Hosted contact centers have increased in popularity over the last few years. They offer a professional means for a company to deal with their customer base without having to purchase hardware, license software, and continually maintain and upgrade the required technology. They are not always the best solution for businesses, but tend to be among the most efficient ones.
Cost Savings with Hosted Contact Centers
The greatest advantage of hosted contact centers is probably the cost savings involved. They require very little infrastructure to support a company's existing application base, which allows you to save money on things like IVR ports, environmental controls, speech recognition software, and VXML licenses and servers. You can also pay for services as needed and not have to worry about peak contact usage until the expanded capacity is required by the company.
Hosted Reliability
Hosted contact centers are also generally known for being quite reliable. The hardware can exist in multiple geographic locations that serve as a backup to each other in case something goes wrong. They also use a shared soft-switch architecture for improved dependability, and the service delivery platform can be regularly scrutinized to find potential technical issues before the system is compromised.
Scalability
Scalability is another notable advantage of hosted contact centers. You can shift the platform up or down as needed without any disruption in service. This can be particularly useful during holidays and special promotions when the company might experience greater phone traffic than normal. It can also help prevent the business from overinvesting in call center services that it may not require on a consistent basis.
Easier to Test Run with Less Equipment
Hosted contact centers also typically allow companies to try out call center features on a trial basis. You can thus see if it would benefit your company to have phone monitoring, call recording, voicemail transcription, and similar functions. Normally, a company would have to purchase expensive hardware and software before getting a chance to use these features.
Queue Management
Another noteworthy benefit of hosted contact centers are the queue management options available. You can create specialized queues that route phone calls and emails to customer service representatives who possess a particular skill set or training. These employees don’t need to be based in a single location – it’s quite possible for the agents to provide assistance from their home.
One benefit of hosted contact centers that is often overlooked is technical compatibility with different phone interfaces. Hosted contact centers tend to use TDM and IP circuits with their network systems, allowing the company to receive phone calls from both traditional land lines and Voice over Internet Protocol.
Overall, these advantages combine to make hosted contact centers an excellent choice for most businesses. They tend to be extremely cost-effective, have multiple backup systems in place, and possess a remarkable degree of technological flexibility. If a company is trying to provide support to a growing customer base, these factors can often be crucial.
