Call Center Vendor Checklist

Here are but a few useful tips to consider when purchasing contact center software:

• Carefully consider the differences between hosted and on-premise solutions. Each has their own merits depending on the business need, but dig deeper than the prevailing hype. Conventional wisdom seems to be that hosted solutions are attractive due to the supposed low-cost, up-front investment. However, when calculating the total cost of ownership, on-premise solutions can be more cost-effective investments than hosted offerings—sometimes even as quickly as within the first or second years of ownership.
• Consider purchasing a call center software solution that allows you the ability to establish integrations between your dialer and other, existing third-party applications or custom, internal applications—without the purchase of additional software and equipment.
• Purchase a software solution that provides you, in a single license, all of the functionality you need to sufficiently operate your contact center. Pay-per application (agent applications, supervisor applications, etc.) can become cost prohibitive.
• Make sure your call center software vendor offers free subsequent software upgrades or otherwise does not force you to upgrade to (and pay for) future releases.
• Seriously consider the fact that many call center software vendors offer “bolted-on” systems with disparate products that were acquired through mergers. Holistic software offerings may represent the better bet since they were designed, from the ground-up, to work together harmoniously and don’t require complex workarounds, proprietary APIs, and additional professional services expertise to implement.

On-Premise vs. Hosted Technologies for the Contact Center

Software as a Service (SaaS) is all the rage these days mostly because of the purported cost-savings and scalability aspects of contact center technologies. In my opinion, there are several SaaS contact center solutions that make perfect sense for any size call center: speech analytics (Nexidia is first on my list) , CRM (think salesforce.com, Siebel et al) are a few that come to mind.

But the core components of the contact center—the predictive dialer (outbound) and the ACD (inbound)—are critical tools that should remain on-premise because they are better suited for systems integrations and are less expensive than hosting options—with a few exceptions.

Existing centers that already have invested in facilities and infrastructure may be able to benefit from the hosted model when they need to add more seats in busy, seasonal peaks and dial-down after the rush. Brand new contact centers, on the other hand—those who are in start-up mode and don't yet have facilities and infrastructure—should be diligent in their consideration when comparing SaaS vs. on-premise call center technologies. Hosted solutions are positioned as cost-effective alternatives to premise solutions, but that's simply not always true.

Just ask CRM expert Steve Hayes, President and Co-Founder of eVergance, who stated a similar belief in his SearchCRM.com post comparing SaaS vs. on-premise applications (Note: you have to be logged in to SearchCRM.com to read this article - but registration is free)

In case you decide against subscribing to SearchCRM.com, here's what Steve said:

"If you already have an established call center systems infrastructure, I don't believe there is anything unique about SaaS offerings that would make delivering self service any easier. In fact, you may be better off with more specialized on-premise applications... These enterprise-grade packages would better support your integration requirements and would provide more flexibility in working with disparate content sources."

Granted, Steve is talking about self-service applications with a focus on CRM, as he is a CRM expert and consultant, but the message is the same: some applications are better suited for SaaS delivery than others.

The real skinny is this: if your contact center needs to integrate with back-office systems or third party applications (think green screens, AS400s, or anything outside your four walls), then an on-premise contact center is the only way to go. And furthermore, it is a complete untruth that hosted options cost less than on-premise systems.

Don't believe me? I'll post more about this soon, and offer some pricing examples, that will debunk the myth about supposedly lower cost hosting options (other than those I mention above) as opposed the more expensive (not!) on-premise option.

Technology: Does It Work On YOUR Terms?

Would you buy a car if it provided everything you wanted—powerful engine, fuel efficiency, sleek body, slick paint job and a CD player with 6-disc changer—but that required you and the other passengers to sit on the roof?

Probably not.

Of course these are ridiculous examples, but they make an important point for contact center managers to consider: technology should work in the way you need it to, and you should never adjust the way you do business to accommodate the limitations of any technology.

