6 Benefits of Hosted Contact Centers

Efficiency and agility – these are the top two features to look out for in a modern contact center solution, which requires robust contact center architecture. Here’s when hosted contact centers come into play.

Hosted contact center services have gained immense popularity in the past few years thanks to their ease of deployment and relative affordability compared to old on-premises services. Read on to understand how hosted contact center software can help you achieve superior business outcomes.

What is a Hosted Contact Center?

Being a communications solution, a hosted contact center is hosted on the cloud rather than on your premises or at a third-party service provider’s data center or physical location.

Hosted contact center solutions enable you to assist your customers, partners, and prospects across multiple channels in an effective way. As it covers several communication types instead of just phone calls, a hosted contact center is not the same as a call center.

Top 6 Benefits of Hosted Contact Center Solutions

Also referred to as a virtual contact center, a hosted contact center doesn’t require any added infrastructure while installing or scaling contact center operations. Being an alternative to the on-premises contact center, it offers several effective benefits, which include:

1. Powerful Features for Supervisors and Agents

In addition to managing multiple phone calls simultaneously, hosted contact center software is equipped with many other features that help in enhancing customer satisfaction. These features are simple to add and include:

• Automatic call distribution (ACD)
• Internal chat
• Call analytics
• Agent status
• Quick call transferring

AI-powered hosted contact center solutions with call analytics and real-time dashboards provide reps with insights on key call drivers and access to CSAT scores. This enables them to mitigate consumer frustration and eventually convert it into satisfaction.

2. Virtualization of Contact Centers

Gone are the days of noisy, busy contact centers. With hosted contact center software, you no longer need to rely on copper wires and physical infrastructure.

They enable your agents to work virtually from any location as long as they have access to a stable internet connection.

This makes them an excellent choice for remote workers and those who are often on the go. Plus, hosted contact centers’ pay-as-you model enables you to scale up activities without hiring more live reps, even during peak demand times.

3. Advanced call treatment and IVR

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an advanced phone system that uses keypad entries and voice recognition technology for call routing.

Basic IVR phone systems automate repetitive tasks and offer customers self-service and on-demand options. They also route calls to the most qualified agents available to handle customer queries.

Highly-advanced IVR phone systems use conversation AI such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), to comprehend complete sentences and give responses to open-ended questions. This enables quick query resolution and enhances agent efficiency.

4. Centralized Access to Information

Hosted contact centers offer Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), enabling you to connect your business phone system to your current business apps and tools.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is one of these tools, which offers immediate access to all customer data, such as past purchases and communication.

This way, you can improve interactions with each customer and increase customer satisfaction.

5. ROI and Total Cost of Ownership

Consider a contact center’s return on investment and the cost of ownership. It will include the costs of the following:

• Software licenses
• Hardware
• Maintenance
• Hiring contractors or expert staff
• Training
• Recurring vendor expenses

Traditional phone systems require heavy-duty hardware. They need technical expertise and involve huge upfront costs only to be outdated with time.

Hosted contact center software, on the other hand, is scalable and lean. As there’s no hardware involved, you don’t require personnel and contractors for installation and maintenance. Everything is taken care of by hosted contact center vendors.

6. Outbound Campaigns

Hosted contact center solutions help in the management of outbound calling campaigns. Rather than dialing contacts manually, you can import a contact list and configure the platform to make calls and divert them to the right sales rep.

This not only saves your reps’ time but also frees them from repetitive, tedious tasks. They can concentrate more on their customer dealings.

Conclusion

The best part about hosted contact center services is that they’re scalable and flexible depending on your business growth. If you wish to manage your call flow more efficiently and answer more inbound calls, consider a hosted contact center.