BENEFITS OF CLOUD ROUTING

By Darren Prine of ConnectFirst

An increasing number of contact centers are utilizing, and/or becoming part of a versatile hosted (cloud based) solution known as Cloud Routing. Campaigns, or call volume may dictate that Centers with multiple locations, or several independent centers be made available as a cohesive pool to handle thousands of calls on a permanent basis, or due to media schedule, or even seasonal demand.

Cloud Routing, in simple terms, refers to a unified queue in the cloud. Call centers with multiple locations, as well as multiple independent centers can be presented seamlessly as a single resource pool, based on many routing rules. This is an ideal solution for large call volume applications, unforeseen call spikes, seasonal growth, disaster recovery, and general business continuity. Cloud Routing is 100% on demand, and offered as a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution which allows call centers to avoid equipment CapEx and reserves.

Some of the benefits that Cloud Routing offers to call centers include the following:

• Calls can be routed to multiple distributed contact centers or assigned to secondary queues such as IVR, or specialized ACD skill groups.
• Cloud Routing helps centers manage their call traffic by allowing them to make use of multiple destinations distributing calls based upon their preferences. Allocation can be configured in many ways (percent, round robin, geographical), so no call receives a busy signal or is placed in an infinite queue.
• Business rules can be established as a hierarchical set of destinations, so the best-performers receive calls first. As soon as any destination hits a specific call-count, or has no available agents, calls are automatically sent to a secondary destination, and so on. A user may configure destinations based upon time of day, and/or split volume in various ways.

One common challenge for busy contact centers is call spikes.  With Cloud Routing, call spikes are easily managed, abandonment is reduced and consumers receive a higher level of service.

Cloud-Routing technology is easy to implement, very affordable, and gives in-depth reporting that offers complete transparency.

Cloud Routing is destination agnostic, and can help to evaluate overall service levels, identify potential abandonment issues, and help ensure that campaigns are managed effectively.

Contact centers that utilize Cloud Routing have found it allows them to scale both their capacity and capabilities.