Certainly no business ever intends to be in this situation, yet far too many contact centers today find themselves slaves to technology—and they’re losing business opportunities to competitors who recognize that the status quo represents stagnation, not success. In short, the successful contact center is one that is enabled by technology, and not hindered because of it.


The core components of your contact center technology infrastructure—predictive dialer, ACD, IVR—should not be so obtuse and unfriendly as to force you to bend to their will, so to speak. These systems should be flexible enough to easily and intelligently connect to and interoperate with the other critical applications that power your business such as workforce management, speech recognition and quality assurance, to name but a few.

The all-important data that flows between these internal systems should do so freely, based on the rules you define and in the ways that you decide. These technologies should provide an easy way to make simple or complex changes (update a call script, change a data source, replace vendor A with vendor B, or provide a different agent application). And, once changes are made, your technology should allow instant, real-time updating and not force downtime during peak activity or require after-hours system pushes.

Practical managers are fond of saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But just because a technology component works doesn’t mean it works well, or that it works in the ways you want and need it to. When practical managers add insight to their thought process, they will successfully avoid the trap of mistaking practicality for the acceptance of the status quo, and they will optimize their IT investments for the sake of their business.

Take the time to honestly and soberly assess your IT landscape. If, after doing so, you can confidently state that your current technology investment has your business poised for future growth and success, then congratulations are in order. However, if you discover that you’re sacrificing efficiency for the sake of technology, you need to reconsider your business priorities. Your position in the marketplace will be dictated by how well you meet market demand, and failure to recognize the need for adaptation can yield disastrous results for your contact center.

Be practical. Be insightful. And be careful. If you’re not, you may find yourself driving your car from the roof, or using a diesel-powered laptop!

Some Additional Insight Into ContactBabel's US Contact Center Operational Review

In "The US Contact Center Operational Review", a free study of over 200 contact center operations carried out by ContactBabel in association with the American Teleservices Association (ATA), they report some interesting reasons why outsourcers are, or are not, adopting hosted vs. premise-based solutions.

Drivers for adopting hosted solution
According to the report, the main drivers for adopting a hosted solution are:

...decreased capital expenditure that such a model brings, as well as the possibility of increasing functionality quickly and cost-effectively, allowing them to try new applications without having to commit massive resources of time and money. More than half of respondents report that they strongly feel that hosted solutions can provide these two advantages.

The report also indicates that other drivers for hosted solutions include managing call fluctuations, reducing ongoing costs and saving on technical support costs.

Concerns about adopting a hosted solution
Reason for concern, according to survey participants, in adopting a hosted solution included 1). a lack of justification for replacing an existing system and 2). the loss of control as it related to getting problems fixed quickly.

I tend to agree with Contact Babel on all of these points, but a glaring omission in their report, as far as reasons NOT to adopt a hosted solution, have to do with inflexibility for integration.

Increasingly contact centers have to connect with multiple and numerous disparate systems, both internal and external to their enterprise. Once you've hosted your contact center capabilities, you no longer have direct, immediate access to the architecture that must be exposed in order to facilitate integrations with mission-critical systems like CRM packages, ERP systems, and a whole host of other business applications and systems that play an integral part in every interaction.

I completely understand a contact center's need to manage and reduce costs and to expand functionality quickly and selectively based on customer demand and seasonality. And I am a fan of the SaaS model when appropriate. But it's important to keep in mind that, because the contact center is becoming more and more a major part of the enterprise and thus requires comprehensive integration into the rest of the business, the ability to achieve integrations should be as lofty a consideration as price.

Make sure your contact center solution provider can give you the best of all worlds. Many vendors offer leasing options for premise-based systems to create the "feel" of a hosted solution. Large up-front capital investments can be repurposed as monthly payment that prevent cash flow crunches while enabling the scalability for connectivity that your center will undoubtedly need.

The report, created in association with ATA (The American Teleservices Association) is entirely free and can be downloaded from www.contactbabel.com.

Come on, Contact Centers! Offer me some affordable, “already-developed” integrations to make my life easier!

