Your contact center is the beating heart of your customer service operations. You need to make sure it’s equipped to handle customer needs. There’s a lot that goes into that, from agent efficiency and agent performance to how effectively you can manage incoming calls.
Above all, though, a good contact center needs to prioritize customer satisfaction. Callers need you, the provider, to deliver top-notch services and an exceptional customer experience across multiple communication channels. If you can’t do that, then your contact center will likely end up doing more harm than good.
So how can you prevent that from happening?
Start by giving agents access to the tools they need to do their jobs. And that’s exactly what the right contact center software does. A hosted call center service provider equips your contact center with everything it needs to meet customer expectations. More importantly, it also future-proofs your contact center against an evolving market landscape
Let’s discuss what that looks like, and what hosted contact center solutions can do for your organization.
Our Methodology Explained in Three Core Ideas
Before we get started and cover all aspects of hosted call centers, it’s important to understand this blog is written on three core ideas:
A hosted contact center should deliver high-quality communication solutions that clients find helpful across different channels.
A critical difference between a hosted contact center and traditional call centers is that a hosted contact center can cover a variety of communication methods.
The communication solutions offered by the hosted contact center will be based on your provider’s physical location instead of on your premises.
Definition and Overview: What Is A Hosted Contact Center?
Also known as a hosted call center or a cloud contact center, a hosted contact center is a cloud-based platform that allows your business to manage customer interactions without on-premise hardware.
Rather than requiring substantial upfront capital, a cloud contact center solution lets you eschew the majority of physical infrastructure, freeing up contact center resources to be directed elsewhere.
How Hosted Contact Centers Work
Hosted contact centers operate by outsourcing the contact center infrastructure to a third-party provider, typically through cloud technology.
With a hosted solution, the provider manages all the necessary hardware, software, and maintenance, allowing businesses to focus on their core operations while still delivering top-notch customer service. The hosted contact center solution is accessed through a secure internet connection, allowing agents to answer customer calls from anywhere and at any time.
The provider takes care of the contact center software, updates, and maintenance, ensuring that the system is always up-to-date and running smoothly. In addition to enhancing operational efficiency, cloud-based contact center software provides greater flexibility and agility.
This, in turn, leads to a better customer experience.
Hosted Call Center Vs. Traditional Call Center
In a hosted call center, software is not installed on-premises. Instead, the installation process takes place at a remote off-site server maintained by your solution provider. That means no physical data center or contact center systems to maintain.
Not all hosted contact centers rely on cloud computing, but all cloud-based contact centers are hosted. People often use the two interchangeably, mixing up cloud services and hosted services. The reality is a bit more nuanced, even if the majority of hosted contact center solutions are now cloud-based.
Hosted Contact Centers vs. Cloud Contact Centers
Typically hosted contact centers are referred to as “single-tenant.” With a single tenancy, each client has their autonomous database and ownership of the software.
A cloud call center is “multi-tenant.” Multi-tenancy indicates that a single instance of the software and its supporting infrastructure serves many customers.
A cloud contact center platform offers increased flexibility, robust functionality, and cost efficiency, integrating various communication channels and enhancing agent productivity. Using a cloud-based contact center means you don’t have to worry about data centers.
Instead, you’re offloading all of that to a cloud software solution. This allows you to maintain near-total flexibility on the number of call center employees and the extent to which your call center uses service hardware.
Benefits of a Cloud Call Center
Relying on a cloud call center instead of traditional hardware can significantly decrease operating costs while improving both scalability and flexibility.
Organizations can offer better service performance by hosting contact center hardware remotely instead of in their own data centers. For companies that frequently deal with sensitive information, a cloud-based call center can also support stringent security measures to the same extent as a traditional contact center.
If you’re still unsure about whether or not to choose a cloud-based call center, consider the following:
#1: Contact Centers Are Becoming Virtual
With technology rapidly evolving and workstations moving to a home environment, busy and noisy contact centers are disappearing. As long as employees have an Internet connection, they can work from anywhere. For your call center, that means better productivity and improved job satisfaction, both resulting in a greatly improved customer experience.
These factors together make cloud contact center platforms an excellent option for just about any service provider.
#2: New Software Innovations
A hosted contact center comes with advanced features that allow agents to deliver a much more enjoyable customer experience. Far beyond managing multiple phone calls, a hosted contact center also enables agents with several software features:
Agent status (On-call or not)
Call queue
Seamlessly call transfer
Chat team
Centralized access to data
Call monitoring and recording
Cloud contact centers can also integrate with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. This integration provide access to comprehensive data that agents can use on phone calls to forge better connections with callers.
#3: Renewed Interactive Voice Response
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automatic phone system with call routing capacities. It gives your clients self-service options to route calls to the most suitable agent. Many contact center solutions have also begun incorporating artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) into their IVR systems.
All of this is to the customer’s benefit. They’ll get their answers more quickly and without as much frustration. And if an agent connects to them, that agent will know everything necessary to provide them with a superior experience.
#4: Total Cost of Ownership and ROI
From phone systems to data centers, traditional contact centers required immense capital to get up-and-running in the past. And that equipment would all grow obsolete over time, requiring even more investment. Cloud contact centers are making this problem a thing of the past.
