Top 8 CCaaS Statistics for Small Business Owners
Corey McCraw is a staff writer covering VoIP and Unified Communications. Corey has over a decade of experience in marketing, tech writing, and corporate communications and has even penned content for the former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative.
This article is part of a larger series on VoIP.
Contact center as a service (CCaaS) technology delivers new opportunities in launching larger inbound and outbound communications practices—driving operational efficiencies and improving customer experiences. It enables you to reach customers on their preferred platforms: social media, text, or video conferencing. Discover how CCaaS adoption delivers better results by reading through the critical contact center as a service statistics below.
1. 62% of Modern Businesses Plan To Implement a Cloud-based Contact Center
(Source: Cisco)
Partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses reported to Cisco that they planned to implement cloud contact solutions within the next 18 months. With the need for more agile work from home work profiles, cloud-based systems make it easy for employees to receive inbound calls and make outbound calls from anywhere in the world.
The increased focus on the contact center as a service is also being driven by a new focus on customer experience. Companies are facing new levels of competition online, so customer retention has become a major consideration. As a result, the expanded touchpoints provided by CCaaS are becoming more considered, and the customer experience (CX) manager has more to say when it comes to adopted solutions.
2. CCaaS Grants Businesses Heightened Scalability & Financial Flexibility
(Source: Aberdeen)
Improved customer experience isn’t the only factor for businesses adopting CCaaS. In fact, 90% of contact centers that opted to switch to the cloud did so because cloud-based contact centers provide a new level of financial flexibility.
Cloud services make it easy to scale up and down as needed. For example, when campaigns are live, merely contacting the CCaaS provider and graduating to a more feature-rich plan tier is very easy. Then, as a campaign dies down, you can make a similar call to downgrade to a previous tier with fewer CCaaS features.
These plans are also very quick to deploy. For example, if you’re already a RingCentral customer, upgrade to RingCentral Contact Center when you need to analyze important call center KPIs (key performance indicators). Since CCaaS solutions bring ease and efficiency to businesses and these businesses are prioritizing the customer experience, this technology is quickly becoming a focus.
Traditional on-premise contact centers opt to adopt cloud technologies as investing in on-premise contact center technology often costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. With cloud solutions, the technology is hosted at the provider level, and newer features are deployable when needed with a small monthly cost.
CCaaS is also easy to implement. Rather than depending on call center hardware, most providers only require a computer with a VoIP headset, a smartphone, or an IP desk phone.
3. CCaaS Creates Omnichannel Customer Experiences
(Sources: Microsoft, Grandview, Vonage, West Monroe)
Contact centers are switching to cloud-based models in response to a growing demand for multi- and omnichannel touchpoints. These are often using intelligent omnichannel routing, which ensures that each customer is connected to the agent that best understands their communication needs.
CCaaS technology is consistently growing, and most providers deliver contact opportunities via email, chat, SMS, voice, social media, and video. These include communications providers, like 8×8 Contact Center, Freshdesk Contact Center, the aforementioned RingCentral Contact Center, and Nextiva.
Not sure which provider would be best for your business? Check out our guide on the best call center phone systems available on the market today.
While having multiple channels for contact is recommended, an omnichannel experience is clearly preferred as more customer needs are addressed. This way, customers aren’t continuously passed between agents, which dilutes and degrades the customer experience. This also prevents customers from repeating information across channels, helping centers meet customer needs more efficiently.
Since the pandemic, 51% of customers still preferred standard voice contact, but an additional 18% preferred contact via email. Another 11% stated a preference for other forms of contact via social media, chatbots, and push notifications. This is increasing steadily, and millennials as a group are leading the charge. In fact, 37% of respondents to a West Monroe study between the ages of 18 and 34 chose chat as a desired way of communicating with a service provider.
4. Resolve Issues Faster & Easier With a CCaaS Solution
With companies starting to embrace cloud-based contact, the efficiency of customer service increases. According to Esteban Kolsky, a leader in customer service, companies can reduce churn by upward of 67% by using CCaaS solutions. These types of solutions help reduce multiple customer issue resolution to one interaction.
