Cloud-based contact centres are on the rise. For organisations considering this shift, the transition is more than a technology upgrade - it is a fundamental rethinking of how businesses support customers and staff in a post-pandemic world.
MaxContact, a specialist provider of contact centre solutions, is riding this wave. Daniel Harding, Director of Australian Operations, shared his insights in a recent interview about the company, the sector, and what lies ahead.
MaxContact's focus is on building close relationships with customers, offering cloud contact solutions that can support anything from six to a thousand users. "We listen to our customers and build new features and improvements around them," said Harding. "After all, they use the system more than anyone else."
For IT managers unfamiliar with the company, MaxContact's key product is its hosted contact centre solution. Harding explained, "We offer a range of ways of getting in touch with customers and ways of customers getting in touch with the contact centre, whether that's outbound or inbound by various dial modes, such as preview, predictive, and progressive dialling."
The solution supports multiple channels of communication - calls, SMS, web chat, email, and virtual queueing for automated callbacks. "All the different interaction channels that you would expect nowadays from a modern business," Harding added.
MaxContact aims to make the administration of its product as simple as possible. "The product is designed to be as simple as possible to use, self-administration from an IT manager's point of view. They will be able to maintain the product and build it around what the business needs at the contact centre, rather than fitting the business around the product," he said.
An important philosophy at MaxContact is avoiding limitations. "We don't believe in limits on the product," Harding said. "From a contact centre IT manager's point of view, there's no limits - set as many dashboards or as many interactions, as many campaigns, all your core recordings… everything is included. In a sense, it's very simple for an IT manager to do whatever they like, basically."
The pandemic has accelerated cloud adoption, but what does a successful deployment look like? Harding advises organisations to keep their focus on requirements rather than flashy features. "Get a good understanding of what your actual requirements are," he said. "There's a lot of vendors out in the market. Everyone can do a range of different things, but what's key to your business? How are your customers going to get in touch with you?"
He warns against being dazzled by feature lists: "Make sure you have the correct channels for your customers, rather than all the bells and whistles. Price comes down to a key point, but it's decided on what you actually need, what on a day-to-day operational basis the contact centre is actually going to use and need."
Harding recommends shortlisting several vendors and making use of free trials or proof of concept periods. "Most vendors nowadays would offer a principle of concept - use a system for a month or two, see how it fits into your business, see if everything the sales team said to you is actually going to work," he said.
Planning is crucial - avoid major system changes during peak business periods if possible. "So, decide time of year. You don't want to do peak timing, you may want to do it at a quiet period of year. Businesses will obviously know their peaks and troughs every year; it even comes down to simple planning - what day is the best day to roll out? Is Monday morning quiet, or is it the busiest time of the week?"
Training staff is a vital step. "A vendor, for example, will come in, sit down and train different levels of the team - managers, team leaders, agents. A good way is to do a dress rehearsal with a few agents a few days before, then run it as the system would actually run," Harding explained.
He also stresses the value of ongoing engagement with your technology partner. "What features and operation-wise that you choose today may not apply in four months' time. We like to have a regular review with our customers - sit down, check how things are going, tell them about our product roadmap, what's coming in features that we think would be good for their business."
Looking to the future, the sector is changing rapidly in the wake of COVID-19. "It's a forever changing scenario, so hopefully the crystal ball is correct!" Harding quipped.
Where many rushed to remote work in 2020, a hybrid model has now emerged as the dominant trend in contact centres. "We're seeing contact centres coming back into the centre, but we're also seeing businesses allowing agents to work from home and in the contact centre," he said. "It really gives great flexibility. If they're recruiting new agents, they're not defined by the geographical region around the actual physical contact centre. You can open up the region to wherever you want in the country - even internationally if you wanted to."
Managing this flexible workforce requires new rules and tools. "You've still got to have some rules in place. It can't be a case of 'who's going to come in today and just randomly decide'," Harding cautioned. "A lot of contact centres now make use of a workforce management system. For example, we have one - contact centres can roster who's going to work what hours, on what days."
Childcare, remote working, and personal circumstances can all be taken into account, with agents able to log in and select the days or hours they can work. He also endorsed the importance of keeping teams connected: "You've actually got to have regular check-ins with the team, even though they're working remotely. People still want that human interaction."
This could take the form of morning video sessions, regular catch-ups, or using team communication platforms. As Harding put it, "Getting things like that in place is what we're seeing in the future for contact centres."
Ultimately, the message for IT managers and business leaders is clear: focus on your unique requirements, plan ahead, and do not neglect the human side of technology adoption. "We like to be personal, get to know everyone that we're involved with, so have a coffee, see what we can do, and see how we can work together to help people," Harding concluded.
