In 2020, the contact centre took a huge step forward, becoming one of the main ways organisations and consumers communicated.
With physical offices and shops closed, the contact centre was a life raft for customers trying to get answers and carry out transactions as normal. And, for companies facing a wave of concerned questions from customers, the contact centre became the heart of their communication strategy.
Organisations needed to get agents set up to work from home quickly and were looking for cost-effective, pay-for-what-you-use ways to make this happen. No one had the time for an expensive, slow deployment, and being tied into a fixed number of licences just didn’t give the flexibility to scale up or down that businesses wanted.
At the same time, customer expectations of the contact centre experience were rising. Customers wanted an omnichannel experience so that, whenever and however they got in touch, the agent or bot had an end-to-end view of the interaction. They wanted the freedom to switch between channels, creating a contact thread that they could continue via email, SMS, webchat, social media or voice. Failing to provide this quickly led to customer frustration and a risk that they would take their business elsewhere. Companies were under pressure to solve these issues, quickly.
When all these factors came together, I think that was the point that cloud contact solutions came of age.
The must-haves of the new age public cloud contact centre solution
Organisations now have a clear specification for what they want from a public cloud contact centre solution. Here’s the checklist that our global customers shared with us:
Speedy, easy deployment
- They want a tried and tested infrastructure with a user-friendly configuration interface, so they can have a solution up and running in a matter of weeks
An evergreen approach
- Today’s organisations don’t have time for disruptive migrations or upgrades, they want immediate access to the latest innovation in customer experience. This also prevents them from having to wait for updates and helps them avoid the pain and the risk related to upgrades.
A scalable platform
- Companies know they have to be ready for anything, and that can mean being able to scale up or down as demand fluctuates.
Flexible, usage-based pricing
- Businesses are looking for ways to reduce annual costs by only paying for what they use. They’re also looking for ways to test new environments without committing to huge investments.
A secure solution that’s fully compliant with regulation
- Organisations expect any solution they choose to have the latest cybersecurity defences and to conform to any relevant regulations, e.g., PCI DSS or GDPR.
The ability to deliver multiple channels and an end-to-end approach
- Companies know they need to offer the channels their customers want to use, when they want to use them. They also understand that it’s critical for their agents to have a 360-degree view of the customer and the transaction: customers don’t want to wait and don’t want to repeat. Flexibility comes in here, too. It must be possible to add in new channels quickly.
Our introduction to Genesys Cloud contact centre
At BT, we’ve been hosting, deploying and managing solutions globally in the public and private cloud for the last 15 years. We’ve carefully assessed what our clients were looking for and have chosen to partner with Genesys to deliver an end-to-end solution. Genesys Cloud is the industry’s leading customer experience platform, used in over 100 countries to power 70 billion exceptional interactions.
Genesys Cloud contact centre, our new public cloud solution, delivers on every point in our customers’ checklist and draws on our strong global capability and contact ecosystem. We can deliver Genesys’ market-leading solution wherever we operate, using our experience to interpret each country’s regulations and applying a robust layer of security. The result? You can focus on your business and leave us to look after your technology, including transformation to meet the market and customer demands of today and tomorrow.
If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you offer the seamless, omnichannel experience today’s customers want, sign up for a free 30 minute insights workshop.
For a unique and valuable insight into why cloud adoption programmes fail to scale, how to avoid the common pitfalls and navigate through the choice of cloud-based options, watch our webinar on demand, ‘Having your head in the cloud may be a good thing’.