What is a cloud call center and how does it work?

An effortless customer experience (CX) helps give businesses an extra competitive advantage in addition to their products or services. Smooth CX sets the expectation that customers can rely on a business to answer their questions or address their concerns promptly and without hassle. To provide ultra-smooth CX, a cloud call center leverages the convenience of the cloud to allow businesses with limited resources to reliably deliver top-tier customer service around the clock.

Cloud call centers give businesses the agility and flexibility needed to adapt to changing customer demands. They allow businesses to scale operations up or down as needed, without the limitations of on-site hardware. In this guide, we’ll explore how cloud call centers work as well as their benefits, features, and more.

More in this guide:

• How do cloud-based call centers work?
• Benefits of a cloud call center
• Important features of cloud call centers
• Frequently asked questions
• ​​Elevate your cloud call center operations with Zendesk

How do cloud-based call centers work?

Cloud-based call center operate through a network of interconnected servers and software applications hosted by a third-party provider. This means businesses don’t need to invest or maintain their expensive hardware and infrastructure to set up a call center—they can access it through a web browser or dedicated app.

These call centers use computer telephony integration (CTI) to fuse computer and phone functions in one interface. This keeps all customer interactions centralized while also allowing them to manage ongoing and active phone calls.

Benefits of a cloud call center

Cloud call centers have several advantages over traditional on-premises solutions for businesses of all sizes. Here are some of the most important ones.

Lower operational costs

Using cloud computing for customer service is more cost-effective than traditional, on-premises solutions. By eliminating the need for expensive hardware, software, and IT infrastructure, businesses can better control customer service costs and avoid some significant asset investments. Cloud call centers also typically operate on a subscription basis, allowing businesses to pay only for the services they need—and encouraging customer retention
via renewals to continue using the services.

Higher scalability

Businesses can scale CX with cloud software as needed, both up and down. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for businesses in industries like retail customer service, which have fluctuating call volumes or seasonal peaks and can’t handle call center management for an on-site facility. Nonstop availability and omnichannel support are two more reasons why cloud call centers help make businesses more flexible, scalable, and reachable when customers need them.

Increased customer satisfaction

Agents benefit from cloud call center technology, too. Cloud call centers give agents tools to deliver exceptional service, like integrated customer relationship management (CRM) software, call routing, and options for customer self-service. These help resolve issues quickly, whether directly with an agent or a self-service tool like a knowledge base. When the time to resolution goes down, and customers have convenient access to effective solutions, customer satisfaction goes up.

Better reliability

Services in the cloud are more reliable than on-premises resources. Anything can disrupt service, from a simple mistake to a more critical issue like a power failure or natural disaster. Often, cloud call centers are hosted in secure data centers with failover protection to avoid service interruption. By minimizing the risk of downtime, cloud call centers can preempt the frustration that comes from being left unattended. This acts as a form of proactive customer service to help keep customers connected.

Fewer operational and communication siloes

A call center that’s in the cloud can help break down communication barriers between different departments and teams. These call centers provide a centralized platform for customer interactions so that teams can collaborate and share information. This leads to frictionless customer service that keeps tickets moving along through to resolution.

Important features of cloud call centers

Not all cloud call centers are cut from the same cloth. These features are essential when considering a call center that will enhance customer service and boost operational efficiency.

AI and automation

AI is an absolute necessity to live up to rapidly shifting customer expectations. It allows a cloud call center solution to manage high demand easily, thanks to helpful tools like AI agents for voice that can autonomously resolve up to 50 percent of all calls with human-like AI. These intelligent voice bots can personalize communications while giving agents instant insights into key call metrics as well as comprehensive call transcripts and synopses.

These tools can even automate up to 80+ percent of interactions across all customer-facing channels. This allows businesses to manage voice alongside a robust set of other communication options, delivering personalized service at scale without sacrificing quality. In addition to scaling, businesses need to adopt AI to meet evolving customer demands. According to the Zendesk CX Trends Report 2025, 61 percent of customers expect more personalized service thanks to AI.

Reporting and analytics

Comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities are the key to understanding customers’ wants and needs. The right call center software should be able to analyze each customer interaction across touchpoints to build a 360-degree customer view and gather key call center metrics like satisfaction levels and first contact resolution (FCR).

With quality assurance (QA) insights, businesses can also evaluate 100 percent of customer conversations—whether with AI or human agents—and take action on potential churn risks and outliers. Businesses can use this data-intensive view to identify trends, track agent performance across conversations, and optimize call center operations to continuously improve over time.

Interactive voice response (IVR)

IVR allows inbound callers to self-service their needs. This technology navigates callers through a menu of options using their phone keypad. It can reduce call wait times and improve efficiency, all without requiring the resources of a large, in-house team of agents answering the phone.

Call routing and forwarding

One major source of customer frustration in the traditional call center model is when the caller gets mistakenly misrouted to the wrong agent. Cloud call center software can automatically route calls to the most appropriate agent or department based on pre-configured rules for skilled routing.. This way, all calls are handled by the most qualified person, leading to faster resolution times and higher satisfaction.

Auto dialing

An autodialer is essential for any business that requires outbound call center operations. This tool automatically dials the next number on a call list, helping to drastically increase the total number of calls that a team can make. It’s particularly useful for sales and telemarketing teams that engage in mostly outbound business.

Data security

Data security is a top priority for cloud call center providers. These call centers typically employ robust security measures to prioritize customer data protection. By choosing a leading CX tool like Zendesk to bolster call center operations, businesses gain enterprise-level security features no matter their size—features like encryption, access controls, and more.

Frequently asked questions

Elevate your cloud call center operations with Zendesk

Settling for an on-premises call center won’t cut it if you have customers spread across the globe—or even the country. You need a cloud call center solution that provides 24/7 support whenever and wherever customers need it.

At Zendesk, all of our solutions live in the cloud. Your team can access our wide range of features from anywhere, including Zendesk AI, which is trained on billions of CX interactions to help you automate your customer service right out of the box.