Contact Center Modernization -...

Contact Center Modernization: A Cloud-Based Approach Delivers Clear Value for Mid-Size Organizations

A Frost & Sullivan White Paper

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contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 3

A Steady Move to the Cloud ........................................................................................................ 3

Spotlight on the Modern Contact Center for Mid-Size Organizations ................................... 4

Cloud-Based Contact Centers Help Mid-Size Companies Get Bigger.................................... 7

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 8

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INTRODUCTION

Today’s savvy business leaders know that the best way to ensure success is to put the customer experience first. Incorporating new channels such as mobile and social into the traditional contact center–and applying analytics to the resulting bonanza of information–can go a long way toward improving that experience. So can supporting a dispersed workforce, including agents who work from home or remote locations; and being able to scale staffing as needed to support increases in customer interaction during seasonal busy times or business growth.

Legacy contact center systems have become too expensive to maintain, upgrade, and integrate with newer contact channels and high-value applications such as analytics. This especially impacts organizations with limited in-house resources to implement and maintain such complex systems. And yet, a modern contact center is a must for organizations of all sizes–but most especially for mid-size companies that, until now, may have lagged behind their larger counterparts when it comes to delivering a truly exceptional customer experience. (Frost & Sullivan defines mid-size organizations as those with 100 to 499 employees.)

Enter cloud-based contact center solutions, which deliver an array of benefits to businesses of all sizes, and which are being widely embraced, in particular, by mid-size organizations that want to leverage new capabilities without pouring more resources into management or IT staff, infrastructure and applications. Cloud solutions deliver state-of-the-art capabilities with zero up-front capital investment; can be deployed in a matter of hours, not days or weeks; are easy to deliver to remote agents and internal employees who can help with customer support; make it easier to stay compliant with corporate, industry and government regulations; and require very little, if any, management and support from the company’s internal IT staff or other personnel. And as companies grow –eventually moving from mid-size to enterprise–cloud-based solutions grow with them.

When purchased from a vendor that offers cloud-based and premises-based contact center systems, cloud-based solutions can be tightly integrated with legacy systems, ensuring that all points of contact work in harmony to deliver a truly exceptional customer experience – and ultimately drive more revenue to the bottom line.

This whitepaper outlines the benefits associated with moving to a cloud-based contact center model, including cost savings, streamlined management, agility, growth, time-to-market, and competitive advantage.

A STEADY MOVE TO THE CLOUD

The cloud is growing so fast that Frost & Sullivan recently forecasted that by 2014, a majority of annual contact center sales would be, for the first time, cloud-based solutions. In fact, the market reached that milestone even sooner than we predicted.

Indeed, 2012 marked the first year in which spending on cloud-based contact center solutions surpassed the premises-based contact center market. The total market for hosted contact centers grew from $1.56B in 2011, to $1.76B in 2012, a growth rate of 12.8 percent. In the same time period, the total premises-based market grew only 0.6 percent, from $1.615 to $1.62B. We expect the hosted contact center market to grow to $3.162B by 2017, while the premises-based market is forecast to grow to only $1.892B by 2017.

This trend toward cloud-based contact center solutions parallels a wider move toward cloud-based IT and applications in general. For instance, in 2012, the North American hosted IP telephony and unified communications and collaboration (UCC) services market grew by 31.2 percent in terms of installed lines/seats/users and 30.8 percent in terms of revenue. Furthermore, a recent survey of more than 1,000 IT decision makers in the US and Europe revealed that 43 percent of respondents use cloud-based services

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today, and 53 percent expect to be doing so by 2016. More than half of surveyed businesses have already moved 50 percent or more of their communications solutions to the cloud. Within the next three years, almost a quarter will have moved 76 percent or more of their communications solutions to the cloud.

Figure 1-Cloud Computing Technologies, Current and Future Usage; US and Europe, 2013

43%

52%CurrentFuture

Companies are embracing the cloud for a number of reasons, including fast time to deployment, capital-investment reductions, scalability, increased flexibility, easier management and support, and the ability to trial new applications. Depending on the organization, IT managers tell us they see immediate benefit and little, if any, risk from scalability (being able to add or remove agents as needed, especially during seasonal busy time and periods of rapid growth); and from not having to make any up-front capital investments. Management efficiencies and faster adoption of new products and services often come later. Broader adoption has also come as cloud providers continue to address concerns around security and reliability, which have held some organizations back. Companies recognize this success: in the IT decision-makers survey, 85 percent of cloud-reliant companies plan to continue using the cloud in the years to come.

Most mid-size businesses deploy a complete cloud-based system when they are ready to do so. But of course, not all companies will move entirely to the cloud. Many have already made investments in premises-based systems; others prefer the management and control they get from having their equipment and software deployed on site. This is especially true for larger enterprises. However, we expect companies of all sizes to increasingly look at so-called “hybrid” solutions, in which some of the applications are delivered as a service, and others are installed on the company’s premises.

