EvolveIP Reveals Contact Center Survey Results, Talks Cloud

This week in Las Vegas, EvolveIP was promoting its new study about the call center. It looked at the status of cloud-based contact center adoption and the gating factors to it, as well as other challenges around customer service.

Only 10 to 15 percent of agent seats are cloud-based today, Rich Fox, EvolveIP’s vice president, told me in an interview at Call Center Week. However, the study’s results indicate that nearly eight out of 10 of the individuals surveyed plan to evaluate a cloud solution in the future.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they plan to evaluate a move to cloud contact centers in the next year. Just over half indicated they expect to review a cloud solution 12 months or more from now. And 21.5 percent do not currently plan to look at a cloud call center at any future date.

Insufficient reporting and analytics were cited by those surveyed as the top challenges in the contact center. Improving agent productivity came in second. The survey involved participation of 168 North American call centers.

EvolveIP has been in business for a decade. It’s a pure cloud technology provider, with roots in telephony and the call center. The company’s solution supports voice and other channels and is aimed at the mid market. It also considers the fact that its solution supports both contact center and unified communications functionality as a differentiator.

The company is working to add more capabilities such as a more robust IVR, more reliable queue callback/scheduled callbacks, and post-call survey enhancements that make doing surveys faster and easier.

Many customers want cloud-based solutions, Fox said. They may think the barriers to entry are more expensive than they really are, he added. But, he said, there are companies that can make it real simple to make the leap to the cloud.