Five9 (News - Alert), a popular vendor of hosted call center tools and products, recently presented a good overview of the company’s technology using a Q&A format to reflect some of the most common questions companies have when considering a switch to such technology:

What are the basic requirements of an at-home agent?

At-home agents using the Five9 Virtual Call Center Suite only require a computer with high-speed Internet access and a USB headset.

How do you handle planned down time? Our need is for 24x7 availability.

Five9 is available 24x7, including support, with one exception. Five9 reserves a maintenance window from 9-10pm on Wednesday and Saturday nights. Though this window is not always used, if uptime is critical during this period, alternative call processing is required.

Can you clarify why outbound credit card acceptance needs a transfer?

It is not required, but many companies have found this a way to manage the risk of an at home agent committing fraud. If you have agents that can be trusted to handle credit card numbers without visual supervision, there is no reason they cannot handle collecting this data.

For a predictive dialer - what type of database can be linked or tied into the Five9 system?

The Five9 Virtual Call Center includes out-of-the-box integration with leading on-demand CRM applications such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite (News - Alert), RightNow Technologies, etc.

What broadband speed, at a minimum, does an agent need to have a high quality voice call?

Most systems require 96k of bandwidth. Five9 has tuned the system to only require 40k of bandwidth, although we recommend customers have between 50 and 64k minimum to deal with other applications that might require bandwidth, such as chat.

Does the Five9 system provide menu-tree management so the customer can self-route through to distribute call center groups?

Five9 removes the guesswork from inbound calling with comprehensive call routing capabilities. Our interactive voice response (IVR) collects caller information, such as account number or department requested, and quickly identifies the nature of each incoming call. Meanwhile, the automatic call distribution (ACD) feature automatically routes the call to the appropriate agent based on the caller's needs. With a touch-tone telephone, callers can intuitively navigate to the agent most capable of resolving their problems. They can even complete tasks on their own, such as finding your office locations and business hours.

How secure is customer information from identity theft both on the Five9 system and at agent's in-home PC's?

Five9 has a state of the art datacenter with multiple levels of firewall protection, intrusion detection systems, etc. All customers have unique table space in the database to ensure no customers can access other customers' data. However, since we are talking home agents, physical security is a concern. If you are using at home agents, you should ensure the data they have access to is public data (such as names and phone numbers), unless the user is in a trusted environment.

Can we use our client's software instead of your for the phone and databases?

Five9 only requires the phone numbers to be uploaded for outbound dialing. From there, other applications can be used to manage the call data. For customers who don't have other software, Five9 does have a full contact management system built in.