Unified communication platforms have revolutionised internal communications and collaboration but are too limited for contact centres
Long before the pandemic, Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platforms became the communication tool for businesses across industries and sectors. Today, the global UCaaS market is worth around US$36 billion and is projected to almost treble by 2032.
Most businesses want UCaaS and for good reason. These platforms replace clunky on-site phone and messaging equipment with a cloud-based, pay-as-you-play model that means companies rent the features and capacity they need – nothing more, nothing less.
UCaaS providers manage the PBX in the cloud and users make calls (audio or video), send messages or collaborate on documents from a single digital dashboard.
There are lots of advantages to this cloud-based model:
- When your communications are streamed as a service, you don’t have to buy, maintain and secure on-premise kit
- Updates and patching happen automatically as part of the contract
Or to put it another way, UCaaS has been something of a revelation, at least outside of inhouse contact centres.
But inside your contact centre it’s a different story, because here UCaaS alone simply isn’t enough. In the rest of this piece, we’ll show why contact centre teams need a specialised cloud-based solution designed specifically for them.
Contact centre needs are unique – enter CCaaS
But here’s the thing. When people talk about the advantages of UCaaS they’re usually talking about benefits for internal communications. UCaaS is great for meetings, messages and collaboration across internal teams.
It can be used to communicate with customers, and some companies with limited customer contact needs may use it in this way.
But that’s not what it’s good at. If you operate a fully fledged customer service or contact centre operation, you really need a dedicated external communications tool. Enter Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS).
The benefits of CCaaS
CCaaS is especially designed for contact centres, helping agents streamline customer communications in a way that leads to better experiences for employees and customers alike.
In technical terms, UCaaS and CCaaS certainly overlap, but CCaaS is designed for external communications in a way UCaaS just isn’t.
Like UCaaS, CCaaS users can access the service from anywhere. Similarly, vendors cover upfront hardware and ongoing maintenance costs, so CCaaS can be a cost-effective alternative to on-premise contact centre equipment.
Both platforms also integrate multiple communication channels into one service, and both can handle basic call routing. But beyond that, CCaaS has clear advantages for external communications. Here’s just a few…
- Integrations. CCaaS systems typically integrate seamlessly with your CRM platform, ensuring all the customer information agents need is at their fingertips. That makes for more personalised and satisfying interactions.
- Advanced call routing. Automated call routing directs incoming calls to the right person straight away. With CCaaS, calls can be routed to different people depending on their skills and specialisms, as well as their availability.
- IVR. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) automates tasks like customer identification and payments, giving callers self-serve options and faster resolutions while taking the pressure off live agents.
- Call centre analytics. Good CCaaS platforms include advanced analytics, allowing you to mine data for patterns and insight that lead to greater contact centre efficiency or better customer experiences. CCaaS makes this information readily available to the business through powerful and often customisable reporting features.
- Omnichannel. With CCaaS, omnichannel (voice, video, text, IM etc) can be made available to customers as well as employees, so they can get in touch in the way that best suits their needs. That’s a clear winner for customer satisfaction ratings.
- Auto dialler. Powerful auto-dialling for outgoing communications means agents spend more time talking and less time dialling.
MaxContact is a feature rich and affordable CCaaS platform
We could go on, but suffice to say that MaxContact’s industry-leading CCaaS platform offers all these features and more at highly competitive cost. Our innovative extras include an AI-powered chatbot facility and next generation speech analytics, which automates the process of analysing customer conversations.
Most businesses will need a UCaaS system for internal communications. Those that run a contact centre or need to optimise customer communications will need a CCaaS system too.
It’s possible to talk to customers with UCaaS, but the technology is simply not set up to handle customer communications at scale. For that, and the kind of functionality that creates contact centre efficiency while improving customer experience, a powerful CCaaS platform is required.
For more on MaxContact’s powerful, secure, cloud-based contact centre solution, please get in touch.
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