Top 5 Benefits of Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) 

Unlock Enhanced Customer Experiences with CCaaS 

Customer service isn’t easy – that’s a fact! From managing large volumes of inbound calls to managing your agents’ time efficiently, providing the best service for your customers can feel like you’re spinning plates. Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) takes the stress out of your customer service operations by streamlining your call traffic, providing access to multi-channel communication solutions and offering a range of customer experience tools.  

Businesses, globally, are already using CCaaS to improve their customer service and as more businesses undergo digital transformations and make the move to the cloud, its popularity is only going to grow. A report by SkyQuest has estimated that over 60% of enterprises will have adopted CCaaS solutions within their business by 2025. So, why invest in CCaaS solutions? We’re going to outline the top 5 benefits CCaaS provides for businesses just like yours. 

Ready to discover CCaaS?  

What is CCaaS? 

Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) is a cloud-based, customer experience solution that unifies multiple communication channels, including voice, email, live chat, email and more with a range of customer service tools within one platform. CCaaS allows businesses to purchase the technology solutions that they need to streamline inbound calls and enhance customer experiences without bulky, costly on-premise hardware. This reduces reliance on internal IT support and means your business doesn’t have to deal with the hassle of managing the solution yourself.   

Now, we’ve got a clear idea of what CCaaS is and what it has to offer, let’s jump into the important information – the benefits. 

What Are the Benefits of CCaaS? 

1) Improved Customer Experience 

Meeting the expectations of today’s customers is a multi-faceted challenge, but it’s important in a world where people are more likely to shout about a negative experience with your business than a positive one. Research by PwC demonstrated that 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand after one bad experience and 92% of customer will completely abandon a company after two or three negative experiences. So, in short, providing customer experiences that stand out is more important than ever.  

The intended use of CCaaS is to improve customer interactions and communication with businesses, so it’s been designed with many features to facilitate this, including: 

• Omnichannel communication facilities – to offer a range of channels for customers to choose how to interact with a business. 
• Intelligent IVR capabilities – to streamline inbound traffic into your business and reduce customer frustration by providing clear instructions when they contact your business. 
• CRM integration – to utlise customer data to provide a personalised service and find answers to customer queries quickly. 
• Call recording and management – to monitor your customers’ experience, provide in-depth training and analyse potential issues within your service. 
• Advanced call routing services – to route customer calls to the right agent, quickly and efficiently. 

These features work together within one platform to help you to provide personalised, tailored and efficient experiences for your customers.  

Let’s take a look at how some of these features can be used in practice to provide optimised customer experiences. Omnichannel communication facilities (voice, email, chat, social media) allow your customers to engage with your business using their preferred method. With customers dispersed through multiple communication channels, this means that traffic can be shared across your contact centre, reducing wait times and allowing your agents’ time to be utilised more efficiently. As all contact channels are managed within one, centralised user interface, agents can manage a number of channels simultaneously. Agents can even collate conversations with a customer that have taken place across different channels. For example, if a customer began a conversation on live chat and the called the business, the CCaaS system can gather this information within one space to prevent customer having to repeat their problem or query when switching to a different communication method.  Depending on what the customer’s issue, query or need is, the intelligent IVR and call routing services, will ensure they are directed to the right agent to deal with their requirements. Contact with your business can be stored within call recording systems within your CCaaS solution for you to access later for training purposes or making improvements to your service. 

2) Scalability & Cost-efficiency 

With CCaaS, your business still has access to software, tools and resources that it needs to deliver great customer service, but without the reliance of on-premise solutions. Therefore, you only pay for the technology that you implement within your CCaaS platfrom and there’s no need to maintain expensive, complicated hardware. Furthermore, with access to solutions like CRM systems, communication channels and call recordings all available from a central location, your agents don’t need to waste time jumping between multiple applications to support your customers or complete tasks. There’s no need to incur the costs of an internal IT team or use up your existing IT team’s resource to mainatin your CCaaS solution. Your provider will take care of your solution for you, providing support if you run into an issue and adapting it to meet your changing requirements.  

As your solution isn’t tied to physical software, it can be easily scaled to grow with your business and as you’re only paying for what you need, you can scale your solution back during less busy periods. Thanks to the solution being hosted in the cloud, you have access to an adaptable solution that provides real value for money and always meets your business’s needs. 

3)Enhanced Flexibility and Remote Work 

Many businesses have to manage teams that are dispersed across multiple locations. CCCaas unites your team whether they are working on the road, from home or in the office through providing access to your system from any location, across any device. Intelligent call routing, means that your customers have access to the relevant agent, no matter where they are working. Your team can access the system from PCs, tablets or even mobile, so no matter where they are, your customers can reach them.  Having the capability to access your contact centre’s technology from any location means that, should an event occur that prevents access to your contact centre premises, your team can simply work from home and business can continue as normal – your customers won’t even notice!  

