Bringing the Contact Centre Back into the Business – Jurgen Hekkink, Head of Product Marketing at AnywhereNow, explains.
The shift to cloud-based Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) aimed to modernise operations. While this has introduced new front office capabilities, it has also resulted in a separation between the contact centre and other areas of the business. Customers now find themselves trapped in a front-end office optimised for speed of answering calls. Frustration grows with every transfer, as each representative lacks the context to help quickly. This fragmented approach has eroded the seamless experience customers expect. The service model now feels distant from both the business and the people it’s meant to serve.
While organisations adopted standalone CCaaS solutions in pursuit of agility, enabling these advanced capabilities led to a sacrifice in cross-company visibility. Now, as Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) becomes an enterprise standard, the critical need is to re-integrate customer service into the organisation, making it a core business function rather than an isolated system.
This shift is already proving to deliver value for organisations, with Forrester finding that companies that integrate UCaaS and CCaaS can achieve up to 20% cost reductions in operational expenses gain revenue lifts of between 15% to 25% within the first year of deployment.
The Hidden Cost of Fragmentation
On the other end of the spectrum, the separation of CCaaS from UCaaS has created a structural divide between customer-facing agents and the rest of the organisation. This disconnect slows down resolution times, duplicates effort, and fragments the customer experience.
While Gartner reports that 92% of UK CIOs consider UCaaS-CCaaS integration a top priority, 70% of enterprises are lagging in implementing it. This gap impacts customer service with fragmented experiences, duplicated efforts, and overall, the business loses visibility into the full customer journey. This has a major impact on the business, with PwC citing that 32% of customers will abandon a brand they love after just one poor experience. In today’s competitive landscape, the cost of fragmented service is measured in lost revenue, customer churn, and diminished trust.
Rethinking Customer Service as a Shared Capability
Imagine a model where customer service is not confined to a single department, but is a shared responsibility across the organisation. In this model, a billing query is handled directly by the finance department, a product issue by the engineering team, and a logistics concern by operations, all without delay or loss of context.
This approach offers organisations greater flexibility to support their customers. Customer service can be scaled dynamically by involving the right internal experts at the right time, rather than relying solely on front-line agents. It also leads to faster resolution, as issues are routed directly to those with the authority and insight to act. Most importantly, it enhances customer satisfaction. When customers interact with informed, empowered employees who understand their needs, they feel heard and valued.
When Departments Should Step In
Consider a customer reporting a recurring bug in an app. Instead of relaying the issue through multiple layers of support, the product team engages directly, asking clarifying questions and logging the issue in real time. This approach reduces resolution time from days to minutes, offering a significant speed advantage.
In another instance, a complex billing discrepancy involving multiple invoices and credits is handled by the finance team with full context, authority, and the issue is addressed efficiently without the need for a contact centre agent to act as a go-between.
In logistics, a customer who needs to reroute a shipment due to a last-minute change can speak directly with the team that manages delivery systems. The change is made immediately, avoiding delays and frustration.
In all these scenarios, the benefits of dealing with the team that can solve the customer’s problem the quickest delivers the most efficient support while avoiding delays, and/or inaccurate information.
Collaboration: The Engine of Exceptional Service
When customer service is treated as a shared responsibility, the benefits are transformative. Precision improves as issues are resolved faster and more accurately by the right experts. Organisations become more agile, able to respond to crises or surges in demand by mobilising resources across departments.
Employees across the business feel more connected to the customer journey. This boosts morale, engagement, and retention. As teams collaborate, they not only create feedback loops that drive continuous improvement in products, processes, and service delivery but they also celebrate these successes openly. Sharing stories of resolved customer issues turns individual successes into organisational learning opportunities. Recognising these achievements empowers employees and reinforces a culture of shared success, encouraging a more engaged and innovative workforce.
Unified Data: Seeing the Whole Picture
One of the most overlooked problems with using separate customer service tools and platforms is the loss of visibility once a customer interaction moves beyond the contact centre. Many systems stop tracking the journey at the point of handoff, leaving critical gaps in reporting and accountability.
A customer service and communication system that is built to work together from the start solves this problem. Every interaction, whether with an agent, a product manager, or a finance specialist, is captured, time stamped, and linked to a unified customer record. This provides end-to-end visibility across all touchpoints.
With a complete dataset, organisations can identify bottlenecks, measure service effectiveness, and forecast demand with greater accuracy. There are no blind spots, just smarter insights and better decisions.
Embedding Service into the Cultural Fabric
Customer service requires a mindset change to be ingrained into the fabric of the organisation. This will only happen when every employee sees themselves as part of the customer experience, resulting in service becoming more responsive, more human, and more effective.
Solutions that integrate customer service and communications environments, such as AnywhereNow Dialogue Cloud for Microsoft Teams, are enabling this shift. They allow any employee to participate in customer service, whether formally or informally, bringing expertise to the point of need.
The future of customer service relies on companies embedding it across the organisation. When service becomes everyone’s responsibility, businesses become more agile, more resilient, and more trusted. It’s time to stop treating customer service as a department and make it a culture.
Jurgen Hekkink is Head of Product Marketing at AnywhereNow
Founded in 2010, AnywhereNow is a Netherlands-headquartered and fast-growing provider of Customer Experience SaaS solutions. AnywhereNow empowers voice and digital dialogues for organisations worldwide and brings to life Agentic AI platforms for increased productivity and effectiveness. AnywhereNow’s products are award-winning, recognised by industry analysts, and trusted by over 2,000 global customers, including Rabobank, DHL, Emirates, KPMG, Swarovski, Mazda, Deloitte, Aldi, Vodafone and Zeiss.