With a hosted contact center, you can save on:
Training
Hardware
Software licenses
Hiring expert staff or contractors
Maintenance
Recurring vendor charges
Cloud contact centers typically also include business continuity measures, to help your contact center avoid costly (and potentially crippling) downtime.
#5: Comprehensive Reporting
A contact center generates an immense volume of data each day, which can be used for everything from improving agent performance to general quality management. With the right cloud contact center software, you can gain access to essential metrics and insights that will help you further optimize your customer communications.
The metrics you should be able to see include:
Handle times
First-call resolution (FCR)
Abandonment rates
Agent uptime
Queue times
Always remember that customer satisfaction is data-driven. The more you know about your customers and how your agents interact with them, the more effective your contact center becomes. The best contact center solutions arm you with these insights.
#6: Excellent Outbound Automated Systems
It is possible to configure a cloud contact center to make automated dial-outs from a list of contacts to an available agent. Combined with automatic call distribution, this can remove immense pressure from your agents, while also significantly reducing their workload. This, in turn will make them feel more relaxed and focused.
And that means they’ll be able to give the customer their full attention.
Key Features of Hosted Contact Centers
Hosted contact centers come equipped with a range of advanced features designed to enhance customer service and streamline operations. Some of the key features include:
Multichannel Support: Handle customer interactions across various channels, including voice, email, chat, and social media, ensuring a seamless customer experience.
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD): Efficiently route calls to the appropriate agent or department based on predefined rules, improving response times and customer satisfaction.
Skill-Based Routing: Direct calls to agents with the specific skills and expertise needed to address particular customer inquiries, enhancing the quality of service.
Call Recording and Monitoring: Record and monitor calls to assess agent performance and ensure high levels of customer satisfaction.
CRM Integration: Integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) software to access comprehensive customer data and history, enabling personalized service.
Real-Time Analytics: Provide real-time insights into contact center performance and customer interactions, allowing for data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.
Real-World Examples of Companies Switching to Hosted Contact Centers
Here are some examples from different industries that switched to a hosted contact center.
By making the switch, each of these companies addressed company-specific challenges to improve service quality, agent availability, and access the latest features.
Healthcare
A leading healthcare group faced long patient wait times and frequent dropped calls due to an outdated on-premise system. After moving to a hosted contact center, it cut call abandonment rates significantly and allowed nurses to assist patients from any location. The organization also saved money by avoiding costly server upgrades, investing the extra funds back into patient care.
E-Commerce
An online retailer struggled with massive call spikes every holiday season. Its old phone system couldn’t handle the surge. Once it switched to a hosted contact center, it scaled up easily during peak times and reduced average wait times by nearly 50%. Agents also gained real-time analytics for faster customer service, which boosted overall satisfaction.
Financial Services
A credit union needed to meet strict compliance regulations and was spending heavily on system maintenance. By adopting a hosted solution, it met the necessary security standards, cut IT overhead by 20%, and gained better call monitoring tools. These changes improved first-call resolution rates and increased customer trust.
Software/SaaS
A fast-growing SaaS provider had users all over the world and needed a flexible system that supported remote agents. With a hosted contact center, it quickly added new staff for international support. Thanks to skill-based routing and real-time collaboration, wait times dropped by half, leading to happier customers and more efficient operations.
Travel/Tourism
A travel agency wanted to manage phone, email, and chat together in one platform, but its outdated PBX was too rigid. After switching to a hosted contact center, the agency centralized all communication channels and reduced average handling times by 25%. It also saved on maintenance fees, which it reinvested in loyalty programs to better serve returning customers.
How to Choose the Right Hosted Contact Center Provider
Selecting the right hosted contact center provider is crucial for ensuring excellent customer service and operational efficiency. Businesses should consider several factors when evaluating prospective contact center solutions:
Scalability: Ensure the provider can scale their services to meet the growing needs of your business.
Security: Verify that the provider offers robust security measures to protect sensitive data.
Features: Look for a provider that offers the advanced features necessary to deliver exceptional customer service.
Integration: Check if the provider can seamlessly integrate with your existing CRM and other business systems.
Customer Support: Evaluate the quality of customer support and training provided by the vendor to ensure smooth implementation and ongoing assistance.
Pricing: Consider the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of the provider’s pricing model to ensure it aligns with your budget and business needs.
By carefully evaluating these factors, businesses can choose a hosted contact center provider that not only meets their specific requirements but also helps them deliver outstanding customer service.
The Power of Cloud Technology for Customer Satisfaction
One of the most significant advantages of using a cloud contact center is that they are scalable and flexible enough to meet most modern business needs today, supporting multiple communication channels and enabling better customer communications overall. To experience the full scope of those benefits, however, you’ll need the right service provider.
Momentum can help.
We’ll show you how to turn Microsoft Teams into a fully-functional cloud contact center solution, with flexible call flow management, intelligent routing, and features such as interactive voice response to both enhance customer service and improve productivity.
And that’s not all we offer, either. From advanced collaboration tools to global connectivity options, we’ll give you everything you need to keep your customers satisfied — and to build a contact center that truly wows your audience.
