Table of Contents
2 The future of Customer Experience 3 The benefits of a cloud deployment 4 Let’s talk about cloud connecting your contact center 5 The Four Rs of transforming your contact center 6 Optimize the agent experience with artificial intelligence
7 Cisco’s seamless omni-channel experience 8 Empower your contact center employees to work from home 9 A brief overview 10 Let’s talk about your Flex Plan 11 Cisco makes innovating easy
It’s not about a “someday” aspirational future. Or a disruptive “rip and replace” future. Rather, it’s about a future that’s available now.
A contact center that leverages new innovations in data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language understanding (NLU) to:
The cloud offers opportunities to innovate, grow, and consume technology in a smarter way. It can offer better security, too.
Let’s explore the benefits of a cloud contact center.
Improved agility, flexibility and scalability, plus faster deployment of new capabilities Innovative cloud features and emerging technologies and easy integration with major cloud apps Reduced costs and capital overlay, plus more accurate and predictable budgeting Faster and more frequent deployment of services and new features, with no disruption to your employees IT staff and operational efficiencies, with more time to focus on strategic initiatives Higher security, to meet strict regulatory and legal compliance requirements, while protecting contact center uptime and customer privacy
A practical approach to cloud transformation can happen sooner than you think. Cisco takes a “cloud first, not cloud only” approach to helping customers transition their contact centers to the cloud. We recognize how time-consuming and costly a complete contact center infrastructure upgrade is. So we offer a number of strategies that meet your specific technology refresh and migration needs, no matter where you are in the cloud transformation process.
Think of it as a step-by-step approach. This allows you to adopt new, innovative cloud services and technologies like advanced data analytics and AI, without disrupting your current on-premises Cisco contact center deployment. This formula maximizes and protects your current on-premises investments, while allowing you to innovate and improve competitive advantage.
This is a smart and practical way to take advantage of the future without disrupting the present. With this approach you can “cloud-enable” your contact center quickly and cost-effectively, while completing your overall transition to the cloud at whatever pace you’re comfortable with.
As a bonus from a strategic management perspective, Cisco's Flex® Plan provides a flexible consumption model that lets you move your licenses with you to any platform. This allows you to have a combination of on-premises and cloud users licenses to effectively meet “growing pains” and scalability issues, and gives you cloud innovation and agility without disrupting your critical on-premises operations.
Transforming your contact center operation from a cost center to a strategic business asset. New cloud services give you the ability to do precisely that by significantly boosting the effectiveness of four key components of contact center activity.
In today’s experience economy — one that features social media interactions and critiques that reverberate across wide audiences — successful brands build their entire business model around delightful customer experiences. Those successful brands do that in two ways.
First, they concentrate their efforts on three overarching objectives:
Second, they make a strategic decision to help accomplish all of the above by digitally transforming their contact centers.
Importantly, they don’t “rip and replace” their current contact center investments, they build on what they have by taking advantage of cloud/hybrid services. That means that they don’t wait until “someday” to digitally transform their contact centers, they grab the opportunity in the near term.
“The new Cisco solution will enable Customer Service to move forward on a new platform that is designed to be scalable, extensible, and flexible. This will allow Amway North America Customer Service to provide additional services in a quicker and more agile fashion.”
RION HOLLENBECK, Corporate Unified Communications Manager for Amway
Because you trust them to engage with your most precious resource – your customers – agents play a key role in your business. Many companies claim they have a customer-first culture. But many contact center agents are still screen switching between apps and documents looking for information. As your agents scramble, your prospects and customers wait, and everyone is frustrated. This is one of reasons agent turnover rates are so high.
Investing in intuitive, AI-powered features such as virtual agents for voice and chat make it simple for customers to self-serve, and goes a long way in minimizing agent workload and enhancing their state of mind, productivity, and job satisfaction.
Your customers have different preferences when it comes to interacting with your company. They call. They email and text. They self-serve using chat BOTs and IVR. They use social media.
Having a silo-free omni-channel experience enables you to provide greater flexibility and faster service to your customers. And your agents can efficiently manage all customer interactions, for all channels, from one seamless intuitive desktop experience. This allows you to better meet customer expections – especially those who only conduct business digitally, while making it easy for your agents to respond quickly and efficiently.
Cisco brings that omni-channel experience to life.
Agent desktop experience — Means your agents can manage all incoming channels from one screen.
Intelligent routing — Your AI-assisted system that can route customers to the right agent based on skills and channel.
Customer experience — Means your customers can engage with your company however they prefer.
No matter how your customers want to connect with your company, Cisco can make it happen.
Today’s contact centers need to provide workplace flexibility and adaptability so your employees can work effectively and securely from any remote location. Cisco’s priority is to enable our customers to readily adapt to these needs.
A cloud contact center is a virtual contact center. It allows your contact center agents to successfully work from home, regardless of endpoints or physical location. Setting up agents to work from home is simple. An agent simply needs a home or smartphone that can be dialed directly – preferably with a headset, and a computer with a browser and internet connection. No VPN connection is required. This ensures they can stay fully productive and connected to customers and the rest of the business.
What kind of cloud services does Cisco offer to help you transform your contact center today while transitioning to the cloud at your own pace?
Webex Experience Management
A next generation customer experience management solution gives your business greater insight across the entire customer journey, enabling you to make informed decisions on how to improve customer and employee experiences that will create positive business outcomes.
Cisco Customer Journey Analyzer
A cloud-based analytics reporting tool provides a unified view of all the interactions in your contact center, both real-time and historical, bringing together ACD and IVR data into an analyzer repository in the cloud so that you can analyze, understand, and optimize for operational efficiency.
Agent Answers
A cloud-based “intelligent agent” powered by Google Contact Center AI, Agent Answers listens to customer conversations in real-time, and gives your agents contextual help. It puts relevant information like process guidelines, pricing, membership benefits, and coupons at your agents’ fingertips, while they’re interacting with a customer.
The Cisco Collaboration Flex® Plan is a simplified user-based subscription purchasing plan for all your collaboration needs: Meetings, team collaboration, calling, and of course, contact center services. Choose Flex Plan for one solution or choose the Flex Plan for a combination.
With Flex plan you can deploy Cisco contact center solutions however you want: on-premises, in the cloud, or a mix of both.
The contact center is evolving from cost center to strategic business asset.
Only Cisco can provide the security, product stack, migration services, and customer journey intelligence to move the contact center beyond offering isolated interactions to offering personalized, seamless, and cross-channel customer experiences.
By layering innovative cloud services on top of the on-premises Cisco Contact Center solutions you have now, you can take advantage of data analytics, AI, and ML to deliver better customer experiences.
Contact a Cisco representative for help with your cloud Contact Center transformation
Explore more about Cisco Contact Center solutions
Work Smarter with Cisco Webex Contact Center
Take the Cloud Collaboration Readiness Assessment
