UC Advanced - issue #11

CONTACT CENTRES

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Common barriers to adoption Laura Bal l commented, “Adopting contact centers can be hindered by several common barriers, including the complexity of migrating from legacy systems and integrating new contact centre solutions with existing workflows, concerns over data security and privacy, and ensuring agents feel supported during the adoption process. To mitigate data privacy concerns, businesses should ensure that they are only engaging with solutions that comply with data privacy regulations and ethical guidelines. Transparency is also key. Policies for data usage and storage should be clearly communicated with customers and employees to foster trust. There is also a learning curve for employees adapting to new tools and processes. To ensure agent satisfaction and wellbeing, businesses must adopt an agent-centric approach and should consider providing a series of training programmes and resources to ensure they feel fully supported. Finally, ensuring consistent, high-quality customer experiences across multiple channels, particularly in hybrid work environments, can pose significant challenges. Investigating what is and isn’t working in hybrid and remote models is key here. Businesses should regularly check in with their agents, and leverage tools like Zoom Workforce Management to help forecast and predict agents’ concerns to help keep them happy, and ultimately drive positive customer interactions.” Myles Leach continued, “One significant barrier is the legacy investment in existing systems, which can create a “sunk cost” mentality and reluctance to switch. And

another barrier arises from the perceived functionality of current phone systems. If existing systems seem to be working adequately, businesses may question the need for change. Expense justification is another critical aspect. New contact centre solutions require financial investment. To overcome this, it’s crucial to demonstrate a clear return on investment (ROI) by quantifying the benefits of the new technology, such as improved customer satisfaction, increased efficiency, and reduced costs.” Martin Taylor echoed similar views, “For organisations, the financial justification for moving to the cloud must be compelling, especially considering the significant costs of maintaining legacy systems. Substantial productivity gains from AI can also make cloud migrations self-funding within a short period of time. Geopolitical and economic uncertainties have also historically slowed investment, though this trend is slowly easing. Large enterprises are particularly hesitant about migrating, as the process can be complex, the organisations themselves are less flexible than smaller SMEs, and they worry about jeopardising mission- critical workloads. There are also security concerns, although modern cloud contact centres offer superior security features compared to on-premises systems. Adopting a solution designed to navigate disparate and complicated IT environments can help prevent delays which could complicate future updates. As the cloud is now generally accepted as a prerequisite for AI, barriers are being swept away in the fear of being left behind.” n

Martin Taylor Co-founder & Deputy CEO

contentguru.com

Substantial productivity gains from AI can also make cloud migrations self-funding within a short period of time.

What’s hot?

What’s not? Legacy systems

Data security, data privacy and ROI (Return on Investment)

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