Mitigate 5 risks of outdated contact centre technology

The quality of your customer relationships and their experiences define your success. Time-strapped customers want personalised, hassle-free interactions across many channels. In fact, the average contact centre engages customers across 11 communication channels. This includes digital applications as well as in stores and branches.

Inadequate technology can hold you back. If it lacks omnichannel capabilities, you can’t offer consistent service across all channels and touchpoints. That’s because many legacy contact centre investments weren’t built to support modern customer engagement or built with the cloud in mind. And that adds to your risks.

Let’s look at five of these risks and how to address them.

1. Making no decision at all

Competitive advantage is a sweet thing. But it can erode fast, as we’ve seen in 2020. The risks of losing market share can be disastrous when you don’t act fast. That requires agility. But older technologies can’t use the latest innovations of artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver exceptional customer experience. You also miss out on cost savings like easily scaling up and scaling down during peak workloads and seasonal shifts in volume.

Indecision causes many businesses to continue running critical workloads on systems that are at end of support. Unsupported releases open you up to a minefield of problems. These include security vulnerabilities, compliance and incompatibility issues, poor performance and reliability — and high operating costs. Yet executives are often reluctant to abandon on-premises technology they’re comfortable with. This is true even though cloud typically reduces costs.

But there’s no arguing the benefits to customers. By implementing proven customer experience solutions, you can optimise engagement across channels. And with a partner who’s focused on both innovation and your success, you can future-proof your business as it continues to evolve.

2. Moving too fast

Rushing to move workloads to a cloud platform without a clear strategy in place first and a solid plan for each step introduces risk. You can miss unexpected costs, or issues with systems integration, which channels to migrate first, or ongoing internal challenges around stakeholder buy-in.

Evolving to deliver true omnichannel service shouldn’t happen overnight. With an open customer experience platform, you can transition in phases, at a deliberate pace. Start with the basics: inbound voice, critical reporting and data. Later, you can add in digital channels, self-service, assisted service and Workforce Management. Or deploy a full omnichannel customer experience platform and keep your existing PBX system, for example. The answer is in the planning.

Your goal should be to manage and orchestrate all customer interactions from a single, intelligent, universal queue-routing engine. This lets you prioritise and blend interactions and work across channels. An orchestrated approach reduces effort and improves the customer experience. Plus, an omnichannel desktop gives employees access to real-time context and knowledge. It enables them to provide the seamless, personalised experience that builds customer loyalty.

3. Making short-term mistakes

A phased approach not only improves your customer experience, it can mitigate short-term risks. You’ll avoid total reliance on a vendor with an unclear roadmap, leadership challenges or an inability to deliver a long-term business partnership. Working in phases gives you valuable insight into whether this vendor is best for your future plans. Look at it as an opportunity to learn a new omnichannel customer experience platform — without having to move mountains.

This has distinct advantages for your employees, as well. Given the time, training and practice needed to become confident users, agents will be more likely to embrace new technology. Even IT staff benefits. They can build high-demand skills with cutting-edge technologies as they’re implementing them.

With this phased approach, you’ll gain a solid foundation for customer engagement channels and touchpoints. Internally, omnichannel engagement across departments and processes ends the silos that diminish services. You’ll be prepared for next-generation solutions.

At Genesys, we work to understand your current environment, desired outcomes and customer experience vision. Then we map out a realistic path to get you there — at a pace that’s right for you.

4. Deploying “big” architectures built on old technologies

When you think of contact centre innovation, cloud likely comes first. It gives businesses the speed and agility required to meet requirements for growth and customer satisfaction. That is, unless it’s a monolithic architecture built on antiquated methodologies and restrictive operations. And there are plenty out there.

Some vendors who lag in prioritisation and investment in innovation are struggling to catch up. The only “cloud” they can offer customers is the same aging, on-premises software hosted on someone else’s premises. Unfortunately, these solutions are subject to the same upgrade cycles, cost and inflexibility as traditional architecture.

By contrast, cloud-native architectures are scalable. They’re designed to take full advantage of modern cloud strategies and technologies. Migrating to the cloud at any pace is easier for enterprises that have in place microservices architecture – and orchestrate their containers with tools such as Kubernetes or Docker engine. This makes it faster and easier to create, test, iterate and deploy solutions. And this is how the Genesys Cloud platform is designed. We use microservices, API-first development, open data and AI for rapid innovation, agility and resilience.

5. Using a faulty migration process

A lot of valuable intuition goes into how call centres engage with customers. It’s what makes agents indispensable. But you shouldn’t rely on intuition in major technology decisions. Faulty migration models waste time and deliver surprises, such as hidden costs. You also run the risk of discovering that after moving an app into the cloud, it doesn’t work as well there as it did on-premise. The right methodology helps prevent this and it starts way before the migration begins.

Migrate without unnecessary risks

The Genesys Prescriptive Migration methodology reduces these unnecessary risks. It’s based on best practices, outcome-based use cases and architecture patterns. Our model uses repeatable steps that guide call center transformation and give you faster time to value.

From a top-level perspective, here’s how we help you:

• Gain a common understanding among stakeholders
• Assess where you are now and where you want to be
• Create your personalised migration plan built on a compelling business case
• Decide on a cloud deployment model

Apply our proven use cases that support core functionality, like inbound voice

With our agile approach, you migrate in predictable, manageable phases – with a plan that translates into execution. We create a holistic reference architecture framework for infrastructure, functionality, integration and education.

Gain value without the risks

Unmet customer expectations diminish your business success and viability. Cloud migration has its risks but the risk of standing still is a far greater issue. Start planning your move to an open, stable and proven customer experience platform from a long-term partner – not a vendor.

Using our proven prescriptive migration methodology, Genesys works with you to map out a realistic and personalised plan. This will guide your transformation, manage short-term risks and accelerate your time to measurable business value.

Reduce business risks when you migrate to Genesys Cloud:

• Fast, iterative upgrades, with new capabilities available instantaneously
• Ease of implementation and lower costs for incremental advances
• Innovate quickly with less risk and disruption
• Support your employee retention strategy
• Differentiate your customer experience for the long-term
• Gain agility to adapt to change quickly