Contact center migration is the process of moving from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud-based system, including software, data and services. This shift allows businesses to deliver secure communications to remote teams with less complexity compared to traditional on-premises setups.
A cloud or virtual contact center provides cost savings, scalability and improved reliability, making it an ideal choice for businesses seeking greater efficiency and flexibility. It also supports a remote workforce, streamlining operations and customer engagement.
A successful migration requires a comprehensive plan, including executive buy-in, operational changes and staff training. Below are key steps to guide a smooth transition.
1. Circulate a Contact Center Migration BRD
As the name suggests, a business requirements document (BRD) details what is necessary for the success of the business or project. It describes the objectives and goals of the project, the desired expectations during its life cycle and the resources required to implement it.
In the case of a contact center migration, a BRD should indicate how you plan to execute the migration, as well as the expected cutover times, if you have a staged deployment plan that requires a transition period.
The BRD should describe the things your contact center already does well and how you plan to replicate and improve them once you move to the cloud. It should include key performance indicators (KPIs) that serve as a benchmark and allow stakeholders to evaluate whether the cloud migration process can be considered successful.
While it is important to share this document within the organization to gain buy-in from stakeholders and key decision makers, disseminating the BRD throughout the organization allows you to uncover the needs of different departments in terms of equipment, features and expectations.
Essentially, a BRD surfaces conflicting expectations and forces everyone to address the tradeoffs you need to make. It’s critical to start BRD early in the contact center migration process to uncover potential issues and opportunities while you have time to fix things.
Keep in mind that this step is meant to be iterative, with lots of discussion between relevant stakeholders. You will likely move on to the next steps before this document is truly finished, incorporating what you learn as you go.
2. Tailor requirements to a type of contact center solution
Before selecting specific vendors, you should take advantage of the opportunity of a contact center migration to select the best possible infrastructure for the future of your business.
UCaaS, CCaaS and CPaaS, which have become the preferred model for contact centers to implement cloud-based communications. However, they each correspond to different communication needs.
UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) is geared towards internal communications within the call center. It merges common communication methods such as live chat, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), SMS, social media, file sharing and video conferencing into a single interface or cloud platform.
SEE: Learn the most important what you need to know before signing a VoIP contract.
By unifying all of these diverse tools, UCaaS provides the simplicity and flexibility of a single solution for inbound communications. For outbound communications, UCaaS also eliminates the need for contact center agents to frequently switch between platforms.
As a centralized communications hub, UCaaS is also ideal for a dispersed and remote workforce, providing the focal point that keeps a contact center workplace integrated.
CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) is basically another name for a contact center solution which is hosted in the cloud. It includes all channels: social media, live chat, VoIP phone services, social media. CCaaS usually comes with tools to facilitate CRM integration, or even pre-built integrations with popular CRM providers.
As a hosted service, CCaaS provides secure online communications to remote workers without the complexity of large numbers of VPN users, the security concerns with on-premises security versus cloud securityor having to maintain a PBX 24/7.
Generally, CCaaS is better suited for external communications because it has the capacity to handle high volumes, both inbound and outbound. Unlike UCaaS, CCaaS is more optimized for an enhanced customer experience, while UCaaS is more adept at internal collaboration and communication.
CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) allows businesses to integrate voice, messaging and video directly into their workflows via APIs. Businesses can simply integrate these new features into an existing solution.
Therefore, integrating CPaaS capabilities into your cloud-based contact center does not require managing backend infrastructure. Unlike traditional real-time communications (RTC), CPaaS provides the development framework needed to build your own RTC features without having to do it from scratch.
CPaaS offers features such as two-factor authentication, video conferencing, interactive voice response (IVR), call center chatbots, SMS, and AI capabilities. Cloud-based contact centers may be particularly interested in CPaaS applications that can help them deliver video support.
SEE: Discover it latest IVR updates And call center chatbot examples to find out more.
Overall, the cloud offers many features to optimize contact center performance, but you should evaluate your options and select a platform that fits your organization’s goals and business needs.
3. Perform SIT and UAT
Once you have a contact center migration solution, you can begin testing to ensure you can deploy a full migration without downtime, technical issues, or security breaches.
The testing phase of a contact center migration should include some form of system integration testing (SIT) and user acceptance testing (UAT). SIT ensures that the new system integrates easily with existing software and meets technical requirements. UAT validates that the system works as expected from the end-user perspective and aligns with business needs.
The scope of testing should cover key contact center workflows, system performance, scalability and integration with other platforms like CRM systems. Stress testing, IVR testing, compliance and security checks are also essential to identify potential risks before going live.
SEE: Discover six ways to automate your call center workflow.
To avoid disrupting operations, testing is often performed in a sandbox or test environment. The goal is to make the test environment as close to a replica of the live system as possible. The idea is to test functionality without affecting overall system performance or availability.
In addition to making sure the contact center migration is technically sound, you should perform UAT to ensure the new contact center system works well for real users before its full launch.
For example, during UAT, agents can test whether it is easy to switch between customer information and communication channels. Supervisors can also check whether the reports provide them with the information they need. UAT ensures that the system is ready for daily use and will help the business run smoothly.
4. Project implementation and training
Most software implementation plans use a phased delivery strategy, ideal for reducing downtime. Plan your move with a release schedule that prioritizes the features you need most. This means migrating them first.
In this step, you may want to adopt the agile development method for deployment using quick sprints to accelerate delivery. Additionally, you may also want to deploy robotic process automation (RPA) agents to help with cross functions such as data migration. This is often better than requiring employees to perform manual data transfers due to the risk of hardware errors.
To ensure success, you need to plan an achievable timeline and train your staff to use the new cloud platform. Training is important to ensure that your call center agents will adapt and manage the new system proficiently. You need to make sure they understand the new platform and the new features that come with it before they start using it. Make sure your knowledge base has been updated so agents have a single source of truth to answer their own questions when they encounter unknown issues.
SEE: Learn how to create a knowledge base that agents will actually use.
5. Monitoring and analysis
The final step in contact center migration is to assess whether your key performance indicators are being met. This helps with two things: first, it allows you to provide feedback to management on the overall status of the migration, and second, it helps you determine if you need to make any adjustments.
In other words, you need to know whether the tactical and strategic goals you identified and proposed in your BRD at the start of the cloud migration journey are close to being achieved. Even if the objectives are achieved, there is always room for improvement. Continuing the monitoring process can therefore lead to finding new ways to optimize positive outcomes.
In addition to quantifiable statistics, feedback from staff and officers should also be part of the ongoing evaluation and re-evaluation of the new system. Although their opinions may be subjective, they are nevertheless an invaluable source of information.
