5 Steps to Every Successful Contact Center Migration Plan

Contact middle migration is the method of transferring from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud-based system, together with software program, information and providers. This change permits firms to supply safe communications for distant groups with much less complexity than conventional on-premises setups.

A cloud or digital contact middle affords price financial savings, scalability, and higher reliability, making it a great selection for companies looking for improved effectivity and suppleness. It additionally helps a distant workforce, streamlining operations and buyer engagement.

A profitable migration requires a complete plan, together with administration involvement, operational adjustments and workers coaching. Below are the important thing steps to facilitate a easy transition.

1. Deploy a contact middle migration BRD

As the title suggests, a enterprise necessities doc (BRD) particulars what is required for the enterprise or venture to succeed. It outlines the targets and goals of the venture, the specified expectations throughout its life cycle, and the sources wanted to implement it.

In the case of a contact middle migration, a BRD ought to define how you propose to carry out the migration, together with anticipated transition timelines, when you’ve got a staggered implementation plan that requires a transition interval.

The BRD ought to define the issues your contact middle already does nicely and the way you propose to copy and enhance them when you migrate to the cloud. It ought to embrace key efficiency indicators (KPIs) that function benchmarks and permit stakeholders to guage whether or not the cloud migration course of might be thought-about a hit.

While it is very important share this doc throughout the group to achieve buy-in from stakeholders and key determination makers, disseminating the BRD throughout the group helps uncover the wants of assorted departments when it comes to tools, performance and expectations .

In essence, a BRD brings out conflicting expectations and forces everybody to face the trade-offs that should be made. Starting BRD early within the contact middle migration course of is crucial to uncover potential issues and alternatives when you have time to course-correct.

Keep in thoughts that this step is supposed to be iterative, with a number of communication backwards and forwards between related stakeholders. You will possible transfer on to the subsequent steps earlier than this doc is actually accomplished, incorporating what you study as you go.

2. Match the necessities to a kind of contact middle answer

Before figuring out particular distributors, you need to use the chance of a contact middle migration to pick the absolute best infrastructure to your firm’s future.

UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS, which have emerged as the popular mannequin for contact facilities to implement cloud-based communications. However, every of them addresses completely different communication wants.

UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) is unbalanced in direction of inner communications within the name middle. It combines generally used communication strategies resembling dwell chat, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), SMS, social media, file sharing, and video conferencing right into a single interface or cloud-based platform.

SEE: Find out crucial issues it’s essential to know earlier than signing a VoIP contract.

By unifying all these completely different instruments, UCaaS affords the simplicity and suppleness of a single answer for inbound communications. For outbound communications, UCaaS additionally eliminates the necessity for contact middle brokers to incessantly change between platforms.

As a centralized communications hub, UCaaS can be best for a dispersed and distant workforce, offering the focus that retains a contact middle office built-in.

CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) is principally one other title for a contact middle answer hosted within the cloud. It contains all channels: social media, dwell chat, VoIP cellphone providers, social media. CCaaS often comes with instruments to facilitate CRM integration, if not out-of-the-box integrations with fashionable CRM distributors.

As a hosted service, CCaaS affords safe on-line communications for distant employees with out the complexity of huge numbers of VPN customers, safety issues with on-premise versus cloud safety, or the necessity to keep a PBX across the clock, 7 days every week.

Typically, CCaaS is finest fitted to exterior communications as a result of it has the capability for top volumes, each inbound and outbound. Unlike UCaaS, CCaaS is extra optimized for higher buyer expertise, whereas UCaaS is best fitted to collaboration and inner communication.

CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) permits firms to combine voice, messaging and video straight into their workflows through API. Companies can merely incorporate these new options into an present answer.

As a outcome, integrating CPaaS capabilities into your cloud-based contact middle does not require managing any back-end infrastructure. Unlike conventional real-time communications (RTC), CPaaS offers the event framework to construct your personal RTC capabilities with out having to do it from scratch.

CPaaS affords options resembling two-factor authentication, video conferencing, interactive voice response (IVR), name middle chatbots, SMS, and AI capabilities. Cloud-based contact facilities could also be significantly fascinated about CPaaS purposes that may assist them supply a video-enabled assist desk.

SEE: Check out the newest IVR updates and name middle chatbot examples to study extra.

Overall, the cloud affords many options to optimize contact middle efficiency, however it’s essential to consider your choices and choose a platform that aligns together with your group’s enterprise targets and desires.

3. Conduct SIT and UAT

Once you’ve a contact middle migration answer, you’ll be able to start testing to make sure you can implement a whole migration with out downtime, technical points, or safety disruptions.

The testing part of a contact middle migration ought to embrace some type of System Integration Testing (SIT) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT). SIT focuses on making certain that the brand new system integrates seamlessly with present software program and meets technical necessities. The UAT verifies that the system works as meant from the end-user perspective and is aligned with enterprise wants.

The scope of testing ought to cowl key contact middle workflows, system efficiency, scalability and integration with different platforms resembling CRM programs. Stress testing, IVR testing, compliance and safety checks are additionally important to establish potential dangers earlier than going dwell.

SEE: Discover six methods to automate your name middle workflow.

To keep away from disruptions to operations, assessments are sometimes carried out in a sandbox or staging surroundings. The purpose is to make the staging surroundings as shut as doable to a reproduction of the dwell system. The concept is that options are examined with out affecting the general efficiency or uptime of the system.

In addition to creating certain the contact middle migration is technically sound, you need to conduct UAT to make sure the brand new contact middle system works nicely for actual customers earlier than the complete launch.

For instance, throughout UAT, brokers might test whether or not it’s simple to maneuver from buyer info to communication channels. Supervisors might additionally test whether or not the reviews present them with the knowledge they want. UAT ensures that the system is prepared for day by day use and can assist the enterprise run easily.

4. Project implementation and coaching

Most software implementation plans use a phased supply technique, best for decreasing downtime. Plan your transfer with a launch timeline that prioritizes the options you want most. This means migrating them first.

In this step, it’s possible you’ll wish to undertake the agile development method for deployment utilizing speedy sprints to speed up supply. Additionally, you may additionally wish to deploy robotic process automation (RPA) brokers to help in cross-functions resembling information migration. This is usually higher than asking staff to carry out handbook information transfers because of the danger of clerical errors.

To guarantee success, you need to plan an achievable timeline and prepare your workers to make use of the brand new cloud platform. Training is essential to make sure name middle brokers adapt to and function the brand new system competently. You ought to be certain that they perceive the brand new platform and the brand new options that include it earlier than they begin utilizing it. Make certain your information base has been up to date so brokers have a single supply of reality to reply their questions after they encounter unfamiliar issues.

SEE: Learn the best way to create a information base that brokers will really use.

5. Monitoring and evaluation

The ultimate step of contact middle migration is to guage whether or not key efficiency indicators are being achieved. This helps in two methods: first, it lets you present suggestions to administration on the general standing of the migration, and second, it helps you perceive whether or not any adjustments should be made.

In different phrases, it’s essential to know whether or not the tactical and strategic targets you recognized and proposed in your BRD at the start of your cloud migration journey are on monitor to be achieved. Even with targets achieved, there may be all the time room for enchancment, so persevering with the monitoring course of can result in discovering new methods to optimize optimistic outcomes.

In addition to quantifiable statistics, suggestions from workers and brokers also needs to be a part of the continuing analysis and reevaluation of the brand new system. While their opinions could also be subjective, they nonetheless present a beneficial supply of data.