Hosted IVR

July 20, 2012

Cloud-based Call Centers and Hosted IVR Provide Big Benefits

By Steve Anderson
Contributing TMCnet Writer

Increasingly, businesses of all sizes are looking to move their call center operations to the cloud in a bid to take advantage of the increasingly large number of benefits associated with such a move. But what are these benefits, more specifically? There may be a substantial number of them, but can they be quantified, and reasonably expressed? They can indeed, and that's what we'll take a look at right now.

A cloud-based call center offers some substantial benefits in terms of costs. Not only does a hosted call center require little in the way of equipment--the service provider offers most of the equipment on their own premises--but this same stance also more easily allows users to upscale their cloud presence as needed. Many cloud providers offer tiered pricing, which in turn allows businesses to select the package best commensurate with their needs and their budgets alike.

Better still, since hosted cloud providers are used to working with a variety of different companies as a matter of course, they have the ability to be flexible in terms of getting a specific business' technology to work with their own systems. This in turn allows for the regular addition of new technology and the replacement of old technology to make a system that comes the closest to perfect that can be.

What's more, using a remote provider allows for improvements in employee performance as they get access to tools that can improve response time, response quality, or a variety of other metrics. Managers get better coaching tools to further improve employee performance, and the entire system sees an uptick in terms of reliability as not only are the systems maintained by professionals, but they can also be distributed over a wide geographic range to provide redundancy and an easy backup in time of trouble. Carrier neutrality comes into play as well, with cloud providers able to offer a wider range of services, including access to TDM--Time Division Multiplexing--as well as VoIP--Voice over Internet Protocol--services that many providers couldn't, or wouldn't offer before.

There are indeed a wide variety of benefits to a hosted cloud system. Not only does it operate within a business' budget, it also provides an impressive array of services and can be, in many cases, closely tailored to meet the specific needs of a business. For those businesses that want access to a variety of services without having to build up a massive investment in hardware, and don't mind the regular recurring charges, a cloud-based call center may be exactly what's needed to make a powerful communications system.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.

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Edited by Juliana Kenny