The Cloud

You may have heard the term ‘the cloud’ dropped every now and then when discussing call centres. You could be forgiven for thinking that it’s some kind of bizarre weather phenomenon. But rest assured, you won’t have to check cloud status at the Met Office as part of your management duties at a call centre. When people talk of cloud in IT they refer to a private server with software essential to managing your contact centre ; what this means is that with better internet speed and the right software on your computer you can access any software running on the cloud.

We have discussed in the past how the internet allows customer service agents to action customer’s accounts instantaneously across multiple systems. The cloud allows for the customer service agent to access the call centre system from anywhere allowing for better coverage for your contact centre but also giving your staff members a new found form of flexibility in how they work.

So how does this help you and your company? The most obvious way a cloud aids in the operation of your contact centre is in setting up home sourcing solution for you and your staff. Its ability to allow you to access your contact centre system from any computer/mobile phone/tablet with sufficient band width means that work load can be moved away from the office and into the wide blue yonder. This kind of mobility also offers contact centres that rely on specialists, whom may have additional responsibility, to offer their service away from an office allowing for extended access for your clients. This flexibility could apply to those working in management positions as it also allows for call centre metrics to be measured from outside.

The cloud provides better security for your company information by keeping a back-up of all the data your company produces on your master server. This provides your company with different methods of handling sensitive information, for instance instead of storing information on each work station and therefore leaving it vulnerable to passers-by you can instead opt to store all data on the cloud in one location. This not only makes data your company produces more secure, it also allows a more accurate set of data as your customer agents can be updating one set of client data whilst ensuring all copies of the data accessible is up to date. The major benefit this has to your company is that regardless of how many times a client’s profile is updated you can be assured that having one database stored on the cloud prevents you from having to update any off-site databases.

There are also other smaller benefits for adopting the cloud.  The small expanding contact centre business will find the cloud networks a cheap and easy way to network across multiple contact centre or multiple home based customer service agents.

While the benefit of using the Cloud is primarily based around the way that data is stored and used, it also has a less obvious, but important effect on customer service. The main benefit to the customer is more accurate records and better accessibility for them to your your customer service agent because they are easier to contact.