CCaaS migrations will likely accelerate in 2023. Why? Partly because speed to innovation, ease of integration, and greater scalability make an increasingly compelling argument. However, there is a much more pressing reason: vendors have slowed their legacy innovation efforts and are attempting to uproot on-premise contact centers.
Last year, this aim became much more explicit. For instance, Genesys formally announced that it would focus all its “innovation, investment, and resources” on Genesys Cloud CX. Meanwhile, Avaya is attempting to inspire its customers to migrate to either a public or private cloud with its “innovation without disruption” mantra.
While its on-premise customers can still expect maintenance and support, further “innovation over the top” seems unlikely. Thanks to such moves, the market seems to have reached an inflection point, and businesses are speeding up their migration plans.
Yet, such a transition is tricky, and contact centers will sometimes find that the features available in the cloud – particularly regarding voice – trail what they had on-premise.
Moreover, many pain points deter CCaaS transformation efforts. Here are a handful of examples.
CCaaS Migration Pain Points
Economic troubles, poor budgeting, and compliance restrictions that block the movement of particular data loads are pain points that can each stall CCaaS migration projects. In addition, many rip-and-replace transformations take a turn for the worse when cloud features work somewhat differently from those the business grew accustomed to on-premise.
Of course, running benchmarking and journey orchestration exercises beforehand can spare much of this pain. Yet, as Paul Cicchelli, Sales Director UK&I at Hammer, says:
“We hear of companies who are in the final stages of their project but still don’t know if they are going to replicate their old journeys, design new ones, or completely simplify their approach and build their CX on the fly, as they use it.
Similarly, there are many tricky migration loads for which there are no easy-to-follow how-to guides. For instance, moving mobile device management (MDM) technologies or software built on old systems – such as Microsoft 2003 - to the cloud is notoriously challenging. Try finding a whitepaper that’ll help with that!
Unfortunately, these considerations add complexity, as does the fact that many legacy operations now work with multiple vendors and have built a complex patchwork of systems. Any disruption to these impacts CX and may lead to system failures.
Then, there are sector-specific risks. Cicchelli shares the example of emergency services, stating:
“Having localized redundancy and fail-safes makes far more sense to them than sharing bandwidth with multiple organizations where they are not in control of call capacity and data. Sharing that pipe with somebody else represents risk.”
Finally, CCaaS customers sometimes fail to realize that some solutions are more scalable than others and struggle to move hundreds of agents to the same platform simultaneously. Without foresight and testing, this can considerably slow the cloud's launch.
Overcoming These Pesky Problems
Avoiding the disconnect between CCaaS perception and reality is sometimes tricky. Yet, research and planning will save considerable time, effort, and distress. Often, this starts by whittling down the current technology ecosystem, pinpointing those that support service experiences on a daily basis.
Then, the business can use orchestration tools – like Amazon Connect Flows - to reimagine customer journeys and the architecture that supports them. Testing tools also help streamline the migration process and support companies in preventing overruns that add significant costs to transformation initiatives.
Indeed, The Customer Experience Foundation notes that poor or no testing increases delays and costs in 79 percent of all projects. That represents a significant potential saving. Moreover, these solutions verify newly conceived customer and agent experiences, ensuring they function as expected when the contact center reaches its peak capacity.
Lastly, businesses must make sure their disaster recovery plan is watertight. As Cicchelli notes:
“There is widespread agreement between business leaders, industry analysts, and economic commentators that the future will be much more volatile.”
“Internet outages, failures of energy supply, and environmental disasters are just a few of the events outside of your control that could generate an unprecedented number of calls.”
As such, contact centers must build continuity measures that pair with their CCaaS plans. Automated testing tools can help ensure that these meet the mark.
Cicchelli discussed these tools in greater depth in a video with CX Today, as shown below.
A Final Point
"Ask yourself: "Is this a rip-and-replace project or an ongoing CX improvement project? That mindset may stop you from making costly, possibly unrecoverable mistakes," concludes Cicchelli.
Adopting this approach from the get-go is sound advice. Yet, some may worry their ship has sailed halfway through a gruelling transformation journey.
Thankfully, Hammer is offering a free one-week assessment of contact center experiences to help businesses get their migration back on track and better plan for the future.
Charlie Mitchell, CX Today - Read the original article here.
