Companies are beginning to embrace the contact centre on demand, or CCOD model. In terms of this, companies can deploy market-leading contact centre technology at a far lower price point, and with greater flexibility than is currently the case.
They can also begin to embrace new strategic opportunities, freed from the constraints of traditional contact centre technology.
As existing contact centres reach their end of life, so companies are increasingly considering the CCOD model for replacement. New contact centres are also candidates for CCOD. The reasons are not hard to find. Here are five of them:
1) Relatively low acquisition cost: As CCOD is delivered according to the software as a service model, contact centre operators can avoid the big expenses typically associated with software and hardware purchases. Rather, they pay on a monthly, per-user, or per-transaction basis. The clear and immediate benefits are reduced capital expenditure, and the ability to take the contact centre costs off balance sheet. These translate to rapid time to market, and equally rapid return on investment. It is important to note, though, that "reduced costs" does not translate to "free": technology is only one component of what is needed to get a contact centre up and running; and secondly, the reduced costs might appeal to small to medium enterprises, but at its heart, CCOD remains an enterprise-class offering.
2) Ease of implementation: As the contact centre software is hosted off-site and accessed via a VPN or dedicated Internet connection, there is little of the complexity typically associated with software implementation. Again, this translates to reduced time to market and rapid return on investment. In addition, a contact centre operator need not concern itself with the skills needed to implement a contact centre technology solution.
3) Ability to scale in line with business requirements: Many companies have cyclical or one-off peaks in their business. As an example, financial services companies locally had to scale up their contact centres to ensure customers were FICA-compliant; and retailers need to scale up their contact centres over the Christmas shopping period and new year collection period. CCOD is ideally suited in both cases, as it scales seamlessly in line with business demand.
4) The fact that it is Web-based: Contact centres have tended to be deployed on traditional networking infrastructure. Today, the maturity and high performance of IP-based networks - in essence, the Internet - has made it possible to design new-generation applications on this backbone. This has freed contact centre operators from traditional constraints, and makes it possible to host contact centres anywhere. This ensures contact centres can be hosted in multiple locations - say, two or three smaller contact centres, rather than one, large centre. This reduces the risk of single point of failure, enhances business continuity, and virtualises contact centres based on the required business rules and outcomes.
5) Frees operators from geographical constraints: With the CCOD model, contact centres can now be hosted anywhere: any suburb, city, province or country. This opens up mind-blowing potential: for instance, South African contact centres can now promote themselves for offshoring opportunities, and agents can work from more cost-effective locations - even from home! Intelligent routing functionality, along with the fact that the software is IP-based, takes care of the requirement to route calls to the next available agent. Datamonitor, for one, has predicted rapid growth of the South African contact centre market as a consequence of this opportunity.
It is very important to note that the reduced cost, flexibility and adaptability of the CCOD model does not in any way translate to reduced functionality: today's CCOD offerings offer all the power, features, and multimedia access capability the most demanding customers expect.
But above all, they confer significant competitive advantage, along with cost-cutting and new revenue generating opportunities.
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