What Are the Top Benefits of Using Cloud Customer Service?

Whether you run a brick-and-mortar store, an e-commerce shop, or a mix of the two, you can’t afford to provide anything less than exceptional customer service. No matter your industry, customers are your most precious resource, and 90% of United States customers state that customer support is a deciding factor in whether they stick with a company. Every good business owner knows that it’s always easier to keep your existing customers than it is to attract new ones, so you need a reliable way to ensure positive customer interactions and provide service that elevates you above your competition.

One of the best ways you can do this is by investing in a modern contact center. Call centers sometimes still get a bad rap from those who picture them as offices lined with cubicles filled with exasperated agents trying to field phone calls from customers who are endlessly put on hold, but that’s just an example of an old call center that’s still relying on legacy systems. These days, the cloud lets you invest in a contact center as a service (CCaaS).

This gives you access to a virtual call center that’s hosted in the cloud, rather than on-premises. This saves significant operating costs in office space, as well as hardware and infrastructure. It also lets you hire remote employees instead of having them in an office. By hiring even a few agents in different time zones, you’ll be able to easily provide around-the-clock support for customers. These benefits are just the beginning, though. Here are a few more reasons why you should invest in a cloud contact center.

CRM integrations take customer interactions to the next level.

Any good CCaaS solution will be able to seamlessly integrate with your customer relationship management (CRM) system, whether you’re running Salesforce, Zendesk, or any others. Whenever your agents answer inbound calls, they’ll be able to instantly pull up any relevant customer data, so they’ll have more information to work with from the start.

For example, consider if you’re an herbal packaging business that sells chew cans for tobacco products. If a customer was satisfied with their previous order and wants to make a repeat order, your agents can use their information to make special offers, thus cementing customer loyalty. If a customer is unsatisfied, your agents will have all the information they need about what the customer ordered, so they can bring the call toward a successful resolution faster.

Intelligent routing is the ultimate in customer convenience.

With CCaaS, you’ll have smart routing options like interactive voice response (IVR), which presents customers with a menu of options to choose from before connecting them with the right agent for their unique needs. Of course, a modern contact center solution is capable of much more than routing voice calls.

Customers will also be able to reach your agents using their preferred digital communication channels, whether that’s texting, SMS, email, social media, live chat, or your mobile app. Convenience has become a basic customer expectation in this modern era of instant answers, and you’ll need to provide it if you hope to stay competitive.

One way that you can stand above your competitors is if you invest in a true omnichannel solution. Digital channels are typically kept in silos, meaning that there’s no easy way for customers to switch between them. With a CCaaS provider who offers omnichannel capabilities, however, your customers will be able to seamlessly switch between channels whenever they need to. Even better, they’ll be able to do this while staying in contact with the same agent, ensuring that they’ll never have to deal with the frustrating experience of repeating themselves. This makes for personalized customer journeys that they aren’t soon to forget.