A contact center is a customer service function that handles inbound and outbound interactions with customers. By its very nature a typical contact center is "multichannel" because they handle contacts in more than one channel, which can include phone, chat, email, social media and more. This distinguishes them from call centers, which only handle phone interactions. A multichannel cloud contact center has their contact center software, such as their automatic call distributor (ACD) and interactive voice response (IVR) system, in the cloud, hosted by a vendor such as NICE .
Being in the cloud offers multichannel cloud contact centers several benefits. In hosted cloud arrangements, contact centers typically only pay for the seats they're using, which is a cost effective model for businesses with large, seasonal contact volume swings. Additionally, multichannel cloud contact centers can worry less about technology, because that is the vendor's responsibility, and focus more on their core service function. Cloud technology also enables agents to work at home, allowing multichannel cloud contact centers to tap into additional labor markets and offer their agents a nice perk, which helps reduce attrition and makes hiring a little easier.
But being a multichannel cloud contact center has its drawbacks, and they are related to the term "multichannel." Multichannel, in comparison to omnichannel, implies that the channels exist in silos, not allowing customers move across them seamlessly. For example, a customer might send an email about an issue and then, a week later, initiate a chat session to discuss that same problem with a chat agent. In a multichannel cloud contact center, the chat agent very likely won't have access to the email or even know it exists. This makes for a frustrating customer experience and causes agent inefficiencies. An omnichannel approach solves this through comprehensive integration across channels that enables the contact center to provide customers with the experience they expect.
NICE CXone is the market leading contact center software in use by thousands of customers of all sizes around the world, many of them multichannel cloud contact centers. CXone is a cloud native, unified suite of applications designed to help a company holistically run its contact center operations. CXone includes:
Omnichannel Routing – routing and interaction management that empowers agents to positively and productively interact with customers in digital and voice channels. These solutions include an automatic call distributor (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), interaction channel support and proactive outbound dialer.
Workforce Optimization – unlocks the potential of your team by inspiring employees' self-improvement, amplifying quality management efforts to enhance customer experience and reducing labor waste. These solutions include workforce management (WFM), quality management (QM), recording and performance management (PM).
Open Cloud Foundation – ideal for multichannel cloud contact centers, enables rapid innovation with an extensible enterprise-grade platform that scales securely, deploys quickly and serves customers of all sizes globally. We guarantee an industry-best 99.99% availability and offer easy customization through RESTful APIs and DEVone developer program.
CXone also includes pre-defined CRM integrations and UCaaS integrations with most leading solutions on the market. These integrations provide a holistic contact center software solution capable of elevating customer experiences for companies of all sizes.
