If you’re a small call center looking to expand your business, you might have heard about CCaaS, or Contact Center as a Service. Depending on how fast you’re scaling, this can be the call center solution you need to invest in. But what does CCaaS mean, and how can you seamlessly integrate one?
We’ll review the key features you should know before purchasing a CCaaS, the benefits, and what you should prioritize when making a decision.
At Hooked CRM, we have created a VoIP dialer with a CRM and an AI assistant, which takes care of all the busywork for you. Book a demo with us to see how our CRM can upgrade your call center.
What is CCaaS?
CCaaS stands for “Contact Center as a Service”. Typically, CCaaS refers to a cloud-based management system that facilitates customer interactions. Call teams have moved to a CCaaS format because it is a flexible system that scales with your team, offering ample growth potential.
No matter your company’s size, we urge you to invest in CCaaS to enhance your customer journey. Small businesses can use CCaaS to scale up, while larger businesses can use it to organize and adjust their customer interactions.
How Does CCaaS Work?
CCaaS uses the internet to log interactions between you and your customers, instead of manually tracking them. Depending on the CCaaS software you use, it can track phone calls, emails, SMS, in-person conversations, social media, and more. With each integration, a more comprehensive view of your customer relationships and how to improve your process is revealed.
Once it has gathered all the information, it will provide you with analytics on the individual customer, along with the next steps to ensure customer satisfaction. This makes CCaaS essential for your workforce engagement management.
Key Features of a CCaaS Provider
Before you purchase a CCaaS provider, here are just a few key features you must consider to see which ones will create the most impact on your business:
| Feature | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Omnichannel Routing | With omnichannel routing, information from social media, email, SMS, phone calls, and other customer conversations is recorded. Depending on your company, you’ll want information coming from multiple channels to get a comprehensive view of your client. |
| Call Recording | An essential element of call center success, your CCaaS should record all your calls to ensure you aren’t missing any vital information. If your CCaaS doesn’t keep a record of your calls (by transcription or audio recording), you will want to switch to one that satisfies your needs. |
| Analytics | Once it has all the information, your CCaaS must keep track of all the analytics you’re looking to track. Whether that is call length or ROI success, your CCaaS needs to be customized to show you exactly what you need to know. It’s a bonus if your CCaaS can provide any analysis based on the data it pulls. |
| CRM Integration | A customer relationship management system (CRM) is a series of tools that analyzes your customer interactions. It offers suggestions based on your calls and your goals, so when you’re looking for a good CCaaS provider, you should find one that can integrate with your current CRM. |
| AI Tools | Today, if your company isn’t using AI tools, you’re behind the competition. Your CCaaS should have AI integration within its system. With an AI virtual assistant, tedious tasks that would’ve taken hours or days now can take minutes. Before you purchase your CCaaS, you should always make sure its AI assistants can reorient your workflow to become more efficient. |
Benefits of CCaaS
If you’re on the fence, there are plenty of CCaaS benefits you should consider. Especially if you are a smaller business ready to increase your workload, the benefits of CCaaS should be something you consider as you make the switch. Here are just a few of the benefits we’ve seen:
- Flexibility: Because programs are run through the internet, employees can work from wherever they have an internet connection. Most programs adjust their prices based on your company's size and needs, giving you the flexibility to change as needed.
- Cost-Effective: With a CCaaS provider, you can lower your in-person office costs since systems are run online. Plus, with the built-in flexibility, you can always adjust your plan and match your team’s size.
- Better Customer Tracking: With a CCaaS, access to your customer journey is more visible, which allows you to care for your customers more efficiently. Decent CCaaS platforms have a complete overview of your process and record it for your review.
- Easier Agent Process: With a simple CCaaS process, your agents will have a much easier time understanding their customers. It also eliminates the need for a lengthy call center training process since your agents can pick up workflows more easily.
- AI Automation: Most CCaaS providers have implemented some AI integration. With an AI assistant, your agents can automate lengthy (and often tedious) processes, ask questions, and generate reports with simple instructions.
How to Choose a CCaaS Provider
Choosing a CCaaS platform is an important decision that should be made based on your company’s needs. Certain CCaaS platforms specialize in specific features or industries, so we recommend doing your research and determining which features are a priority for your company vs ones that you can live without.
In our opinion, you should make your decision based on three different factors: the kind of calls you’re making, the AI capabilities you think would be useful for your company, and integration with your current CRM.
Inbound vs. Outbound Call Focus
Determining the types of calls your company receives will greatly impact the CCaaS platform you will use in the future. Most CCaaS platforms will claim to specialize in every type of call. However, most of them lean towards one or the other, even if they can do both.
If your leads are coming to your office, you should find a CCaaS solution that can handle high call volumes. However, if you are focused on outbound calling, you’ll need a CCaaS that provides dialer functionality built for efficiency.
AI Capabilities
Every CCaaS system today has AI tools used to enhance your workflow. Each tool is crafted to expedite tedious tasks, but you should review your company’s needs to determine which AI can handle.
Here are just a few of the AI assistant tools you should consider:
- Transcription: A complete transcription of the call and interactions that you are involved in. AI can record all of these conversations for you without human error.
- Live AI Assistance: Throughout a call, AI assistants can provide actionable suggestions to facilitate your conversations.
- AI Reporting: Using your interactions and ROI metrics, AI can create reports to evaluate your performance.
- Automation: Throughout your call, your AI should analyze call data, upload it to your CRM, automatically fill out forms, and generate calendar events.
CRM Integration
Your CCaaS shouldn’t get in the way of your current CRM. If it doesn’t already integrate with your current system or provide a dedicated CRM with easy migration, it would be worth considering a different CCaaS for your company.
Your CCaaS solution should work seamlessly with your CRM and provide you with all the customer insights from the CCaaS data. This ensures that your next steps are clear.
How Hooked Works as Your CCaaS Software
Hooked CRM was built with simplicity in mind. In our experience in insurance sales, we saw our agents moving from screen to screen, scrambling to fill out forms and find information for the client. It was an incredibly tedious experience that didn’t serve the customer and frustrated the call representatives.
That’s why we created Hooked CRM. No longer will your agents have to switch between different monitors — everything is in one convenient place. Hooked keeps track of all your calls by offering native phone recording, and, with our series of AI tools, Tacklebox AI, you can receive real-time insights, call summaries, and accurate reporting.
Hooked was made with your company in mind, and we are so excited to share it with you. If you’re interested in how Hooked can help you, book a demo with us today, and we’ll walk you through our program and its many features.
