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[May 17, 2005]

Selection of a Call Center

BY PRAFUL SHAH


The role of a contact center is more than customer services; the contact center has evolved and is responsible for revenue as well. Currently, more than 50% of contact centers have turned into profit centers. As the role of the contact center evolves, the transactions performed by a contact centers are evolving as well, ranging from taking orders, responding to marketing campaigns and more education interactions with customers. The contact center now plays a central role throughout the customer cycle from identification, acquisition to service.

We are in the midst of an astounding transformation in the way organizations serve their customers. Most contact center organizations today, are transforming into customer-facing organizations, and these centers do not have to be location specific. Customers want interaction with companies in order to provide them with higher levels of differentiated service. All interaction is through multi channel contact such as live agent, e-mail, IVR, voice mail, Web chat, instant messaging or fax.

Customers have two choices for selecting a call center. The first choice is for the premises based call center. The second choice is for the Virtual IP hosted call center. Designing a contact center is a challenging and time-consuming task, with broader operating and financial implications. During last few years, the mobility of workforce is also playing a bigger role in the decision-making process.

Once business and customer needs are determined, you need to understand and select the right set of products and features in order to integrate the required functionality. The call center is required to provide system features by using state-of-the-art IP and Telecom technology (ACD, Predictive Dialer, IVR, Reporting, Monitoring, Conferencing, Email, Web chat). High reliability is expected through layers of backup servers, backup electrical generators, and backup voice and data networks. It is not unusual to have 10 different products that need to be integrated together. This technical complexity of the contact center requires experts from every technical domain to work together in order to architect the solution.

In a premised based contact center, once contact center technology is implemented and next is to integrate all of the required applications, and to train users (call center managers, administrators and agents) on all of the products (i.e. PBX, IVR, CRM, ACD, etc.) integrated into a call center. This is an arduous task for anyone. The process is often longer and more complex than creating, compiling and executing the training sessions. It does not necessarily end there, whenever there is an upgrade to one of the components in the contact center, training, manuals have to be implemented to all the representatives.

One of the biggest hidden costs of deploying a premise based contact center is the cost of maintenance. It now becomes essential to employ a telecom expert, a Networking expert and an IT expert in order to stay abreast of training, updates and additions associated with the different applications in the contact center. In a premise based contact center, the technical people constantly have to carry out projects to improve the contact centers functionality and reliability. Whenever an application goes awry, technical team must determine if the issue is an artifact of the integration of the various applications or an issue with that particular application. This requires a huge investment that is both costly and inefficient.

The virtual IP hosted contact center model, which EagleACD provides, is a valuable tool for giving small and medium businesses the functional equivalent of a premise-based call center. This includes a full operational and administrative control, access to all real-time and historical reports, without lead-time implementation. Contact Centers offer full control of call treatment with monitoring and recording of all media for the most effective call center management and quality assurance. This approach takes away all the pain, cost, time and resources of the vendor. It eliminates planning or budgeting for an integration project. Additionally, there is no need to track, maintain and implement product updates from various vendors. IP Hosted contact center provides a complete solution and ensures quick implementation. In other words, the operators do not need to invest or maintain the communication infrastructure. This product adoption strategy allows you to be up-and-running much faster and much cheaper.

With EagleACD, everything is integrated not only from agents perspective but also from administrative points of view. Adding an agent is very simple, selecting his/her skills, access rights and the agent is automatically provisioned to use the call center. Also, reporting and management tools are synchronized. Similarly, queues and recordings are easily available. This flexibility represents tremendous savings in time, money and energy.

IP based call center is the future trend, as a number of call center operators are either evaluating or implementing this option. There are six main reasons to consider IP based center such as EagleACD:

1. No upfront capital investment

2. Speed of deployment (can be set-up in matter of days)

3. Super Scalability and easy distribution

4. Predictable and low per minute fees

5. No training, maintenance or upgrade costs

6. Fully integrated solution (easy to use, allowing multiple customers to run on a shared environment)

Virtual Contact Center


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