I recently outsourced a telesales campaign with an onshore outsourcer to set-up sales appointments. The winning outsourcer did a fine job and the results were better than we expected (good contact rates, the list was accurate, etc.). It was a fairly low-tech campaign: we simply provided a script and a list and they gave us back reports and data files on a daily basis. So, it worked and we were “sort-of” happy.

But, now I've got a lot of manual work on my end just to get that data back into my salesforce automation system (we use salesforce.com). And while that, too, is a relatively low-tech affair and fairly easy to do, it's a time-consuming process that I would much rather not have to deal with. It’s just not a good use of my time – and my company can’t afford to hire a full-time DBA to handle the delicate process of data migration and management.

Now, I knew at the outset that I wanted to have this data automatically imported into my system of choice - but none of the outsourcers I vetted could achieve this without a significant development effort that would inflate my cost for the campaign. I was forced to accept daily data dumps in flat Excel files, or pay far more than I wanted to for basic data migration.

Methinks this is a very common occurrence in the contact center industry, and I think outsourcers are missing a huge opportunity to exceed customer expectations. With all of the great technology out there for system integration and process orchestration, it seems smart contact centers would optimize their centers by creating a set of core services that can be re-used over and over again.

I don’t know the specifics of salesforce.com’s marketshare, but I would hazard a guess that they have a significant piece of the small to medium-business market for CRM and SFA. Don’t these outsourcers know this? And why don’t they have ready to go integration points into salesforce.com, or other leading brands of CRM tools?

I don’t know why – but I know it needs to change. And it needs to change right now. Get smart and think about what your customer wants and needs. Suck-up the investment in implementing an integration platform and building some integration points into the most popular SFA and CRM systems. And don’t charge an arm and a leg for it. Satisfy the customer once, and they’ll come back for more excellence. Disappoint them once, and you’ve lost your opportunity for future business.

Mind you, I’m not advocating for salesforce.com, per se, I’m simply advocating a service-oriented approach for contact centers to do a better job of meeting minimum expectations.

Let me end this blog/rant with full disclosure: I work for a company that solves the very problems I describe here. It is particularly frustrating to know how easily and painlessly contact centers could optimize their architecture to provide a more service-oriented approach. And in case you might think this is aimed at "selling," you're right! It is. But let's say I was advocating physical fitness. Just because I sell weight-lifting equipment doesn't mean that you don't need to get your body in shape!

Maximizing Contact Center Productivity: A few clever ideas

Over at the Evolving Contact Center, a podcast series that I produce for Interactive Softworks, we do a monthly segment with The Call Center School on topics like IVR menu design, staff management, and verbal makeovers.

In the most recent episode, Penny Reynolds, one of the founders of the The Call Center School, offers some crafty ideas for maximizing contact center productivity. This is a good listen for those anyone who manages contact center staff or technology.

The Consolidated (or Unified) Desktop

Contact centers are subjected to constant change: clients are forever updating, modifying and changing scripts, adding new projects, and introducing new sources of data that must be accessed to make an interaction be successful.

And while it might seem the IT team would be victimized by such continuous fluctuation, its the agent who may suffer the worst. Without a unified, or consolidated desktop, agents are clicking through multiple screens, copying and pasting data from one place to another, and otherwise engaging in effective tasks when they need to be focused on customer service and quality.

The consolidated desktop is one that, within a single interface, data from different sources (and even in completely different physical locations) can be assembled for easier access by the agent. Contact centers of all sizes are beginning to move towards this vision.

I was interviewed by The Evolving Contact Center podcast about this very subject. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Steve - don't wait to integrate and automate

I was recently speaking to a friend of mine who is an IT professional at an outsourcing firm. To protect his anonymity, I’ll call him “Steve.” Steve’s company has multiple contact center facilities here in the US, and each of those centers has different telephony platforms and a bouillabaisse of partner, legacy and proprietary applications to connect with.

I wasn’t surprised when Steve told me that new projects took too long to launch, that changes required him to take down during business hours, and that the company was constantly hiring new agents to replace those who left out of frustration due to constant changes and difficult-to-use systems.

