When communicating with a business, customers expect only the best. If you cannot keep up with changing needs and demands, you could develop a poor reputation. A hosted contact center is a solution that can match your customers’ expectations. Here are a few things you need to know about this type of contact center and how it can solve your communication problems.
Do you want to see how a hosted contact center can improve communication in your company? At SE Telecom, we use cloud-based solutions to help connect customers to your business. Find out how we can help you!
Get To Know a Hosted Contact Center
A standard contact center allows you to serve your customers, partners, and prospects across all channels. These centers will cover many types of communication instead of focusing on voice calls.
With a hosted contact center, the communication solution is hosted on the cloud or at your service provider’s physical location. Many people use the terms “contact center” and “hosted contact center” interchangeably, but they are different.
Cloud services are a part of the hosted service. Still, the hosted services include infrastructures outside the user’s physical location, usually located in the cloud or at the vendor’s site.
Related: What Is Hosted VoIP? Features & Benefits Explained
How Does a Hosted Contact Center Differ from a Call Center?
Businesses use a call center to handle both inbound and outbound calls. Partners, customers, and internal staff members all make these calls, and these centers support the business’s customer service and sales divisions.
Call centers relied on a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) with physical phone lines in the past. There were many limitations, including the call centers could only handle the voice calls of the company. Many businesses want to modernize, which is why they are switching to VoIP. These systems offer richer features and better reliability.
With a contact center, it can handle live chat, SMS, email, instant messaging, and support tickets, all components that are vital to the business-customer experience.
Along with that, a contact center allows customers to use the channel of their choice. This platform enables the business to operate effective marketing and sales campaigns.
It also provides them with access to the complete customer journey, no matter the channel. Customer issues are resolved more quickly with access to past interactions.
Call centers have worked in the past, but a contact center is ideal for businesses that want to engage and connect with their clients.
Hosted Contact Center Solutions
There are many benefits to having a hosted contact center compared to a traditional contact center.
Contact Center Virtualization
In the past, contact centers have been busy and noisy. Hosted contact centers are not tied down to copper wires or physical infrastructure. Your agent can access their workstations from any location, as long as they are connected to the internet. As you may have guessed, hosted contact centers are ideal for remote workers.
Excellent Features for Agents
A hosted contact center can assist with more than managing phone calls. These centers have rich features. They allow you to implement computer telephony integration, which will enable you to connect that phone system to existing apps and tools.
Many businesses can link the hosted contact center to a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Your agents will have instant access to the customer’s information, including past interactions and phases.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is another excellent automatic feature providing call routing capabilities. You can give your customers self-service and on-demand options to route the call to the best available agent.
Most of these systems use voice recognition technology to route the calls. If your hosted contact center uses Natural Language Processing (NLP), it will employ a form of conventional AI that will understand sentences and answer open-ended questions.
Total Cost of Ownership and ROI
A hosted contact center has a low cost of ownership with a significant return on investment. Traditional contact centers need heavy-duty equipment requiring financial expertise and upfront costs. Hosted contact centers are scalable and lean. There is no need for on-premise equipment, so you will not need personnel or contractors to set it up. Your service provider will take care of it for you.
Detailed Reporting
Efficiency is everything in today’s business world. When you use a hosted contact center, you can get key metrics in real-time, such as handle time, queue times, agent uptime, abandonment rates, and first-call resolution rates. With that, you can track and improve the performance of the contact center. If there is an issue, you can work to find solutions to the problem.
Outbound Campaigns
Easily manage an outbound calling campaign with your hosted contact center software. Your agents will not have to dial by hand; instead, you can configure the platform to import contacts into a list. Your agents will not have to worry about those repetitive tasks, but now they can focus on starting a conversation with the customer.
Related: The Pros and Cons of VoIP: Should You Switch?
Factors To Consider Before Switching To a Hosted Contact Center
If you are ready to switch to a hosted contact center, keep these things in mind when choosing a provider.
Ask about security policy management and customer data privacy. You will want to check the provider’s certification, regulation compliance, and disaster recovery plans.
List the features for your business needs. Look for a provider with an omnichannel approach to manage your communication channels so that you can expand into the future.
Consider bots and AI-based automation to help customers without tying up an agent.
Prioritize the customer and agent experience when choosing a hosted contact solution.
Related: What is Direct Inward Dialing (DID)?
Hosted Contact Centers Are a Flexible Communication Solution
What is the best part of a hosted contact center? They are scalable and flexible, perfect for those businesses focused on growth. Consider a hosted contact center to communicate with customers on all channels. These options allow you to keep your customers happy with multi-channel support and on-demand service options.
Are you ready to establish your own hosted contact center for your business? At SE Telecom, we have the solutions to help you effectively communicate wth your customers across every channel. Schedule a demonstration today!