With interaction volumes—and customer expectations—soaring, more and more contact centers are re-evaluating their contact center software and providers. Clear-eyed analysis often confirms conclusions that contact center executives and managers have been becoming aware of over months and even years. It could be time—or even past time—for a change.
Following a change process that includes a methodical needs analysis paired with a robust assessment of provider capabilities will clarify your course of action. And it is guaranteed to not only set your contact center on the path to a productive future but will also return all kinds of dividends to your organization for years to come.
Executives and managers exploring change for their organizations’ contact centers should find themselves in good company in the coming year and beyond. According to a report published by Fortune Business Insights, the global contact center software industry, while $20.72 billion (USD) in 2019, is projected to reach a whopping $60.35 billion by 2027. That’s a lot of activity—and a lot of change.
Who’s taking the plunge
Two full years of a pandemic (and entering a third) has put unprecedented demands on contact centers. This may have delayed some previously planned software changes initially but now is accelerating the need for change. Across virtually all business sectors, contact centers in organizations of all sizes and across business sectors are poised to expand and refine their offerings and operations, to level up in an increasingly challenging, highly competitive business environment. They can be broadly grouped into two categories:
- Contact centers who may already be in the cloud but who are looking for a better fit, both in terms of software performance and a partnership with their provider; and
- Contact centers with on-premises hardware that is costly, underperforming, and unsustainable.
What’s driving change
Specific reasons can vary, but the decision to explore alternatives generally grows out of issues that tend to surface and intensify over time. Things like performance, cost, ease of use, integration, future-proofing, security, and certainly not least, provider responsiveness, are all factors in contact centers’ need to change software and establish a relationship with a new provider.
Contact centers that may have moved to the cloud in the last few years may look to alternative solutions when performance, cost, or responsiveness aren’t meeting expectations.
For those still operating on an on-premises platform—estimated to still be as many as 70% of all contact centers today—the need for change can take on even more urgency. Industry experts estimate that as many as 60% of those are planning to move to the cloud this year or next.
The last couple of years have shone an especially bright light on the critical role technology plays in the customer experience (CX) and in retaining customers who are increasingly demanding and won’t hesitate to realign their loyalties based on CX. Customers expect a seamless omnichannel experience—interactions across a wide variety of digital platforms; they expect to be seen and heard; they expect fine-tuned self-service options; and as their needs and habits and expectations change, they expect contact centers to be able to respond. Contact center technology is the key.
Customers aren’t the only ones making clear demands: Contact center employees also expect job satisfaction, which means having the right, easy-to-use tools that enable them to provide exceptional CX and set them up for success. As millions continue to leave their jobs in record numbers in what’s being called ‘The Great Resignation,’ contact centers have been hit especially hard. Post pandemic, work-from-home options have become the norm, as have 100% remote and hybrid contact center workforce models. Again, technology is the key.
CXone customers who’ve been there, done that
A growing number of our customers have made or are making the switch to CXone from competitors. With the move to CXone, previous issues and challenges are quickly resolved, and in many cases, these contact centers are realizing even more advantages than the ones they were anticipating.Cost savings of $3,000 a month!
For one marketing services company, switching to CXone not only reduced monthly expenses significantly but also enhanced the contact center's ease of use and elevated its performance. “Before moving to NICE CXone, we used Five9,” said the contact center manager. “It was difficult to create reports, outages were frequent, and it was expensive and time-consuming to make system updates. In fact, almost all system changes, such as creating reports or making IVR modifications, had to be performed by Five9 consultants, which was a lengthy and often expensive process. But because it’s so easy to make system changes ourselves in CXone, we’ve eliminated up to $3,000 per month in outside consulting costs!”
Astronomical costs were very much on the mind of another retail executive, whose decision to leave its on-premises contact center platform for the CXone integrated cloud solution didn’t come easy. “…We were what I would call ‘cloud never,” he said. “But when we saw the numbers for the next generation of our on-premises solution, we were [looking at] not hundreds of thousands of dollars but millions of dollars in investment in capital expense. He says that after the move to the CXone platform, both capital and operating expenses dropped substantially.
More functionality, with no end in sight
And then there was the matter of functionality—the ease of transferring calls, logging in, moving between chat and email. “You just can’t stay competitive…unless you provide your people the [technology] tools they need,” the manager said, adding that NICE CXone has exceeded his company’s expectations, resulting in both profitable growth and operational excellence.