But I was surprised to hear him tell me – after suggesting to him the adoption of an SOA integration platform for standardization and BPM tools to orchestrate web services – that introducing one more computing system was the last thing he needed.

Huh? What?

Steve told me he and his peers agreed that a zero tolerance policy had been put in-place with regard to new systems. “Make due with we have – make it work,” was the edict he and his co-workers had placed on themselves. Folks, this simply doesn’t make sense.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like Steve. He’s a nice guy, and I think he’s a pretty smart fellow too. But in this case, Steve is missing the boat: SOA and BPM are exactly what his company needs to optimize their processes and to maximize their current IT investments.

Steve… if you’re reading this… don’t wait to integrate and automate. I’m telling you this as a friend!

SOA This. SOA That. Dolls Re-Enact SOA Confusion in Cute YouTube Video

In this YouTube video featuring "Greg the Architect", played by a doll (distant cousin of Ken Doll fame, perhaps?), Greg is tasked with implementing an SOA solution by his oppressed boss who is literally under the foot of "The Big Guy". Overwhelmed by the complexity of SOA and not-so-professional vendors, Greg is belittled, confused and ultimately yaks "SOA" in the toilet. A cute video from SOANowJournal, a publication sponsored by industry giant TIBCO.

Fred On Tech

I'm pleased to announce that my colleague, Fred White, a super-sharp technologist and all-around good guy, has published his new blog, Fred on Tech. His blog will feature trends, analysis and the latest, most interesting topics in the world of enterprise-level technology.

Reuse and standardization, part of the value of Contact Center SOA, get Gartner's green light

Don't you love it when a plan comes together? I start the Contact CenteRevolution on a Wednesday night, and by Thursday morning there's already an excellent blog from a very smart guy, Joe McKendrick, who writes about the advice from a very smart company, Gartner, that SOA is definitely the way to go. While Joe is referring to any industry, I hope contact center pros will keep their operations in mind when reading this post.

Gartner: ‘no major conceptual flaw’ yet with SOA, but… by ZDNet's Joe McKendrick -- Gartner has given the green light to accelerated SOA spending. The concept works, but caution, the payback will be slower than expected

Some Pros and Cons About Virtual or Hosted Contact Centers

Virtual contact centers, also known as hosted contact centers, are being considered by more and more companies these days - either as replacement systems, seasonal/overflow solutions, or as a temporary solution while migrating to an on-premise platform.

Decision-makers are attracted to the hosted model for very good reasons, a few of which are described here.

First and foremost, Hosted solutions don't have the same up-front investment required by on-premise systems. Monthly payments ease the strain on cash flow, and you're only paying for what you need. The virtual option appeals to small businesses because of the ability to avoid protracted periods of time installing, testing and training.

A second key reason for considering a virtual solution is independence from IT. Because it is not uncommon for an adversarial relationship to exist between business and IT personnel, the idea of jobbing out IT's involvement could mean quicker turnaround and less operational headaches and contractual SLAs to hold over the head of the hosting service.

The virtual contact center is on the rise for these and many more reasons. And, in my opinion, the hosted model is a smart way to go - if it suits the business need. There are plenty of reasons why an on-premise solution works best.

I'll address each of these in my next post.

Until then, peace.

The Contact CenteRevolution Begins!

Welcome to the ContactCenteRevolution. This blog is dedicated to exploring all aspects of contact center management, with a keen focus on technology and operations.

My name is Robb Duke, and I've worked in the contact center industry for the last 10 years or so. I've seen enough to have compiled some ideas about contact center optimization that will hopefully, one day, help fully achieve the Contact CenteRevolution!

What is the Contact CenteRevolution? It's an evolution of management philosophies: focus on the long-term rather than short-term fire drills. It's a revolution against ineffective processes, proprietary technologies.

I will try to offer some useful input on how you can optimize your contact center operation. I encourage you to share your own experiences and insights.

Enjoy, and thanks for visiting.