What is a Cloud Call Center?

A call center is a business function that handles inbound and/or outbound phone calls with customers. A cloud call center, or cloud-based call center, is one that has its call center technology in the cloud and hosted and supported by a third-party vendor. A cloud call center typically includes core technologies consisting of the automatic call distributor (ACD) and the interactive voice response (IVR) system.In addition a cloud call center can also include other modules, such as workforce management, analytics, and more.

What are the benefits of being a cloud call center?

A cloud call center offers many benefits including the following:

- Scalability. Many call centers have significant seasonal swings in call volume. For example, candy manufacturers may have a big spike in call volume during the holiday season and again around Valentine's Day, and then low, steady volume the rest of the year. Using older “on-premises” technology, they would have to purchase hardware and software licenses for their peak call volumes. This is wasteful because they would be paying for unused licenses and underutilized hardware during the rest of the year. In contrast, with a cloud call center you only pay for the seats being used thereby making it a more cost effective model.

- At home agents. Cloud technology is accessible from anywhere with a quality internet connection. This enables a cloud call center to assemble a team of at home agents. In markets where it’s difficult to recruit and hire good agents, being able to hire agents who can work remotely provides an advantage. In addition, working from home is also considered a perk by many call center agents.

- Flexibility. Most cloud-based systems offer easy integrations with other business applications like a CRM by simply adding a new integration module. For example, a cloud call center may have a CRM application and a ticketing system it wants to integrate with. The extensive use of integration APIs eases the way towards a smooth integration. Additionally, if a call center wants to add chat as a channel option, it can do so quickly, often same day.

These are just a few benefits of a cloud call center. Ultimately, using a hosted solution allows organizations to think less about technology and more about how to delight their customers.

How NICE can help

NICE CXone is the market leading call center software in use by thousands of customers of all sizes around the world to help them consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences. Our solutions help cloud call centers realize extensive benefits, including those listed above. CXone is a cloud native, unified suite of applications designed to help a company holistically run its call (or contact) center operations. CXone includes:

Omnichannel Routing – routing and interaction management that empowers agents to positively and productively interact with customers in digital and voice channels. These solutions include an automatic call distributor (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), interaction channel support and proactive outbound dialer.

Workforce Optimization – unlocks the potential of your team by inspiring employees' self-improvement, amplifying quality management efforts to enhance customer experience and reducing labor waste. These solutions include workforce management (WFM), quality management (QM), recording and performance management (PM).

Open Cloud Foundation – enables rapid innovation with an extensible enterprise-grade platform that scales securely, deploys quickly and serves customers of all sizes globally. We guarantee an industry-best 99.99% availability and offer easy customization through RESTful APIs and DEVone developer program.

CXone also includes pre-defined CRM integrations and UCaaS integrations with most leading solutions on the market. These integrations provide a holistic call center software solution capable of elevating customer experiences for companies of all sizes.