Customer support conversations moving to the cloud

POSTED BY RON GOLDMAN, ASTADIA, INC. ON JUNE 21, 2010

Gartner says “By 2012, 65% of support conversations will happen in the cloud and by 2013 at least 75% of customer service centers will use some SaaS application.”  This prediction is supported by the data from Goldman Sachs. Figure 1 shows that many of the apps used in the contact center are already been used in a SaaS model including CRM (38%), eRecruitment (30%), content management (23%), and call center automation (18%). Two of the fastest growing adoption models are call center automation and eRecuitment, growing at 18% and 17% respectively.

Figure 1. SAAS Implementation

Practically all components of contact center technology are now available in a SaaS based model, including:

• Contact Relationship Management (CRM)
• Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
• eLearning
• eRecruiting/testing/screening
• Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT)
• Work Force Management (WFM)
• Knowledgebase
• Call Scripting
• Entitlements/SLA Managements
• Reporting
• Call Recording
• Multi-channel communications (phone, chat, email, web portal and social media)

Cloud based components are being added incrementally to replace some portion of a premise based solution. Bolting Cloud solutions on to existing systems allows you to demonstrate the ROI of the Cloud approach without the risk of ripping out and rebuilding existing systems.  Cloud solutions also scale up and down gracefully with your needs – while on premise solutions require you to continually rip out and rebuild.