Are you ready for a call center upgrade?

Happy New Year! Calling to you from the mountain of content you’ve undoubtedly received about fresh starts, goal setting, and annual strategy planning. But as a call center leader, how about something practical and actionable? A tool that can help you blow off the cobwebs and set your call center operations off on the right start? A simple way to determine if you’re ready for a call center upgrade? You’re in the right place. We’ve come up with a handy checklist that will help you identify whether the time is right for a call center facelift, helping to simplify what—let’s face it—can be a complex decision. 

Whether you’re a small business with a handful of lines, curious about taking the next step toward a fully operational contact center, or an enterprise looking to move from an on-premise solution to a cloud-based contact center, we have you covered. A good cloud contact center solution can help tackle and solve a host of issues you might be experiencing, regardless of your company size, industry, or environment. 

Simply put, a cloud call center leverages the benefits of cloud technology by providing a more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective solution for handling customer care and support inquiries. With an on-premise solution, there are limitations, like the physical space and complex implementation its hardware requires, as well as the capabilities it offers. A cloud contact center can be accessed just about anywhere, is easy to set up and update, and provides more channels for connecting with your customers. It can also integrate with your essential apps and communications platform, creating a truly unified experience for employees and customers. 

The recent trends in a more flexible and hybrid working model, along with the revolution in generative AI (GenAI), have made implementing an AI-powered cloud contact center a must-have as we move into what can be called a new generation of work.  

Cloud-based contact center solutions come in many shapes and sizes, so assessing your needs is a good first step before jumping into your research. That’s why we’ve developed this convenient tool to help you evaluate your current system. Completing this checklist can help you determine not only if you need an upgrade but what your requirements might be.  

It’s simple: the more boxes you check, the more likely an AI-powered cloud contact center platform can help.

Agent experience

• Remote/hybrid agents can’t access the tools or systems they need to be successful
• Remote/hybrid agents feel disconnected from their teams and the larger organization
• Your agent interface is hard to learn and navigate
• Agents can’t locate customer history or data to help quickly resolve issues in real-time
• Agents can’t easily access subject matter experts or resources within the organization

Customer experience

• Your NPS or CSAT scores are low or could be better
• First-call resolution numbers are low or need improvement
• Wait and handle times are too high
• Customers are frustrated by continuously repeating their issues to different agents
• Customers have a limited choice of communication channels (no options for chat, video, SMS, social media, etc.) 

Supervisor/contact center leader experience 

• Reports are not giving you the insights required to understand your customers and their needs
• Generating reports is cumbersome and/or manual
• It takes a long time to onboard new agents 
• It’s challenging to track agent performance across your entire organization
• Post-call coaching and real-time support tools are not ideal

Complexity

• Your current solution is cumbersome or complex for agents and leaders to use
• You can’t track or transfer support calls between agents and subject matter experts 
• Your contact center solution runs on a separate platform from your UCaaS solution, creating complexity and giving your team multiple bills and vendors to manage

Cost

• Your current solution is getting too expensive to run
• Having multiple communication solutions across the company is increasing overall operational costs
• Your contact center contract is about to expire with your current provider (including COVID-related benefits or discounts)

Future-ready/technology

• Your current vendor does not offer the latest GenAI tools
• Your current vendor can’t seamlessly integrate with the third-party tools your team uses every day

We hope this checklist helps guide you on whether a call center upgrade to a cloud-based contact center is right for your business in 2024. Deciding to upgrade may feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be. You can start making small changes at your own pace based on the priorities and requirements you identified in this checklist.

Flexibility and seamless deployment are at the heart of the three new Zoom Contact Center bundles we just launched. With several pricing options, a mix of deployment packages, and a host of enterprise-grade features, you’ll find enhanced privacy and security features and practical AI capabilities to fit your budget and needs, regardless of your business size. Start small and build your own solution.

Don’t know where to start? We’re here to help. Contact one of our contact center experts, and they’ll happily answer any questions you have. 

Find out more about Zoom Contact Center and our approach to AI.