During the snow earlier this year, workplace assessment solutions provider SHL Group, which uses NewVoiceMedia’s cloud-based telephony system, was able to quickly and easily reconfigure its services so that its staff could work from home or wherever they happened to find themselves.
Says NewVoiceMedia CEO Jonathan Grant, “In traditional call centres, human beings went to the technology, now with the help of cloud computing, the technology goes to the people.”
Marketing Director Amanda Fennell adds, “Everybody wants that accessibility via the internet and the resilience that it also affords.”
Running processes in the cloud means call centres can make significant cost savings, as they are able to reduce the amount they spend on maintenance and upgrades of traditional IT systems. Cloud applications can also be rolled out quickly, a crucial benefit given the fast-paced nature of the call centre industry where speed is a key performance indicator.
If payment is by subscription, firms only pay for what they use and there is no large upfront expenditure.
Plus, as agents have secure access to all the information they require irrespective of the computer they are working on or where they are physically, relocation or expansion becomes more of a seamless experience.
A case in point is when SHL Group moved its operation from Colorado to the UK, which it did without even having to contact NewVoiceMedia. This has created the power of “crowd sourcing”, where enthusiasts rather than salaried staff proffer information online.
A number of applications have emerged, such as Salesforce’s Service Cloud 2, where all channels of communication, including social media, are consolidated together.
This means that you can highlight a customer complaint on Twitter in the same way as a telephone query.
Utilising lower-cost interaction channels, such as email, plus chat, web self-service knowledge base, Twitter and Facebook, can result in significant cost savings.
Hosted contact centres, delivered from the network, are one the quickest, most cost-efficient ways for a business to virtualise resources and improve service quality by connecting the best person with the right skill to the right enquiry every time, wherever they may be located.
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