SPOTLIGHT ON THE MODERN CONTACT CENTER FOR MID-SIZE ORGANIZATIONS

Mid-size organizations can look like their larger counterparts–and deliver an exceptional customer experience–with the right technology in hand. And indeed, Frost & Sullivan is seeing companies across all industries and of all sizes, from small to mid-tier to larger enterprises, adopting the cloud as part of their business.

In North America, the cloud-based mid-size contact center, which Frost & Sullivan generally defines as between 100-499 seats, has been growing at a rapid rate; well over half of all respondents in a recent Frost & Sullivan survey said that they are either currently using a cloud-based solution or plan to do so in the next 18 months. In 2013, we also saw strong cloud adoption in small organization, with fewer than 99 agents or ports, and in large ones, with more than 500 users.

Based on 445 responses from IT admins

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Figure 2-Current and Future Use of Contact Center Applications (Percent of Means): North America, 2014

57% 60% 60%68% 71% 73%

Current, 2014 Future, 2016

Small Medium Large

Source: Frost & Sullivan

However, the reasons for moving to the cloud are changing. While cost was until recently the leading driver behind the move to the cloud, especially among mid-size organizations, in 2013 it was surpassed by ease of use and improved disaster recovery/business continuity. Among those same mid-size businesses, these drivers are followed by several others.

• Ease of provisioning and managing multi-site operations is increasingly important for mid-size businesses as they grow and expand into new regions. Most small businesses cannot afford to have on-site IT staff at every office location, but they need to be able to deploy advanced contact center solutions to all their agents, regardless of where they are located; and they need to know that those remote users will have the management and support they need to get their jobs done.

• Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity is taking on more significance among mid-size companies. The trends impacting contact center BC/DR include customer and investor expectations, regulations, the use of higher skilled agents, global interconnectivity, mobility, and social media. Given the variety and increasing frequency of events impacting BC/DR–including weather disasters, political changes and terrorist threats–the need to create and deploy BC/DR strategies is clear. Best practices include smarter site selection, placing centers away from vulnerable areas; using “multi-shoring”; enabling employees to work from home; placing applications and data in the cloud; employing multiple backup and response tools and channels; alerting customers with out-bound messaging; and improving contact center access control. Cloud-based solutions offer all these options, and because they have their own redundant infrastructure, users know they will always be up and running, even if one data center goes down.

• Cost savings are consistently rated high in importance among businesses of all sizes, including mid-size organizations. Cloud-based solutions can significantly reduce system maintenance and management costs. They do not require much, if any, up-front capital investment, which is a secondary economic driver but one that is still rated as important by most organizations.

Base: Filtered respondents - Those who currently use hosted/cloud solutions

(n=160); those who use or plan to use hosted/cloud solutions (n=284)

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• Reduced IT budgets are having an impact on businesses’ ability to properly manage and support increasingly complex contact center solutions. Cloud-based contact centers deliver leading-edge capabilities without requiring skills-based deployment and support from IT or business leaders. Since management and support are included in the monthly usage fee, end users, IT staff and business leaders can go directly to the provider when they need help.

• Rapid time to deployment is of particular interest these days, as technology evolves at a very fast pace, and even small and mid-size organizations do not want to be left behind. Cloud-based solutions ensure that all end users are up on the most recent version of the software, all the time, with no upgrades or re-installs needed. Adding new users can be almost instantaneous, and companies can be up and running on the most advanced contact center systems in a matter of hours or days, rather than weeks or months. This makes it easy to enter new or emerging markets or add agents during seasonal busy times. It is equally easy to de-activate users as needed, when agents leave the organization, or after periods of high volume and seasonal staffing.

• Flexibility and scalability are critical for business agility, which is a key driver across all business and technology implementations. Cloud-based contact centers make it simple and very cost effective for companies of all sizes to add new agents as needed, in any location, and on any network or device. This enables seasonal staffing and quick response to growth or one-off crises, allowing mid-size companies, in particular, to take advantage of new opportunities and react to market shifts without having to invest in infrastructure and applications beyond their needs. Cloud-based solutions also make it easy for companies to grow into large enterprises–without having to sacrifice their preferred contact center applications and services.

• Outsourcing management and expertise is growing increasingly important as organizations look to stay laser focused on their core business. With smaller IT staffs available to support a mid-size contact center, and with the technology changing at a rapid pace, mid-size companies are especially eager to partner with a cloud provider that can deliver best-in-class service and support, freeing up its own employees to improve business processes and positively impact the bottom line.

