Size Does Not Matter: Six Reasons Take Your SMB Channel Strategy to the Cloud

26 Sep, 2011

By: Carol Kline,Tina Valdez

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As customers become more digital, social and mobile, businesses have significant opportunity to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through a differentiated customer experience; but those who are unwilling to invest in solutions that embrace the needs of today’s marketplace will most certainly be left behind. Consider these facts: 

• More than 2 billion consumers are online, spending more time than watching television, and only 28 percent of consumers prefer to resolve service issues on the phone.

• 96 percent of Gen Y has joined at least one social network, and, in 2010, they outnumbered the Baby Boomer generation.

• By 2015, mobile Internet will surpass fixed Internet, and 40 percent of 18-34 year olds use their mobile devices to make purchases today. 

Until the application of hosted – or cloud – technology, many advanced customer relationship management solutions were out of reach for small and mid-size operations due to investment and infrastructure requirements, making it difficult to compete. Done right, cloud technology overcomes these barriers and stands to be a huge enabler of competitive advantage through a differentiated customer experience.   

More small and medium businesses are recognizing this opportunity and taking advantage of the benefits of cloud-based contact center solutions, improving customer satisfaction and return on investment by as much as 27 percent in the process. So how can the cloud help small and medium businesses compete and better identify, attract and serve customers? Here are six benefits you can’t afford to ignore: 

1. Reduced fixed and technology support costs, all with access to new technologies at lower risk. In large organizations, acquiring and maintaining traditional physical infrastructure – including data centers, as well as separate contact center technology at each service delivery center – requires significant capital expenditures. Organizations are then often committed to a system for the depreciable life of the assets, limiting the ability to try new solutions or make significant changes. Cloud solutions allow companies to pilot, implement and globally scale without incurring unacceptable levels of risk. 

2. Improved customer satisfaction and revenue by delivering a consistently great experience and the right service at the right time via the right channel. A key driver in customer satisfaction is the ability to recognize and accommodate customers from one channel to the next. This nimble and proactive approach requires a centralized and virtualized infrastructure that allows for one view of the customer across all channels, including mobile and social channels. 

3. Reduced onboarding costs, higher retention and better associate performance. A virtual, global system broadens the talent pools exponentially, and allows companies to select the most qualified associates. 

4. Reduced cost-to-serve via improved staff utilization, effective multi-channel strategies and access to new tools that improve operational efficiency. While a non-technical telephone contact can run as high as $12, self service can be as little as $0.10 per contact, with click to chat, email and virtual agents costing anywhere from $1 to $5 per contact. Cloud solutions make it possible to balance these options and deliver sales and service via the right mix of channel to various customer profiles. As a result, average cost per contact can be reduced by 44 to 88 percent.

5. Improved responsiveness and scalability, across channels, and around the globe. In the highly seasonal retail industry, for example, premised based systems and traditional workforce management mean idle human resource and technology costs during non-peak times. Meanwhile, unanticipated or particularly high demand can result in missed opportunities and a poor customer experience. Cloud architecture enables ready and flexible access to the right associate talent pool.

6. Reduced implementation timeline with fast time-to-market and time-to-benefit. Cloud-based solutions allow companies of all sizes to respond to dynamic market changes in real time.  

Companies large and small stand to benefit from the flexibility, scalability and efficiency that cloud contact center solutions deliver. By leveraging the cloud to create a superior customer relationship management strategy, customers can drive down costs and improve revenue, loyalty and retention through a differentiated customer experience.