The chief technology that powers this single-interaction resolution is the real-time data being provided through CRM (customer relationship management) solutions.
By providing an omnichannel experience, you potentially save money on poor customer service experiences. When customers are unhappy, money is lost. In fact, businesses lose around $75 billion when customer service is lacking, and customers aren’t being met on the right platform.
5. Customers Still Reach Out to Companies via Phone (Despite Omnichannel Opportunities)
(Source: Contact Center Satisfaction Index Report 2020)
While omnichannel is critical, a vast number of customers still reach out to their favorite companies by phone. In fact, based on research by Claes Fornell International (CFI) Group, 70% still prefer this means of contacting customer support. It’s important to remember that the modern contact center still supports voice calling, and many voice over internet protocol (VoIP) providers have tiers and entire plans dedicated to CCaaS.
Calling is still a critical part of the contact center, and finding the right provider for your calls is critical. Check out our guide to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) statistics, which goes in-depth explaining why switching to a cloud-based calling provider can help your business. Additionally, many VoIP providers offer CCaaS features or have CCaaS plans to help you transition to the contact center.
6. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Improving Customer Experiences in CCaaS Environments
(Sources: Business 2 Community, Salesforce, Aberdeen)
With a cloud-based architecture, contact centers more easily adopt newer technologies in order to enhance business processes. Based on research done by Business 2 Community, artificial intelligence technology is becoming one of the most process-enhancing features of CCaaS. In fact, following up with research done by Aberdeen, artificial intelligence increases yearly revenue by as much as 2.4 times greater than those centers not using AI.
AI software automates the process, so that agents aren’t as overwhelmed with information, and as a result, interactions are reduced to one instance in some cases. This type of solution provides an effective “partner” for agents interacting with customers that helps with real-time decision assist and guidance.
It’s important to understand that personalization is critical during CCaaS interactions. During both business-to-customer and business-to-business interactions, showing your clients that you are paying attention to their needs specifically has incredible value. AI helps provide recommendations for content and products that are tailored to the needs of your clients, which they will find valuable. Thus, improving the customer experience.
7. CCaaS Self-service Features Grant Customers More Convenience
(Source: Babelforce)
Like most VoIP systems, CCaaS solutions also provide some self-service features through interactive voice response (IVR) software. IVR systems provide convenience to customers by helping automate basic business processes.
For example, many customers simply want to dial in to your business and pay their bill. An IVR system provides this functionality without the need for an agent. It takes down card information, requests PINs and usernames/passwords, and updates a customer’s profile when done.
In addition to this, CCaaS IVR systems enable customers to schedule callbacks or check transaction details like account balances or payment dates. This adds convenience to the customer service process, and it helps your agents receive only inbound calls that require more in-depth, human-based resolution.
8. CCaaS Adds Efficiency & Saves Businesses Money
(Sources: Frost & Sullivan, Business News Daily, Odigo)
Outside of improving the customer experience, CCaaS also delivers other key business benefits, like maximizing financial resources. For example, with many agents being able to work-from-home, businesses can significantly save money. In fact, based on research done by Frost and Sullivan, work from home employees of contact centers save their employers as much as $25,000 per year.
Outside of the financial advantages, CCaaS also increases work time. Business News Daily’s research shows that work from home employees work up to 1.4 days more every month than office-based contact center agents.
A leading telecommunications company in Belgium, VOO, found that when moving to the cloud, absenteeism dropped from 62% to about 5%. Any professional contact center knows that absenteeism often results in lower quality of service. In fact, it’s often the cause of longer hold times and reduced productivity. Because they switched to a CCaaS solution, VOO also noticed that the average calls per day rose from 1,300 to 1,800.
Bottom Line
CCaaS technology, as part of a modern business phone system, helps businesses manage their customers and colleagues. And based on the CCaaS statistics above, it’s not nearly as expensive as businesses might expect. It provides greater customer service at a very reasonable price, starting at around $30 per user, per month. The number of CCaaS solutions is also increasing steadily, so that businesses can select the one that best fits their needs.
