On-premise Vs Cloud-based Call Centers: The similarities & differences

Are you thinking of moving your call center from on-premise to cloud-based? First of all! Know all the factors of them and implement them smartly to enhance your call center business!

In this article, you will find all the information that you need to know about on-premise and cloud-based call centers, including their differences and similarities.

On-premise and Cloud-based call centers  both serve flexibility, versatility to your business. Both involve the development, advancement, and give the modern path to your plans and strategies. 

However, with these entire undeniable similarities, they are extremely different from each other. On-premise is found expensive but the cloud-based call center is cheaper.

On the other hand, an on-premise call gives undefined security from hacking and breaching but on cloud-based lack of data always takes the limelight. 

The best way to understand each one of them is to start from the beginning.

What is an on-premise Call Center?

An on-premises call center can be defined as the common telecom phone setups for businesses that use phone lines installed throughout an entire building, infrastructure including servers, and PBX phones.

Contact center infrastructure needs all the equipment to make calls and remain in the building, delivering the on-premises solution very reliable at least until there’s hardware failure.

On-premises means the safest choice, as there is a physical requirement of hardware and few chances for anyone to hack the entire system and steal data or eavesdrop on calls.

However, it can be expensive and complex to get the entire setup, and it requires an IT service team to build the infrastructure in-house and combine everything.

Pros and Cons of on-premise Call Center

On-premise prevents us from hacking. Moreover, there’s no risk of data loss, but the complexity and expenses make it less facilitated with less flexibility.

Pros of On-premise Call Center

• Overall control over the system functions
• An up-front cost that is paid off 
• Peace of mind knowing about confidential data is stored
• In-house safely and securely 
• Stressless about authenticity and security  

Cons of on-premise Call Center

• Specified hardware must be compatible with the software.
• Costly while set up the entire system
• Sudden software or hardware fails, the whole system goes down
• Maintenance is time-consuming and difficult.
• Limited support
• Not scalable

Top On-premise Call Center Software and Solutions

On-premise call center solutions and software can provide all the good service and can impress you. However, somehow that software and solutions fail to fulfill your entire requirement that is needed in real-time. 

Here are our top 5 On-premise call center software and solutions:

1.  Avaya 

Avaya is an on-premises and cloud-based developed to reduce toll-free charges for mobile charges and allow for customized communications with repeat customers.  

Avaya’s Features:

• Omnichannel support,
• mobile-specific experience, and
• Customizable desktop for users. 

Pricing: Essential: $19.95/user/month;Business: $24.95/user/month; Power: $34.95/user/month; Ultimate: $52.99/user/month.

Avaya is an innovative and productive tool that handles contacts(calls, call recording, chats, and more). No doubt it can be said as one of the responsive and good software but lack of customization, poor in call recordings quality and glitches makes it irritating

3. Atos

Atos, the on-premises software that offers on-demand solutions with agile features designed for a single site integrated into 100 cooperative agents. 

In terms of enterprise or multi-site, it supports up to 1500 concurrent agents per system and 7500 per cluster. 

Atos’s Features:

• Customizable interactive voice response,
• UCaaS integrations, 
• holds small and large versions of hosted solutions. 
• Chatbot integrations, and 
• Choice of voice platforms for the enterprise. 

Pricing:  Essential: $19.99/user/month;Standard: $22.99/user/month; Premium: $32.99/user/month; Ultimate: $42.99/user/month.

Atos Summary

Atos on-premise software can meet clients’ personal goals and gives a feeling of personal appreciation. Its time and location flexibility is at the point. However, it has some areas that need to be improved such as a sense of belonging, poor management, and temporary contracts.  

4. Hubspot

HubSpot call center software provides powerful and easy-to-use advanced automation tools and insightful reporting that helps your team consistently improve customer service. 

Hubspot’s Features:

• Shared email inbox, 
• live chat software, and
• Self-service tools.

Pricing: Support for free, Started: $45/month; Professional: $360/month; Enterprise: $1200/month.

Hubspot Summary

Hubspot is a broad product base that is simple and easy to use. Its ticketing system makes technical support and accessibility for easy device management, detailed notes, and record-keeping on account, etc. 

However, Its contact management is so reliable and allows for thousands of contacts to be maintained. Emails templates and snippets cut down on real-time for otherwise repetitive tasks.

Service provides great metrics, analytics, and reporting tools, but needs more improvement and more configuration options for reporting. Alike with automation, it could be improved and allow the creation of macros, greater integration with databases. 

Hubspot is clunky and avoidable at Email/Conversation functions which end up with conventional email processing systems. 

5. Acefone

Acefone is an on-premises solution providing a package of call center services along with PBX services. It is one of the considered solutions for all kinds of business. It runs with 256-bit encryption that is collided with over 200 services.

It also guarantees 99.99% uptime with its PBX services along with cloud-based due to today’s demand.

Acefone’s Features: 

• With offering almost 200 different services, Acetone features services like
• VoIP phone systems
• Toll-free numbers
• Easy Deployment
• Call Analytics
• Detailed report
• And, many more…

Pricing: Has free trial; Basic:$9.99/user/month;Business: $13.23 /user/month;Premium: $17.99/user/month.

