Recently, Ventana Research, the most authoritative and respected benchmark business technology research and advisory services firm, released new research on the state of contact centers in the cloud.

The research details the level of adoption, trends and best practices in organizations' use of cloud computing-based contact center systems.

It also explores how organizations currently use cloud computing for contact centers and the communications technologies, business applications and analytics systems for current processes, plans they have to change or improve them, and what benefits they hope to gain by doing so.

In recent years, with the help of the Internet, additional customer contact channels have been introduced, making it easier for customers to get information and communicate with companies.

Customer service agents, because of the increased sophistication in contact centers have been allowed to work outside of the physical call center itself, causing companies to look for new ways to support agents and integrate new customer interaction systems.

The new benchmark research by Ventana found that only 36 percent of companies surveyed plan to invest in new on-premises contact center technology, while 63 percent will consider adopting contact center technologies in the cloud.

Officials said that the research also noted that 63 percent of companies believed a cloud-based contact center will increase agent effectiveness, while 60 percent thought it will increase operational efficiency and 55 percent believed it could improve the corporate brand image.

"There are many challenges and opportunities presented by the operation of cloud computing-based contact centers to maximize their accessibility," said Richard Snow, VP & Research Director of Ventana Research, in a release. "As companies increasingly look to service customers more efficiently and across the Internet, using a cloud-based contact center model will enable customer service support anywhere in the world. The home or Internet-based agent has become a practical reality with new applications and technology."

The research also founds that companies believe that cloud-based contact centers offer a variety of benefits, including less capital spending, innovation in handling interactions, less dependence on IT and others.