Figure 3 - Important Factors in Decision to Move to Hosted/Cloud Solutions: North America, 2014-Mid-Size Contact Center

Easy

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Reduc

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cost

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ip

Fast

to de

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Flexib

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89% 87% 83% 83%81% 81%69%

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Base: Filtered respondents - Those who use or plan to use hosted/cloud solutions

and rated these factors as “Very” or “Somewhat” Important (n=284)

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Spotlight on Home-Based and Remote Agents

Home-based and remote agents continue to grow in numbers, as the so-called virtual workplace becomes a mainstay in businesses of all sizes and industries. This is a bigger concern for mid-size businesses than it is for large enterprises, because these smaller companies often do not have large-scale contact centers and instead want to support only a handful of agents throughout the regions in which they do business. At the same time, mid-size organizations rarely have the resources to deploy premises-based solutions to remote and work-at-home employees, making cloud-based options very attractive. With cloud-based contact center applications, even mid-size organizations can hire the best personnel, regardless of where they are based; and scale up or down as needed for seasonal support or high-growth periods.

CLOUD-BASED CONTACT CENTERS HELP MID-SIZE COMPANIES GET BIGGER

As companies grow, they need to expand their contact center capabilities so that they can deliver a truly world-class customer experience. Frost & Sullivan research shows that as companies deploy cloud-based solutions, they also use more, and more-advanced, capabilities within them, including multi-media (Web, chat, email, SMS), automatic call distributor (ACD), and workforce management. And mid-size companies tell us they are planning to use those features more in the next 12-36 months, as well as even more-advanced capabilities, including outbound contact, and quality monitoring.

Figure 4-Contact Center Applications Currently Used as Hosted/Cloud Solutions by Mid-Size Contact Center

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Contact Center Applications North America, 2014 Currently Used as Hosted/Cloud Solutions

Contact Center Applications North America, 2014 Planning to Move to Hosted/Cloud Solutions

Custo

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Quality

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itorin

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Web

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abor

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Tools

Wor

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Mobile

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Socia

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CRM

Outbou

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Spee

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RACD

44%

55%

55% 53%

52% 50%

51% 46%

47%

49%

49%45% 43%

47%

47%

40%37%

38% 35%

29%

29%

44%

44%

54%


Base: Filtered respondents - Those who currently use hosted/cloud solutions

(n=160); those who use or plan to use hosted/cloud solutions (n=284)

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In essence, cloud-based contact center solutions make it easy for even mid-size organizations to support a cross-channel contact center, which leverages an integrated set of customer interaction points to deliver a personalized customer experience. The goal is to ensure that customers can interact with the organization via both new and traditional methods; and agents can support them with a 360-degree view that offers pertinent information on the entire customer relationship right when it is needed. This helps businesses deliver a unique set of services and support to each individual buyer, and leads to deeper loyalties, lower customer effort scores, and new revenue opportunities.

Cloud-based systems that come with pre-defined integration capabilities make it easy and seamless to get a complete view of the customer and leverage advanced capabilities such as analytics. And they support the workforce optimization (WFO) efforts that more companies are looking to implement in order to drive productivity and profitability. WFO solutions typically include tools for workforce management, call recording, quality monitoring, online training, and performance monitoring and evaluation. Such reporting can be complex to handle with premises-based systems; cloud-based delivery makes it easy to implement and execute.

Finally, because cloud solutions are so easy to scale up or down as needed, they make it possible for mid-size organizations to grow organically, or in response to outside factors, and transition from mid-size to enterprise.

CONCLUSION

Companies that focus on the customer experience will see increased loyalty, lower customer effort scores, and bigger revenue growth; and they will have an easier time staying compliant with company policies and regulations. But to achieve those gains, they must deploy a truly modern contact center that supports advanced applications and analytics, as well as remote agents, internal employee experts, and the scalability needs of growing organizations.

Mid-size companies, in particular, can benefit from a contact center that enables high-value customer interactions. Being able to differentiate on customer service– and compete head-to-head with large organizations with more personnel and resources–can make the difference between success and failure. But while premises-based contact center systems can enable such initiatives, they have become expensive and difficult to maintain, upgrade, and integrate with newer contact channels and advanced capabilities such as mobile, social and Big Data analytics. This is especially challenging for mid-size organizations with limited in-house resources and budgets.

Cloud-based solutions deliver myriad benefits to businesses of all sizes, but they are especially attractive to mid-size companies. Cloud solutions deliver state-of-the-art capabilities without the need for up-front capital investment; can be deployed quickly and easily to everyone who needs them, including remote agents and internal employees; and are maintained, managed and supported by the provider, freeing up IT and line-of-business staff to focus on their core competencies. When integrated with legacy systems, cloud-based solutions can be tightly integrated with other applications, ensuring that all points of contact work together to deliver a truly differentiating customer experience.

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Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that

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MELANIE TUREK

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