On-premise call centres are on the verge of obsolescence, says Jed Hewson, director of 1Stream, a provider of hosted contact centre solutions and call centre management software.
"Gartner has said that, by the end of 2013, 75% of global call centres will be making use of the hosted call centre model - which leaves 25% of call centres likely relying on premise-based solutions that use their private branch exchange [PBX] to perform basic call centre capabilities, along with several bolt-on solutions and platforms," says Hewson.
"It's not to say that on-premise solutions aren't doing the job they were intended to do, but those jobs may very well have become redundant in a world that demands a multifaceted, multi-channel call centre," he explains.
Hosted call centres should encourage enterprises to consider a move to the cloud, rather than a replacement or upgrade when premise-based systems start nearing the end of their life cycles, says Hewson. An advantage is the change in customer experience that comes with keeping pace with social media trends.
"It's safe to say that most of the legacy on-premise call centre equipment in use today has become obsolete, simply due to the nature of the industry. A contact centre that was deployed five years ago would not even have made provision for social media or smart devices - which means no provision would have been made for the technology or business processes that customers are demanding," notes Hewson.
"We're living in the era of the customer experience - with customers using search engines, social media, Wikis and forums rather than just phone and e-mail," he adds. "Moreover, customers are dictating how they want to communicate with businesses, not the other way around. Conventional contact centres have tried to stay abreast of the changes by adding functionality, but too many add-on remedies can result in layers of complexity and solutions that are hard to manage or change."
Cloud can accommodate the changes currently needed to keep up with customer trends, and because of the 'pay-as-you-go' model, it allows the kind of flexibility and scalability that on-premise solutions do not, as well as swift installation, says Hewson.
Moving on from on-premise solutions that involved a large investment can be painful, Hewson admits, but is not a good reason to avoid the cloud. "The only thing that truly matters is the future. If you are currently hosting your own contact centre, you have to factor new hardware, operating, database, middleware, application and labour costs into the equation. Then consider the trends in the marketplace - such as remote agents - as well as the need that may arise to up- or downscale according to demand, and the cost of upgrading. These considerations are automatically catered for by hosted providers in the cloud - and included in their fees.
"Twenty-five percent of call centre managers are still holding on to on-premise solutions - but the end is nigh," he concludes. "Their competition, in the meantime, will be spending their time and resources servicing the needs of customers, rather than focusing on making the technology work."
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