CCaaS 101: An Introduction to Contact Centre as a Service

Everything You Need to Know About Contact Centre as a Service

Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) solutions have been growing in popularity in recent years thanks to the efficiency with which they can be implemented by businesses seeking to maximise contact centre technology. 

As experts in business communication with over 20 years of industry experience, we’re going to provide a whistle-stop tour through the world of CCaaS, allowing you to explore how this technology works, its features and the benefits it offers to your business.

What is CCaaS?

Contact Centre as a Service is a communication platform that combines omnichannel communication with a range of features and tools that allow your agents to provide the best experience for your customers. It unifies best-in-class voice, messaging, video, social media and email, as well as call queuing, advanced call handling tools, presence and more.   

As the solution is taken ‘as a service’, it means it is hosted and managed by a third-party provider, who will handle the management, as well as data protection and backup of your solution. This reduces pressures on internal IT teams, as well as reduces maintenance and management costs. 

One of the key benefits that attract the eyes of businesses is that the solution can be precisely tailored to meet the needs of a business, and paid for on a subscription-style model. This means you only pay for the features that directly benefit your business.

How does CCaaS work?

CCaaS solutions offer businesses the contact centre tools they need to route inbound calls to agents, along with a host of other impressive features that make the overall running of a contact centre environment far smoother and improve the experience of customers. Let’s explore a few of these features, shall we?

Interactive voice response

You’re likely very familiar with interactive voice response (IVR) tools. Essentially, this is the interactive menu in which options are read aloud to an inbound customer, allowing them to say the options that best meet their preference, or to use their keypad to press the numbers that allocate to their direction of choice. Interactive voice response systems also often include the option for customers to complete simple tasks without the need to speak to an agent, such as hearing a balance or paying a bill. Given that many customers today prefer to handle issues themselves as opposed to speaking with a representative, these options can prove very useful to companies who are seeking to maintain a positive level of productivity within their contact centre environments by reducing the number of simple queries being routed to human agents. 

Predictive dialer (outbound calls)

While the main task of many contact centres is to accept calls from customers seeking to have their needs met and questions answered, there is also the need to make outbound calls from time to time in most contact centre setups. When outbound calls need to be made in large numbers, predictive dialers can be a massive help, eliminating the need for colleagues to manually enter the phone numbers they need, instead accessing the pre-built customer database. This saves a lot of time, allowing employees to make more phone calls quicker, upholding a healthy level of productivity while opening up the potential for greater profits and good customer relationships.

Intelligent queueing

When customers call a contact centre and need to speak with a live agent, they often need to be placed in a queue with other customers, if the company is experiencing a high volume of calls. But while many queueing systems place customers in a queue position based on when they made the call, intelligent queuing systems can place customers in a queue position based on the severity of their enquiry. For example, if a customer went through a business’s IVR and was found to need immediate assistance with a pressing query, they could be forwarded straight to the front of a queue, superseding customers whose enquiries aren’t quite as urgent. Some systems can even utilise artificial intelligence-based vocal analysis tools to detect the mood or tone of a customer, before using this information to decide where in the queue they belong.

With the solution hosted within a cloud environment and managed by an external provider – relieving the need for bulky on-site servers – contact centre staff simply need to install the contact centre software onto the relevant devices (often PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones) and they can access all the tools they need to communicate with their customers effectively.

Not only is this easy to use in a contact centre environment, but it’s also incredibly useful for remote workers, who can access all the same tools as their office-based colleagues, as long as they have the appropriate device, the correct login details and a stable internet connection.

Is CCaaS the same as UCaaS?

While they’re very similar at face value, offering teams the communication and collaboration tools they need to remain productive, CCaaS and UCaaS do differ in the benefits they’re able to offer teams, depending on their ultimate goals. For businesses that want to create a seamless communications experience across all levels of the organisation, a UCaaS system will be an invaluable step in the right direction. However, if communication with customers is your key focus, a CCaaS system will likely be a wiser move.

Not only can CCaaS systems offer the tools an internal team needs to work better together, but they also provide teams with a seamless solution to cater to every communication need a customer may have – whether they’re reaching out via phone call, email, text, social media or instant messaging. 

Read more: CCaaS vs. UCaaS – Key Differences and How to Make the Right Choice For Your Business

What Other Features Does CCaaS Offer?

Call recording

Sometimes it can be difficult to accurately recall all the points raised in an important conversation between a colleague and a customer, but in-depth knowledge of customer needs is essential if a business wishes to serve them as effectively as possible. Thanks to call recording through CCaaS systems, businesses can always have access to all customer calls, so they can access moments in a conversation they may need to recall at a later date to solve a problem.

Analytics tracking

Thanks to AI-powered analytics tools, businesses utilising CCaaS systems can keep an eye on emerging trends and statistics.. For example, if sales figures aren’t as impressive as they should be, the analytics could highlight a point in the sales funnel where customers seem to fall out of favour with the process or product, so that the appropriate action can be taken and boost revenue.

Application integration

A fear many managers have when onboarding new technology of any kind is that it may replace existing tools that are still functioning very well, while also causing disruption as staff adapt to the new ways of working. However, rather than replacing existing communications tools, CCaaS can be installed to work alongside them, offering staff and management the best of both worlds with minimal disruption.

What are the Benefits of CCaaS?

Cost-effective

Whereas some companies may try to build a contact centre setup using multiple separate tools, such as subscriptions to live chat platforms, as well as phone services, CCaaS solutions have the potential to slash a business’s financial commitment to these services. By bringing all essential elements of communication into a single platform, under a single monthly subscription payment, companies can relieve themselves of unnecessary monthly debits and consolidate their internal and external communications tools into one easy-to-use system.

A more interconnected customer-service experience

Given the methods to communicate with customers are wide-ranging in the digital age, it is understandable that some companies may rely on multiple people or departments to handle the various ways a customer can reach out for support. One team may be in charge of responding via email, while another handles live chat responses. However, if these teams are separated, it does not serve them well if they require a joint effort to serve customers across the board. But CCaaS systems offer the communication tools a contact centre needs in a single application, meaning these teams can mix and match how they respond to customers, widening their scope to serve a variety of needs, while also being able to rely on each other’s assistance when needed.

Integration with CRM systems

If a business already has an existing customer relationship management (CRM) system, onboarding a CCaaS system to work alongside it can enhance the customer journey and make it far easier to meet their specific needs. With instant access to all essential customer data available in a CRM system, contact centre staff can utilise said data to improve the customer experience without delay and improve customer-company relationships.

Want to explore CCaaS systems for your business? Speak to Our Specialists.

As a business technology expert with over 20 years of experience in the industry, Elite Group is ideally placed to help you maximise your contact centre efforts with the latest, intelligent CCaaS solutions.. With excellent relationships with some of the world’s top CCaaS vendors, our job is to match you with the CCaaS solution that fits your business perfectly and we’ll work with you to ensure your product meets your precise needs and standards.

Get in touch with Elite Group today to learn more about how CCaaS solutions could help you and your business thrive. Fill in our contact form or call 0344 875 8880.