How to Clean Your CX Data When Moving to the Cloud

Without regular maintenance, your contact center’s back-end software can pile up, causing a drop in performance and even larger issues down the line. Even more concerning, if you are planning a move to the cloud, you want to avoid carrying legacy problems and dirty data with you. 

As we think about the ever-changing customer, I joined in a conversation with two larger than life characters I’ve learned a lot from in my days here at Five9: McGee-Smith Analytics President & Principal Analyst Sheila McGee-Smith, and Blackchair CEO & Co-Founder Jason Owen, for an engaging, energetic conversation where they share their tips for keeping your CX software clean and adaptable for future challenges.  

The conversation focused around why companies make the jump to switch from legacy systems to the cloud, how to personalize your company’s transformation process, and why and how to clean up your CX Solution for success. 
 

What to Consider When Moving to the Cloud 

Did you know about 70% of companies still use on-premises CX despite the major advantages of moving to the cloud? This is a staggering statistic when we think about the digital shift in today’s world with the changing role of the customer service agent. 

Companies often find themselves in a crunch because they stick with their premises solution, and eventually they’re unable to upgrade it. This causes many companies with premises solutions to put all of their R&D budget into some kind of cloud solution because they waited too long. When pushed into this change, companies will often take a look at their current solution and reimagine it as a whole. On the other hand, some companies start with the mindset of transformation. However, when you get there, the best route to follow is toward the cloud. 

“Every time I talk to a company that has moved from premises to cloud, the one thing they talk about as the biggest advantage is the empowerment at the business level” - Sheila McGee-Smith

Personalizing Your Transformation 

Making any sort of changes to your CX solution is not a one-way street to your destination. You’ll face many twists and turns to shape your solution to your needs. Looking at the business process, it’s important to first figure out what you want to keep doing, what you want to change, and what new features you want to add. Jason shared that he and his company, Blackchair, looks at a specific piece of data to ensure the CX solution is working for the team. “Our secret sauce in the transformation process is in the audit data because we study the minute-by-minute CX operational change,” Jason says.  

This audit data shows Jason and his team how effective the CX lap times are. By studying this information, the failures of the CX solution’s design process become clear and avoidable.   
 

“If you’ve got the data it will change the relationship between CX operations and the solution itself.” - Jason Owen 

Cleaning Your CX Solution Before the Big Move 

In the words of Sheila McGee-Smith, “Give your contact center a bath!” 

When a company gets to this point and is ready for a digital transformation or a move to the cloud, that is one key move to avoid falling back into those failures from before.  

If you’ve stuck to the same solution without any cleansing or changes for years, you likely have a lot of untouched and unusable data taking up space and slowing your systems down. Technical debt, as it is often called, can build up over time, without anyone seeing it. Cleaning it out is a must for cloud migration success. When moving to the cloud, it’s a great time to take a look at your vectors, skill groups, and IVR script and ask yourself some questions:  

• Why do you have them?  
• Do you still need them?  
• Are they still relevant? 

If the answer to any of these questions is no, consider doing some cleaning in that area. 
On top of this, it’s useful to create a clear transformation plan. Moving to the cloud is a significant change for your CX solution. Building clear objectives in business process changes and CX solution aspirations and design will set you up for success and help you get the most out of the cloud. This is an insightful conversation and if you want to learn more, you can listen to the full discussion.  

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