A hosted contact center solution offers businesses a cost-effective way to manage customer interactions without the need for on-site infrastructure. Hosted solutions are delivered by third-party vendors who own and maintain the servers, allowing companies to scale operations with ease — and without the hefty upfront investment of on-premises deployments.
Fully cloud-based contact centers, commonly referred to as Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), allow businesses to operate entirely in the cloud, integrating voice, chat, email, and other channels through a centralized platform.
Implementing a hosted contact center solution can often be faster than setting up an on-premises system, with some companies going live in just a few weeks. However, the timeline can vary based on the complexity of your needs and any required integrations. For businesses weighing their options, here are five signs that a hosted contact center might be the ideal choice.
If a sizable part of your workforce is working remotely — either in hybrid settings or working entirely from home — that’s a clear signal that you should make accessing the contact center as easy as checking email on a mobile device.
As they are hosted in the cloud, virtual contact centers are very friendly for teams with remote agents because employees can access the center from almost anywhere in the world. When it’s time to work, agents can sign in from their devices through a secure connection, as this is how most popular hosted contact center solutions operate.
SEE: Discover whether or not virtual contact centers are viable for busy companies.Â
Contrast this setup to on-prem contact centers, which often require a virtual private network (VPN) and some additional credentials to sign in securely. VPNs are great tools for people who want to work from home and abroad, but they are also vulnerable to certain attacks and exceedingly difficult to manage at scale.
Hosted centers aren’t 100% foolproof either, but they don’t require the use of a VPN to connect to your workplace, so they aren’t privy to VPN-specific vulnerabilities, exploits, and attacks.
More importantly, with a hosted contact center, your team is not on the hook for remote work security — at least not to the same extent as when you manage the contact center in-house. Yes, you need to make sure that people use strong passwords and such, but it’s the vendor’s responsibility to maintain security as soon as agents sign into the contact center.
Hosted solutions are built to handle multichannel and omnichannel contact center integration seamlessly because they operate entirely in the cloud, allowing easy access to all communication channels from a single platform. Unlike on-prem systems, which may require separate infrastructure for each channel, hosted solutions consolidate everything within one unified interface.
With a hosted contact center, vendors can integrate new channels quickly, remotely, and without the need for physical hardware upgrades. This makes it easier for businesses to adapt to customer preferences and scale with demand. The result is a streamlined, cohesive system that keeps agents, managers, and customers connected across every channel.
In contrast, on-premises or hybrid solutions often require separate systems for each channel, which can create data silos and limit visibility. This can lead to fragmented insights, as tracking performance metrics or customer interactions across multiple systems is both time-consuming and prone to error.
All things being equal, it’s going to be much easier to improve contact center CX when every channel is integrated to begin with.
If your business has limited IT resources, a hosted contact center can be the ideal choice. Hosted solutions are managed by third-party providers who handle everything from infrastructure maintenance to patch management, relieving your team of the complex, time-consuming tasks that come with an on-premises system.
Remember, keeping a contact center available and secure is a 24/7 job. There’s a lot that can be automated, but the infrastructure required to sustain contact center operations is not trivial, and it requires ongoing maintenance.
With a hosted contact center solution, you won’t need to invest in or maintain expensive servers, nor will you need specialized IT staff to manage software, hardware, or security protocols. Instead, your team can rely on the expertise of the provider to ensure the system is always secure, up-to-date, and optimized to meet a clear Service-Level Agreement (SLA).
Additionally, hosted contact centers offer easy scalability, allowing you to add or adjust channels as needed without needing on-site technical work. For businesses without a dedicated IT department, this flexibility and managed support make a hosted contact center the most practical and cost-effective solution for maintaining a high-quality, multichannel customer experience.
High call volumes can create bottlenecks that lead to frustrated customers and burned out agents. A hosted contact center provides unique solutions to manage these challenges more effectively than on-prem or hybrid solutions.
SEE: Learn about the most common reasons for call center burnout.Â
One of the key challenges in call volume management is handling sudden spikes in demand — whether due to seasonal fluctuations, marketing campaigns, or unexpected events. Hosted contact center solutions make it easy to scale capacity quickly, allowing you to add agents or channels without the costly downtime and delays associated with hardware upgrades in an on-prem system.
It’s also easier to distribute interactions across various digital channels, such as chat, SMS, and social media — the vendor is responsible for ensuring that all of these channels have seamless handoffs and that all customer data is tracked in a centralized location. With other deployments, your IT team will be responsible for harmonizing, maintaining, and troubleshooting each element of your tech stack.
Another common issue is optimizing agent efficiency across channels. In a traditional setup, agents may need to switch between multiple systems to respond to customer inquiries on different channels, leading to slower response times and higher average handle times. Declines in these vital call center metrics will only increase the severity of any call volume issues.
Hosted solutions offer a unified platform where agents can manage all channels within a single interface. This creates a smoother experience for customers, reduces the time agents spend navigating between tools, and gives admins opportunities to automate agent workflows.
If the costs of running an on-premises system no longer align with your budget or business goals, a hosted contact center may offer a viable alternative.
Establishing and maintaining an on-premises contact center involves significant upfront investment, extensive planning, and ongoing operational costs. Purchasing hardware, managing software updates, and staffing IT roles can cause expenses to spiral out of control over time. And this problem gets worse if the system doesn’t scale efficiently with your business needs.
With a hosted contact center, all of those onerous responsibilities and big-ticket expenses are off your plate. For the right company, this can save a boatload of money and stress.
Don’t get me wrong. You will still have to pay good money for a hosted contact center.
Most providers charge on a subscription basis, either monthly or annually, which can be more predictable than the variable costs of maintaining on-prem infrastructure — but it’s hardly cheap. Per-agent, you are likely to be paying $50-$80 per month, and it could be much more. Some hosted solutions do offer flexible pricing models, such as pay-per-user or pay-per-hour plans, which can help businesses adjust costs based on usage.
For businesses managing large volumes of interactions or requiring advanced features, a hosted contact center solution can offer value through integrated tools, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, and remote work capabilities — all of which can lead to increased operational efficiency and decreased costs.
At the end of the day, there is no cheap way to stand up a contact center. However, hosted solutions offer some unique advantages that may be able to save businesses money and a ton of IT headaches.
