A hosted contact center offers all of the utilities associated with running a customer service outfit with a pay-as-you-go plan. This means that managers don’t necessarily need to buy prohibitively expensive hardware, instead they can add software as needed and get deeper in their involvement as they grow. Most hosted contact centers offer all the major tools of a call center, including ACD, WFN, IVR and unified messaging as well as stats and analytics for agent quality assurance. The hosted contact center market is outpacing the rest of the industry as an increasing number of contact centers make the switch from legacy software and equipment which they maintain in-house to hosted solutions provided over the internet as Software-as-a-Service. Hosted contact center offerings provide benefits like lower infrastructure maintenance costs, flexible agent staffing and quick time deploy.
There are several advantages to hosted contact centers:
- Minimal startup costs with virtually no equipment to purchase
- Flexibility in usage and elimination of maintenance
- Software is constantly upgraded and maintained on the provider’s end
- Companies benefit from the newer and more effective software
- Worry-free tech support that grants constant availability for customer service
- Managers are left with more time to deal with company issues
- All functions regulated to hardware can now be processed from a remote location
Hosted contact centers offer a compelling alternative for communications service providers that need to go to market quickly with little up-front costs. The software also allows the customer service professionals the ability to deploy a home-based agent strategy that could take savings even further.