalized customer experience. It has no complex working mechanism; a fair idea of all the CCaaS features can help you successfully implement it in your contact and call centers.

But make sure to choose a suitable solution for your contact center and call centers by following the above guide. Ideal software can positively impact your business, extending greater team flexibility and improving customer satisfaction and experience.

Now, you are all set to choose and adopt robust CCaaS solutions (contact center as a service) software for your contact center and call centers. So wait no further; start exploring now!

Paras Kela

Paras Kela is an accomplished IT professional with 7+ years of industry experience, including 4+ years as a dedicated content writer. His expertise lies in crafting informative blogs on VoIP and cloud telephony, among other technical subjects. Outside his professional pursuits, he cherishes quality time with loved ones, indulges in watching documentaries, and finds solace in gardening.

Updated : May 14, 2024

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