Acetone Summary

It provides 24x 7 support, an all-in-one admin portal, HD audio, or reliable, personalized remote solutions built in the aspect of every client’s benefits. It’s convenient and automates the business communication quality makes it one of the recommended solutions among clients.

However, it’s a cloud-based system due to the demands of today’s digital world makes the software in a dilemma, and it is confusing to select between PBX on-premise and cloud-based solutions.

What is a Cloud-based Call Center?

Cloud-based call center technology is the total reverse of an on-premise. A cloud-based call center is free of heavy investment in the physical infrastructure. 

It requires good quality and strong internet access bandwidth for a virtual agent to control inbound and outbound calls. 

However, cloud center providers establish, manage, and secure regulated telephony platform offerings on their servers, with customers getting exclusive access through the internet on a subscription or as-demand basis. 

According to the Forrester Inc. reports, Cloud-based call center service has exponentially grown from $17 billion in 2009 to $208 billion during 2019. Cloud-based call centers have been growing at an accelerating rate, remarkably in the last five years. 

Many organizations have valued on-premise framework as the best option for their applications; however, the situations and scenarios made most businesses push towards off-premise (Cloud-based and colocation) opportunities.

Pros and Cons of Cloud-Based Call Center

Cloud-based call centers have attracted from small organizations to large organizations with no capital investment upfront. However, the risk of data loss and hacking is the worst situation that any organization can ever face. 

So, here are some of the pros and cons of cloud call centers.

Pros of Cloud-based Call Center

• Improve return on investment(ROI)
• Less expensive 
• Better customer encounters
• Advanced features and capabilities
• Scalability and Flexibility
• Call Center Management 
• Efficiency and effective
• Free Upgrades

Cons of Cloud-based Call Center

• Data loss
• Hacking 
• Dependency on bandwidth
• Costly in terms of upgrade

Top Cloud-based call center software and solutions

Cloud-based call center software solutions make the entire infrastructure free of a complex setup and rid the workplace of stressful wire failure or hiring IT experts to fix an error.  

Here are some of our top 5 cloud-based call center software and solutions to improvise your call management. 

1. KrispCall

KrispCall is virtual cloud call center software that helps anyone manage their personal, cooperative, or business telephony needs from a single app. 

KrispCall meets all your needs with fast service, affordability, scalability and is suitable for different types of business. Krispcall is best known for improving the efficiency of your business, increasing productivity, and automating with analysis of workflow at ease. 

KrispCall’s Features

From improving your efficiency and productivity, we will be with you at every point. Let you serve with KrispCall’s Cloud Phone, Phone Numbers, or Click to Call Widget.

Some of the other features of KrispCall:

• Sales Dialer
• Sales Automation
• CRM Phone System 
• Capture Leads on Website
• Sales Call from Website

Moreover, KrispCall serves with their different customer services including 

Workplace: Get the feature package dashboard that easy-to-use contacts and conversations in real-time in the workplace service. 

Team: krispCall’s team service lets you invite your contact and create your team, which can help assign the numbers, schedule meetings with them, and monitor them. 

International Numbers: KrispCall connects your business, increases you as a cloud call extension, and earns the trust of your worldwide clients without interruption of telecom and worry of cost.

Business Hours: Krispcall provides an opportunity to define your business hours to get more profit, ROI and let the target audience know your presence. 

Call Recording: Get served with the service of recording the calls from your clients, hear about their requirements & feedbacks and get the point-to-point delivery of their requirements.

Internal Call/ Extensions: Get connected with your team easily through their names instead of remembering and searching the number on your phone and extensions. 

Toll-Free Numbers: Be global with KrispCall’s toll-free numbers at no expense.

Krispcall Pricing

Essential: $15 monthly/user; Standard: $40 monthly/user; Enterprise: Customized solution.   

Krispcall is ideal for

KrispCall is one the simple, easy-to-use, user friendly at affordable price. Its unique features of call recording, easy internal call/extensions to receive, and answers, the international number makes it separate from the crowd.

Well, we can say it is a package of your satisfaction and happiness for your call center business.

2. Cloud Talk

The innovative cloud-based call center software allows users a quality of unique features to work with. 

Cloud talk‘s Features 

• Voicemail,
• Finding the status of your team members unavailable,
• Clients can leave voicemails, leave a message that agents can respond to later.

Pricing: Starter: $20/user/month; Essential: $25/user/month; Expert/Custom: $40/user/month

3. Ring Central

RingCentral is on-premise software that deeply integrates market-leading workplace workforce optimization and has pre-built blends with market-leading CRM. With the UC platform, you’ll have access to high-quality, low-cost telephony and agent collaboration.

Ring Central’s Features:

• Workforce Management, 
• Quality Management, 
• Performance Management, and analytics,
• Salesforce, 
• Microsoft Dynamics, 
• ServiceNow with AI, and 
• Self-service. 

RingCentral Pricing

Support for free, Started: $10.64/user/month; Standard:$19.96/user/month; Premium:26.61/user/month;Ultimate: 33.27/user/month.

