The Cloudification of the Contact Center — The Smart Path Forward

I think we'll all agree that a global pandemic has permanently changed many aspects of how businesses work, and perhaps none more than the operation of contact centers. The reality is, today more than ever, that contact centers play an outsized role in business operations. That's true whether you're a consumer or a manager charged with leading contact center operations — contact centers are the lifeblood of a business. Contact centers are are how customers get taken care of and how business gets done. And with work from home looking as though that's going to stay around for a while, taking a look at contact center operations and figuring out how to maximize efficiencies for both employees and consumers is, well, important.

There's a challenge though, and businesses the world over are feeling this. You might say that's exactly why I decided to bring this group of smart people together and tackle this topic as part of our Futurum Tech Webcast Interview Series shows.

The Cloudification of the Contact Center — The Smart Path Forward

While contact centers are without question important to business operations, in many instances, they are problematic. How so? With roughly 90 percent of call centers still using on-premise technologies, organizations have been forced to rethink how they continue to provide high levels of customer service, while still allowing their employees to safely work from home. And this topic, the difference between cloud-based contact centers and on-prem ones, exploring cloud migration, and how to do that successfully (and quickly) is exactly what we're focused on in this conversation today.

I'm joined by Jeff Nicholson, Vice President of CRM at Pegasystems, Jon Gilman, CEO of Clear Software, and Brandon Knight, Vice President of Contact Center Practice at Telarus to discuss why it is critical that organizations migrate contact center functions to the cloud, how to migrate, and some of the obstacles these organizations may face along the way — and how to get through those. Our conversation included:

• An exploration of the differences between cloud-based contact centers and on-premise ones
• The challenges customers are facing during their migrations and some of the unexpected successes they've encountered along the way
• How moving on-premise ERP systems to the cloud fits into the context of cloud-enabling the contact center
• A realistic look at the time it will likely take for full cloud migration
• The 'secret sauce' to success of cloud migration
• Real-world case studies from clients of Pega, Clear Software, and Telarus