What is a Cloud Contact Center?

A contact center is a customer service function that handles customer contacts using more than one channel, and can include phone, email, chat, text messaging, and social media.A cloud contact center has its core contact center technology hosted by a third party, utilizing cloud computing. Commonly hosted applications include automatic call distributors (ACDs), which are responsible for routing contacts, and interactive voice response (IVR) systems which greet callers and facilitate self-service. Cloud contact centers can also use hosted solutions for workforce management, analytics, customer relationship management (CRM), training management, and more.

With the addition of digital channels, workforce management, advanced analytics and more, contact centers have evolved from legacy, limited purpose, call centers. In addition, newer contact centers are now cloud-based making them even more powerful and affordable..

Benefits of being a cloud contact center

There are a variety of reasons organizations choose to use cloud-based solutions for their contact centers. Here are just a few of the benefits:

- Workforce flexibility - Cloud-based software is accessible to anyone with a computer and a good internet connection. This means cloud contact center agents can work from home, which allows organizations to tap into broader labor markets and eliminates the commute for their agents. That's a great perk!

- Scales easily - Many businesses, especially retailers, have significant seasonal fluctuations in contact volume, which leads to peaks and valleys in staffing levels. Cloud contact centers are able to scale up and down easily and they only pay for the seats they're using.

- Lower cost of ownership – Organizations using a cloud contact center no longer has to worry about installing software updates, buying new hardware, fighting hacking attempts or hiring system administrators. All of that is handled by the cloud provider, allowing the organization to focus on delivering exceptional customer service.

With benefits like these, it's no wonder more and more organizations are adopting the cloud contact center model.

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 contact 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.