Improve Communication with a Hosted Contact Center

A hosted contact center allows businesses to enjoy the benefits of a contact center without the costs of hardware and other infrastructure needed to operate the contact center. A hosted contact center is akin to a remote call center. 

In a hosted contact center, the physical server hardware for your communications is hosted and located in a different location on the hosted contact center service provider’s dedicated back-end system. This is a cost-effective solution for small and medium-sized businesses that cannot afford the investment required for a physical contact center. 

Unlike cloud-based contact centers being a complete remote option, hosted contact centers allow companies more control over how they carry on operations. Call staff and data center management would be a company’s responsibility with a hosted contact center while keeping down most of the hardware and equipment costs.

Some of the key features of a hosted contact center include:

Advanced IVR 

Interactive Voice Response systems allow callers to route themselves automatically to the relevant parties using extensions. Advanced IVR uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand full sentences and answer open-ended questions.

Detailed Reporting

With information regarding metrics such as queue times, handle times, abandonment rates, agent uptimes, and first-call resolution, you can optimize your hosted contact center. Agents and supervisors can have more transparency in agent performance and this information can help pinpoint exactly where your company’s contact center needs improvement. 

Outbound Call Campaigns

You can use your hosted contact center solution to auto-dial your contacts and direct it to an available agent. This relieves your call agents from having to do repetitive tasks and can improve the productivity and efficiency of your hosted contact center. 

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)

Your hosted contact center calls can be automatically distributed to the next available agent without losing customers to a constant busy tone. This is a great tool for better contact center agent management, and you can use hosted contact center analytics to understand how to better allocate your resources. 

These are common features of both contact centers and call centers. In addition to the technologies of call centers, contact centers require:

• Email response management systems to track and organize large volumes of emails.
• Omnichannel routing using integrated AI to understand customer intent and routing to a live agent
• Advanced analytics to understand customer journeys and predict future trends
• Channel reports for tracking KPIs

A call center in the past was able to handle the customer service call volumes a company would receive. But with the growing trends in people seeking customer service support through other means such as social media, email, and websites, omnichannel contact centers emerged to consolidate all of these mediums into one. 

Due to the diverse reach through multiple platforms, contact centers are great ways to collect data about a company. Contact centers are not limited to just call support hence, the contact center agents need better training to provide customer support in a contact center. Agents need better reading and comprehension skills, written communication skills, skills in multitasking, and social media etiquette training to run a successful contact center. Hosted contact centers are able to provide a comprehensive customer experience and gather data via their omnichannel presence. 

Talkdesk 

Talkdesk is an intuitive hosted contact center solution provider with fast deployment that requires less staff training due to its intuitive design. Talkdesk can also be integrated with other software solutions in your company to efficiently service your customers. With its AI component, Talkdesk iQ, you can enjoy all of the benefits of a hosted contact center without any of the hassle.

Genesys

Genesys is a leading hosted contact center solutions provider with its fool-proof omnichannel strategy where customers are allowed a seamless transition between channels while maintaining the conversation history and context for better support. Genesys is great for companies of all sorts looking to invest in hosted contact center solutions to improve their customer service strategy.

Five9

Five9 hosted contact center uses Practical AI to increase your hosted contact center productivity across all channels. With 24/7 customer support and a user base of more than 2000 customers, Five9 is an excellent cloud-based hosted contact center solutions provider for any business

Ameyo

Ameyo hosted contact center is a cloud solution that can handle inbound, outbound, and multichannel contact centers. Ameyo can serve as a one-stop solution for all of your unifed communication needs to improve customer retention, agent productivity, and first-contact resolution. With over a decade of experience in hosted contact center migration, active consultation during integration, and training programs for staff members, Ameyo can be a great solution for a business trying to implement a hosted contact center on a tight schedule.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk hosted contact center solutions provide UCaaS capabilities alongside a comprehensive ticketing system to streamline your customer service contact center functions. Freshdesk promotes shared inboxes for active coordination and collaboration between employees to deliver solutions fast to your customers’ concerns. It also features extensive multilingual support and options for accommodating different time zones and business hours allowing you to run remotely hosted contact centers for your business and thus, reduce operational costs.

To help you learn more about hosted contact center solutions providers, consult with our Contact Center Buyer’s Guide and compare the best hosted contact center solutions providers against their competition. This can help you select the best hosted contact center solution for your business's unique needs and understand how other users of the products like the products by reading the reviews for each product.