Contact Center as a Service: Definition, Benefits, & More

gartner contact center as a service

When it's time to move to a cloud contact center, where do you begin? For many, it means researching various hardware options and feeling overwhelmed. There's a better, faster way to deploy a call center.

Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) is an alternative to an on-premises call center. It packages an entire communication solution focused on scalable customer experience. Businesses use CCaaS software solutions to launch a contact center without any hardware.

A CCaaS solution streamlines every customer touchpoint into a single platform. These interactions include phone calls, live chat, email, support tickets, and text messages.

In this guide, you'll get a closer look at why companies are moving their contact centers to the cloud. Plus, you'll learn about the key differences between UCaaS, CCaaS, and CPaaS.

What is Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)?

CCaaS is short for Contact Center as a Service. It's a cloud-based method for customer communication suitable for businesses of all sizes. It consolidates several tools to interact with your customers.

Cloud-based contact centers let you customize every aspect of the customer experience. Some notable features found in CCaaS offerings include:

Call queueing to increase agent productivity and customer satisfaction.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) for routing calls
Call recording to listen to calls between agents and customers.
Call analytics to uncover trends and aid in workforce
planning.

gartner contact center as a service
gartner contact center as a service

There are a couple of reasons why companies upgrade their call center technology to a contact center as a service.

A contact center adds omnichannel capabilities to customer support teams. Agents can view the full context about customers, regardless of their contact method. These contact methods include inbound phone calls, text messages, email, and social media.

Deploying an omnichannel contact center in a matter of days — not months — is quite attractive to most businesses. Since it's in the cloud, there aren't any upfront costs.

Benefits of Contact Center as a Service

There are many reasons why companies adopt cloud-based contact center technology. Let's take a closer look at the top benefits of CCaaS.

1) Deliver a better omnichannel customer experience.

Customers want brands to support them using the channel of their choice when seeking help. The last thing they want to see when they send a message on social media is to submit their request on a contact page.

CCaaS platforms let you help customers regardless of their mode of communication. No matter if they arrive via phone, email, or social media, you're covered. The customer service team shares a single customer view rather than unattended messages on Facebook.

In the age of self-service, a contact center is an excellent way to stand out and provide a human touch to your brand.

2) Centralize every customer interaction in one place.

Housing customer data in one data center rather than separate tools offers a significant advantage. Contact centers surface actionable insights to boost customer satisfaction and reduce call times.

Agents can view real-time customer sentiment, account value, and the nature of a request. And since every customer interaction is tracked, there's no uncertainty when providing help.

Esteban Kolsky, a customer service leader, noted companies can reduce churn by 67% if they resolve issues within one interaction. With real-time data at agents' fingertips, you'll render a better customer experience.

How to deploy CCaaS

It's easier to set up a contact center solution in the cloud than traditional telecom options.

It uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to place and receive calls over the internet. All you need to deploy CCaaS is an internet connection, workstations, and headsets.

The CCaaS provider manages the rest of the contact center infrastructure. You would then adjust your company's IVR, automatic call distribution (ACD), and workflow automation in an online portal.

To begin responding to support requests, team members sign into the contact center software. Supervisors can always watch call queues and team availability, so everything runs smoothly.

There are a handful of areas to think about when moving to a CCaaS environment:

gartner contact center as a service
gartner contact center as a service

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