Aspect Viewpoint on the Cloud Based Call CenterAspect Viewpoint on the Cloud Based Call Center

The cloud's lower cost and dynamic flexibility are among its most attractive attributes for contact centers.

What drives enterprises to or from cloud based call centers may entail several factors. Some factors are business considerations others are security and privacy. The primary positive driver is cost reduction.

I wanted to learn a software company's views on cloud based call centers, so I interviewed Michael Ely, Director, Systems Architecture at Aspect, who leads the Aspect Architecture Team made up of the company's software architects spanning the Contact Center, Outbound Dialer, Self Service (IVR) and Reporting product lines. His team researches new technology options and determines how to incorporate them into next generation architectures. I have summarized Michael's comments below.

Michael, what has changed in call center technology over the past 10 years?
The call center is still about customer contact. The call center is no longer just about a phone call. The additions of Chat and e-mail support have expanded the media used in the contact center. Outbound calls such as notifications are becoming more common.

The call center agent 10 years ago was an isolated employee. Today, these agents are much more integrated into the business. The number of calls forwarded by agents to internal experts that are not part of the call center can range from none to over 30% of the calls. With continued improvements in IVR, especially speech input, the enterprise agents handle far fewer basic calls. The IVR can answer questions and can determine who are the best agents to respond to the caller.

Today's agents are becoming more specialized. This in turn has helped reduce the agent turnover that once was 30% to 50% agent turnover per year 10 years ago.

What is the most attractive factor of a cloud based solution?
The cost can be cheaper than an on premise solution. The cost of hardware has decreased substantially in the last 10 years. Software and licenses are now the main cost factors.

When an enterprise is considering a call center replacement, the enterprise should examine cloud based services to see what savings can accrue to the enterprise. The cloud service may be cheaper but may not offer all the features and functions desired or may not offer the necessary security.

Of course the cloud’s dynamic flexibility for variable amounts of computational and storage resources are a close second. This allows support of on-demand expansion due to unexpected conditions or seasonal trends without purchasing hardware to handle your highest volume when used only occasionally.

What is the most negative factor against cloud based call centers?
Very common objections are the concerns for security and privacy. By moving to a cloud environment, the entrprise is allowing the call center technology to leave the enterprise’s facilities. There is concern for enterprises that must be certified (HIPAA is an example) for security and privacy. Can the cloud provider meet the requirements or will the provider not accept full responsibility for delivering the necessary security and privacy?

Any comments on the Service Level Agreements?
Since most of the cloud services operate over the Internet, the demarcation point where the SLA stops is at the cloud site and does include the network. Most cloud sites can meet 99.9% to 99.999% availability. This makes the potential for a site failure very low. The reliability level is one of the attractions when moving to a cloud site. Further, since the Internet is between the enterprise and the cloud site, the network may be slow. [Michael has not seen response time measurement included in the SLA.]

Anything else that the enterprise should consider?
There are other factors such as control and administration. One factor that seems to escape notice is performing forensic analysis on a cloud system. If for some reason the enterprise has to investigate an issue that calls for forensic tools to be used, it may be very difficult to locate the physical servers and the software that need to be investigated because the cloud site is usually virtualized.

Is there a way to balance some of the concerns and still use the cloud?
There is the Platform as a Service (PaaS). The PaaS will be in the cloud but the enterprise can acquire software and locate on the PaaS as if it were on the enterprise’s premises. This solution can alleviate the security, privacy, control and administrative concerns. However, the PaaS will not significantly reduce the enterprise staff that must operate the applications on the PaaS.

There are also hybrid configurations where some components are placed on premise and others are cloud based. One example is to locate media services on premise for reduced network costs and high availability while putting the compute and storage intensive components in the dynamic cloud environment. This allows media services near the customers and agents with fallback routing if the network connection to the cloud should fail.

If an enterprise wants to start with a small move to the cloud, what be the best function to locate in the cloud?
Every enterprise has a contact center recording function. Storing and archiving the voice mails for legal or regulatory reasons make the voice mail storage continually expand. Storage in the cloud is cheap, pennies per gigabyte, much cheaper than on premise storage. The cloud also supports a flexible model for storage allowing the enterprise to expand or contract the storage used.