Taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut is rarely a good idea.  

All that wasted energy simply can’t be justified. 

Similarly, imposing a monolithic technological solution on a business which simply doesn’t need it, amounts to over-engineered folly.  

So it often is with contact centres. 

Back in the day, there was only one way: a hard-wired, mega-capacity network connection; eye-watering call-handling complexity; and wallet-draining implementation management that took months to deliver. 

The cloud has changed all of that, of course. 

Or has it? 

Oddly, evidence suggests that many organisations are still relying on old school providers that remain wed to those old school approaches. 

But there IS a new wave of thinking. 

There IS a school of thought that seeks to redefine contact centre design in a way which better-leverages the power of the cloud, but which also places the emphasis on the end user organisation’s ACTUAL unique requirements as opposed to trying to modify a monster off-the-shelf solution.  

The result? Richer, responsive, more agile caller engagement – at a fraction of the cost. 

“I see a future where the design and deployment of contact centres are both very different to what has been the traditional norm,” says Johan Dalström, Chief Product Officer at rapidly-expanding European UCaaS provider, Soluno.  

Dalström – a leading thinker in the global cloud services sector – envisions a new, leaner, white-labelled ‘multi instance’ model with the capability of providing light-touch, tailored adaptations based on the specific needs of particular verticals. 

In short, a simple configuration where that is appropriate, and a more sophisticated one where the required functionality is more complex. 

“It’s all about listening to the end user organisation and understanding fully the ways in which they engage with their customers,” says Dalström.  

“For example, it’s wholly inefficient to take a giant, off-the-shelf contact centre solution and try to squeeze it into a small organisation with just four or five agents. 

“Vast amounts of functionality are not needed and go un-used; it often involves a wholesale and costly outsourced project management team; and the complexity means it requires high levels of technical support going forward. 

“Far better to design a solution around the very specific needs and scale of an organisation. Not necessarily fully-bespoke but a tweaked version of something that is size and vertical-specific and which delivers just the right amount of functionality rather than way too much.”  

Cloud technology means that any NextGen model will also respond much more rapidly to technological changes in the way businesses interact with their customers.  

Today, contacts occur via voice, email, message, chat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like. 

It’s essential for an organisation’s contact centre to accommodate them all, but Dalström is the first to concede that none of us know what might come next. 

“The world moves quickly and businesses need to be able to respond,” he says.  

“If a business has traditionally not engaged with its customers via, say Instagram, but it needs to spin that functionality up quickly, the cloud-based contact centre of the near-future will be able to do that pretty much instantly and at very low cost. 

“The same applies to any new application that might come along. We don’t know what that might be – and that’s exciting in itself – but we need to have done some of the thinking now so that we are ready when it happens. 

“Think of how your kids are communicating with each other. That is what next generation contact centres will have to embrace.  

“That said, our role at this point is not necessarily to figure out what is going to happen in the future and make bets on it. Our role is to ensure customers have what they need now, and to ensure it is future-proofed”    

New era contact centres are also likely to be smaller, less-corporate affairs: deployed by smart SMEs who see the value of slick, fully-integrated customer interaction.  

Many of those organisations are likely to currently believe that they do not require contact centre functionality: that that kind of strategic approach to comms is the domain of the bigger boys with big money to invest. 

“The cloud means that doesn’t have to be the case,” says Dalström. “The kind of solutions I envisage will be simple and affordable. 

“Many small and medium-sized businesses don’t yet know how much more efficient and effective they can be when they deploy modern contact centre functionality. 

“That means there is an exciting opportunity to educate the market and to empower those businesses.”   

To learn more about Soluno and its wide range of cloud-based, mobile-first communications solutions, visit www.soluno.com 

 

 



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