The first step towards picking the right call center solution is knowing your options. Below are the two most common types of call center offerings. This article will highlight their respective strengths and weaknesses in an effort to help you choose between them. Let’s take a look:
On Premise Call Center
This configuration means that your call center’s communication hardware, software, and infrastructure all remain in your offices. The dedicated communication servers can take different forms, PBX or IP PBX. Your team takes care of installation, maintenance, and upkeep in every regard. Everything from your servers to headsets to integration support is controlled internally.
Cloud-based Call Center
Cloud-based call center solutions are, unsurprisingly, hosted in the cloud by a business phone service provider. Users access the service through the cloud either through a SIP phone, software client and/or mobile device. This solution relies on internet access with sufficient bandwidth to comfortably accommodate all users. The call center’s data is hosted on the cloud, and the corresponding servers either belong to the service provider, or to a third party.
Call Center Difference Details
Initial Setup
On Premise: The implementation of an onsite call center can take several months. Buying the necessary hardware, figuring out licensing, setting up the infrastructure, and finding compatible software is no easy task.
Cloud: Setting up cloud-based call center is usually no more difficult that installing a phone to your LAN. It will function right out of the box, no assembly required.
Costs
On Premise: The cost of an onsite call center can be prohibitively high. You need to purchase hardware (servers, headsets or phone, computers, etc.), licensing, and make the necessary arrangements to your office space to accommodate it all.
Important! Moreover, you must bear in mind the recurring costs of operation. On average, onsite installations must be replaced every five to seven years, due to the hardware aging and the software becoming obsolete. This means heavy fees recurring in the very long run.
Cloud: Cloud-based systems function with a minimal investment in hardware or infrastructure, except for a business class internet connection. This is the only preparatory expense for which to plan, since without decent bandwidth, your call center won’t operate properly. As for ongoing costs, users are billed on a monthly subscription basis. This means costs recurring with more frequency, but they won’t be as high.
NOTE: In short, switching to cloud-based call center solution means shifting from capital expenditure to operation expenditure: a shorter billing cycle, but lowered costs.
Reliability
On Premise: Many businesses are adamant that an onsite call center is the best way to avoid latency or shaky call quality. It’s true that the technology is older and more stable. However, relying on physical hardware can be a weakness in of itself.
Cloud: Most of the reliability and call quality problems attributed to VoIP aren’t due to failings of the technology itself, but rather to a weak internet connection. Without sufficient bandwidth, packets will get lost, calls will be dropped, and the call quality will suffer. The solution is making sure that your internet link can comfortably support your activity.
Features
On Premise: The features available are the ones all call centers expect and use daily: transfers, hold, waiting music, conferences, call logging, reporting, etc. There is no lack of functionalities with an on premise call center if budget is unlimited.
Cloud: Today’s cloud call center solutions offer many, if not all, the same feature set but with more flexibility and less expense typically.
Integrations
On Premise: Integrating your on premises call center software with other services is possible, but it can be a nightmare of licensing and installation. You will have to rely heavily on your IT team, and the implementation can take a long time.
Cloud: Service providers of cloud-based call center solutions specifically make their product integrate with other services to enhance your customer support and sales. You can easily integrate your CRM system, call script generators, helpdesk tickets, survey templates, and much more with your phone software. This makes for a seamless, intuitive experience for your agents and therefore, a higher quality of support for your customers.
Collaboration & Productivity
On Premise: Every call center software model is capable of empowering your agents work as a team.
Cloud: Agents work with a single, integrated dashboard, which increases productivity and the amount of fielded calls. With the enhanced call monitoring afforded to managers by cloud-based technology, they can jump in to help agents with more ease. Likewise, empowered agents are more likely to seek assistance. Virtual call center software also favors reduced agent turnover. Given the costly and time-consuming process of agent recruitment and training, this is huge.
Note: Cloud-based call center software can help your business retain its employees and become more customer-central, by involving your entire team in customer success.
IT Staff Reliance & Redundancy
On Premise: An onsite installation relies heavily on its IT team for hardware maintenance, software updates, and general upkeep. The complexity of this setup means having to pay for a qualified team in the absence of which, your business would find itself vulnerable. Implementing data backups and redundancy is complex, and can be expensive if you are setting everything up on site. Downtime is very costly to your business, so mitigating its impact is a great concern. You’ll need space to store large, expensive equipment and stringent redundancy procedures.
Cloud: Delegating the maintenance of your installation to a cloud provider eliminates stress. First, you no longer need to employ a full-time IT team. Since the servers your business uses to operate belongs to a third party, they will take care of the upkeep. These providers handle a huge volume of data.
Important! Therefore, they must deliver a higher quality of redundancy protection and disaster recovery. Downtime is less frequent for a cloud-based setup. Many providers boast a 99%+ percentage of up-time on their service level agreements upon signing up. As an added bonus, many times you can use their services to back up not just your communications data, but your whole business’ operating systems, patches, programs, and more.
Security and Privacy
On Premise: While onsite installations have an advantage here they don’t rule supreme. Surprisingly, an overwhelming amount of data breaches are due to human error or intentional malice, which your business is more susceptible to with an onsite infrastructure.
Cloud: Because many people have misconceptions of the cloud, a bad reputation for compromising data security is percieved. However, that is not the case. Cloud providers make it their business to stay ahead of security threats. Much of their downtime redundancy safeguards are superior to what an onsite IT team can provide, so are their security measures.
Cloud computing boosts your security in a way that you will never be able to afford, because of the economies of scale. Due to the volume of data which they handle, cloud providers are able be more vigilant and efficient than a small IT team.
Hopefully this comparison of on premise vs. cloud-based call center solutions was able to highlight the merits and limitations of both solutions.
The important part of setting up your call center is picking the solution which best suits your needs and activity. Contact a reputable adviser that can help you chose a viable and specific solution for your company needs. It could save you thousands in the log run.