RingCentral is ideal for

Ring central is one of the recognized and with some standard support email/help desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge base, phone support,24/7(Live Rep), and chat. However, it is left when it comes to deployment.

It doesn’t have a support deployment service for Desktop Linux, Desktop-Chromebook, On-premise Windows, and On-premise Linux.

However, lack of device support, not being flexible at all customers types, and need enhancements in the analytics and reporting.

4. Nextiva

Nextiva is an easy-to-use on-premise solution that connects users with more callers in a short time and with fewer agents.

Nextiva Features:

• IVR,
• Automatic call routing,
• Call queuing,
• Optimizing agent call flow,
• Leveraging virtual agents to automatic interactions, and
• Streamlining the experience for the caller.

Pricing: Essential: $18.95/user/month; Professional: $22.95/user/moth;Enterprise: $32.95/user/month; Ultimate:$57.95/user/month

Nextiva Summary
Nextiva provides an easy-to-navigate, user-friendly mobile app, and free high-quality desk phones are a bonus. Overall it never gives any trouble to a user.

But, like everything has pros and cons, Nextiva also needs some serious improvement. The user finds no voicemail transcription, difficult to change call trees, does not work for the iOS app on iPhone or iPad, video conferencing is complicated, and sometimes software clutters with team features.

5. Zendesk

Zendesk is one of the most extensive and approachable cloud-based call center solutions. It is also award-winning customer service software that has provided a well-good experience to its customers. 

It’s embedded in the ticketing system, making customers happy through text, mobile, phone, email, live chat, social media makes one of the best solutions in the call center business. 

Zendesk is easy to use with ticket opening capabilities and can be customizable. It sends personal alerts to your emails if a ticket is about to breach SLA and its GUI gives a hit of user-friendly, clean, and organized manner.  

Furthermore, Zendesk is quite expensive, can’t track down the progress of the ticket easily, and not very good support. 

Zendesk’s Features

• Automatic ticket creation, 
• Desk features that can help customers across every channel with the benefits of Zendesk’s slick.

Pricing: Suite Team: $49/user/month; Suite Growth: $79/user/month;Suite Professional:$99/user/month.

Similarities On Cloud Vs. On-premise call center 

While both cloud-based and on-premise call centers are not essentially different, there are some similarities between on-premise and cloud-based call centers, making them significant in several respects. 

Here, we put down their similarities:

Efficiency 

On-premise call centers and cloud-based both give efficiency to enhance the business performance. It lets the agent work effectively, making him/her give the answers they were seeking for. 

Call Management

Both do well when it comes to calling management. On-premise and cloud-based give the environment where users don’t find interruption during the client-agent interaction. 

Skills

On-premise and cloud-based call centers need some basic skills to interface with their clients which helps businesses to get satisfied and leave clients happier. 

Reliability 

The scalability and reliability are the highest priority for both on-premise and cloud-based. Making a user-friendly environment has led them to attract more users and make ROI.

Infastructure Control

On-premise and Cloud-based provide customizable themes, requirement fulfillment led users to control the infrastructure. The easy-to-use, easy to navigate and find software accessible is beneficial for anyone and also for business.

On-premise Vs. Cloud-Based Call Center: Differences

Businesses must analyze each section and possible work on over cost, security, business continuity, performance, governance, and data supremacy. 

The following comparison chart sums up the overall differences in on-premises call centers vs. cloud-based call centers.

How to decide between On-premise and Cloud-based call centers for call outsourcing business?

Businesses are moving towards cloud-based, but on-premise is also a not-out player of the ground! Every business has different requirements and needs that will affect the choice of the deployment strategy.

However, your answers can lie in the following questions:

• Can you and your business afford the upfront investment required in an on-premise solution?
• Do you have the tools and equipment to ensure the highest level of security?
• Is it important for your business to have access to the latest functionality and compatibility?
• What benefits will you get after investing in cloud-based or on-premises solutions?
• Will it fulfill your call center’s demands that help you compete?

If you are still unsure whether your business needs a cloud-based system or go with an on-premise solution. In that case, you need to think about marketing, talk to experts like KrispCall.

On-Premise Vs Cloud-Based Call Center: And the Best is…

Cloud and on-premise-based contact centers are efficient, effective, and have good policies. They also help your business to be managed, insightful and skillful.

However, the craze of the on-premise call center every year has been shown down on the graph.

Business is moving to a cloud-based solution rather than on-premises. One of the reasons is that the cloud-based solution doesn’t need any physical setup and can be accessible to authorized people anywhere, eliminating the bother of maintaining and updating systems.

Cloud-based benefits save time, cost, and resources into managing every core business strategy.

KrispCall is a cloud-based service that has now caught the world with factors such as its cost, business continuity, and scalability. You only need to expense your pennies on an internet connection.

Moreover, KrispCall cloud technology helps businesses use the solution with time or resources handling installation, setup, and incorporation with your digital framework. Try Schedule Free KrispCall demo now, to know how it helps to modernize your call center business.

But, it also depends on your mind map, practical peace of mind, operability, and strategy when you are one of them for your better enhancement of the business; after all, both are fundamentally different but share many similarities.