Let’s take a look at an example. Say a customer calls into your business, looking to speak to someone about renewing their account with you. The agents responsible for renewals are spread out between your office premises across the UK, and some work from home. Your IVR services within your CCaaS system will offer your customer a menu to allow them to choose the support they require and place them in the relevant queue towards for your Renewals team. Intelligent call routing will then identify the agents within this team who are currently logged into your platform, across your office locations and those who are working from home, to identify an agent who is available and will route that call to that agent – location is irrelevant. As long as your agents are logged into the CCaaS platform, the solution will route that relevant call to any agents that are available. Agents will also have visibility on other agents who are available, so if a customer needs to be passed on to another team member, agents can quickly identify who is available and reroute the call accordingly. 

4) Advanced Analytics and Reporting 

CCaaS has the ability to gather and analyse a vast range of data about the service you are providing and how your customers are engaging with your business. You can highlight current trends or common issues that need ironing out within your customer service operations. You can run specific reports to gain insights into a particular element within your customer’s experience or to discover areas for specific improvement.  

There are a range of features that CCaaS can offer in order for you to gain visibility on vital customer experience and agent productivity insights: 

• Set automated messages: Ask customers to leave a review of your service after an interaction with your business or implement a CSAT survey tool to collate information on your customers’ satisfaction with your service.  
• Call recording: Allows access to qualitative data through providing access to customer calls that can be organised and flagged to show your customers’ experience within your business. Teams can then methodically monitor historic calls to analyse positive elements and identify negative factors that are hindering your customers from having an efficient experience with your business.  
• Agent Productivity: Measure the time agents spend on a single call, analyse speed-to-resolution metrics and monitor response times to speed up customer interactions by making them more efficient. 
• Call queueing: Track call queue time automatically and run reports within your CCaaS system to monitor the average time your customer spends on hold waiting for an agent. You can then make data-led decisions regarding resource or agent productivity to improve wait times.  

These are just a few out of a wealth of analytical features that you can take advantage of when using a CCaaS solution. As CCaaS is tailored to the specific needs of your business you can integrate the relevant technologies you need to provide specific insights to improve your business.  

5) Integration and Collaboration  

Thanks to its adaptability, you can integrate your existing platforms, tools and software within your CCaaS solution, to save time, through no longer having to jump between applications and programmes. Teams can work together and collaborate to find the solutions to your customers’ problems, quickly and efficiently, reducing frustration for your team members and reducing wait times for your customers. With information located within a centralised place that your team can access easily, regardless of their department or working location, they can work more productively, collaborate easily and work together to solve problems.  

CCaaS can help to improve your customers’ experience through allowing your team to work smarter not harder with the integration of AI within your solution. Utilising technology like voice recognition with artificial intelligence will allow your system to gather information when a customer calls into your business, before they’ve even spoke to a customer service agent. With auto attendants powered by AI, your customers have access to options that allow them to self-serve, freeing up the time of your human agents for requests that require their help. Customer queries are dealt with faster as they spend less time dealing with hold music being the soundtrack to their increasing frustration and instead find the answers they need quickly. Your agents will also thank you through not being snowed under with overwhelming numbers of customer interactions and being able to prioritise their time to help customers who really need them. 

What Do Our Experts Have to Say About CCaaS 

We’ve already supported many businesses implement CCaaS within their business and have seen the real benefits this solution has provided. We sat down with our UC Specialist, Ryan Black to ask his opinion on this technology and the power it holds to progress businesses and transform customer experiences. Speaking about why businesses are seeing the value in CCaaS and are choosing to invest in CCaaS solutions now, Ryan said: 

As we move out of, what was, exceptional circumstances during the Covid pandemic, businesses appreciate the value of technology and the importance of customer experience. Especially in the current economic climate, ensuring businesses capture as much of their own market, whilst also reducing churn is really important to remain competitive.” 

We then asked Ryan how CCaaS has helped to support the objectives he outlined in his previous answer: 

CCaaS helps to achieve these outcomes by migrating contact centre services to the cloud where they are deployed in a reliable and robust environment. CCaaS also allows businesses to consolidate their communication channels into a single interface, ensuring there isn’t an impact to SLAs regardless of the path customers choose to engage with their business. By doing so, this also presents agents and supervisors with the opportunity to optimise their productivity and provides greater job satisfaction. The compelling benefit here is that there is a direct correlation between employee experience and delivering great customer experience.” 

Optimise Your Contact Centre with CCaaS from Elite Group  

From enabling your agents to work more efficiently to creating more personalised experiences for your customers, improving your contact centre whilst making it easier to manage is possible with CCaaS. If you’re ready to get started with CCaaS, our team of specialists are ready to help. With over 20 years’ of industry experience and accreditations from the biggest brands, you can rely on us to find the right CCaaS solutions for you. Fill in our contact form today or call us on 0344 875 8880