Contact center uptime and the ability to consistently deliver on key metrics also rank high on the list of outcomes from contact centers that have made the decision to switch to the CXone platform.
The marketing services contact center manager described the frustration that prompted her company’s switch. “The Five9 system often froze, and call quality was poor, which increased talk time,” she said. “We don’t have those issues with CXone. Our talk time has decreased, which makes us—and our clients—happy. We can answer more calls while satisfying our SLAs with CXone.”
‘CXone opened our eyes—and changed everything’
Another organization that made the leap to CXone is ECSI, whose contact center provides important financial support services to students. Above all, ECSI knows its young, digitally savvy customers, who usually don’t want to talk to a live person and definitely don’t want to wait in a queue. The answer: a digital chat solution that was fast and easy to use for both students and the contact center. And that meant leaving its previous platform and moving to CXone.
According to ECSI’s contact center manager, the advantages of CXone were felt immediately—and have just kept coming.
“Our wait times before reflected our lack of speed and efficiency…but most problematic, we had no reporting tool to easily calculate our performance,” he said. [Now with CXone Chat] our chat team became so much more efficient that they were also able to take 18,000 phone calls—with no impact on the chat metrics! Our service levels have skyrocketed. Our chat abandon rates fell 86%--astounding. Our business has exploded, but before introducing Chat, we just couldn’t keep up because we were trying to do everything manually. CXone opened our eyes to what we could do with automation, and it’s changed everything.”
‘A no-brainer: CXone is the best’
And then there’s the contact center in a high-demand service industry that handles well over 100,000 interactions per month. The telecommunications manager says his company decided to leave its previous vendor after only three months, largely due to complicated workarounds. Moving to CXone, however, was a game-changer. “CXone’s unified interface is very simple and clean,” he said. “Navigation is easy. It’s responsive. It looks good and works well…we’re really ecstatic….You can be confident that CXone will work as intended and give you more than intended. CXone is the best contact center solution out there—it’s just a no-brainer.”
Where will it be tomorrow? Will it get you where you want to go?
Contact centers who’ve switched to CXone—and some currently contemplating making the move to the CXone cloud platform—have also been motivated by concerns surrounding the vision and leadership of providers. Companies in turmoil or without a clear vision and roadmap for helping their customers navigate critically, evolving areas such as AI and security give customers pause about where they’ll be tomorrow. Are they innovators, leading the conversation about future technology and applications—or are they too reliant on yesterday’s strategies? With technology developing so rapidly, switching contact center software encompasses way more than the software itself.
What CXone customers can expect
A solid company, innovative software products and services, a keen eye on and vision for the future—these are all a given for NICE CXone customers. But with CXone, you’re also assured of specific advantages—tangible and intangible—that many of our customers have found lacking in competitors. A few of these include:
- A truly unified CXone platform with advanced capabilities. This is a distinct advantage over others whose “integration” has resulted from multiple acquisitions.
- Self-service capabilities that merge the best of AI/bots with live agents—not replace them. Customers increasingly want to use automated self-service—as long as they still have ready access to a live person when they choose.
- Financially backed SLAs and robust security requirements. After all, even the federal government trusts our FedRAMP Authorization to Operate (ATO) compliance software.
- Support that is second to none. We’ll prove it with customized and discounted support and implementation packages.
- Attention and responsiveness to YOUR needs, regardless of the size of your organization.
Ready to make a change?
Did we mention that with CXone, you’ll have a library of resources and an extensive community of professionals, colleagues, and peers, complete with all the references you’ll ever need?
If you’re still researching, here are a few resources to help guide your journey:
- Forrester Research Total Economic ImpactTM (TEI) analysis of the CXone platform. A real-life case study of incredible contact center savings realized by reducing infrastructure upgrades and ongoing maintenance. Download it here. Be sure to estimate your own CXone return on investment (ROI) with this economic impact assessment tool.
- Insights on moving to the cloud. Hear what IT professionals say about a premises vs. cloud.
- How to build a persuasive business case. A framework to help you determine the value of, and secure funding for, investing in CX technology.
On the other hand, there’s no time like the present, as the saying goes. We’re ready to help launch the change when you are. In meantime, visit us at nice.com to learn more.