Quality Buying For Quality Monitoring

By Brendan B. Read
Senior Contributing Editor, Customer Interaction Solutions

Quality monitoring (QM) solutions have become central to contact center performance. These tools capture the interactions between your customers and agents and in doing so are invaluable in ensuring excellent customer-retaining service. QM also obviates fingerpointing in disputes with electronic records of what was said.

Given the importance of QM solutions, Customer Interaction Solutions sought advice from experts and leading firms on how best to source and buy them. We asked questions on identifying and buying trends including social media in due diligence, standalone QM solutions versus workforce optimization (WFO) suites, the SaaS option, pricing, and best practicesin selecting QM solutions and suppliers

We have included responses from three industry firms. Those from leading experts will appear on TMCnet.com.

Calabrio (www.calabrio.com)
Kristen Jacobsen, director of marketing communications

The need for recording solutions has not changed, but the emphasis on the reason for recording has shifted somewhat. We are seeing more emphasis on solutions for compliance and risk mitigation than quality, though quality solutions are still being purchased. The trend is for solutions that support multiple sites and are flexible enough to record any employee at any location, so an architecture that supports that reliably and affordably is key. Companies are doing more knowledge worker recording, not just contact center agents. Companies can't afford to put a server at every location.

We answer questions from partners and customers through knowledge base wikis and blogs and have since we started as a company a little over a year ago.

Some customers want to buy stand alone solutions and some want to buy integrated suites. The best solutions can be purchased both ways. When integrated, they work together to make the other more powerful in terms of cohesive workflows and reporting. As a stand alone, they must provide the key features the business needs. The advantage is that the company can always add other applications in the suite down the road and they will be fully integrated. We are a lot of that buying behavior. A company will start with QM for example and add WFM down the road.

SaaS (News - Alert) is a good alternative for some businesses, though some features become more difficult to deliver in this model. Our architecture supports this model well. We support our partners if they want to implement our solutions using this model.

We have not seen a need to change any of our pricing models. We sell by per-seat license. Because of the low server cost of our architecture, it scales very affordably.

We see that companies want to buy a total solution from one vendor, from ACDs to applications. It minimizes complexity both from a solution standpoint and they don’t have to manage multiple vendors. Support becomes easier as well.

Look for technology that supports a distributed business. You must be able to record at any location. Even if it is not a factor today, it will become so down the line. Even if you are just buying QM today look at the vendors’ suite strategy and make sure they have a strong solution in terms of features and architecture. Pay attention to the features you really need and make sure the software is easy to use. More features are not always a benefit if they are not required and they add to complexity of the deployment and the end user interface. Many vendors will offer bundles of basic and advanced features, so you pay for only the features you need.

CyberTech International (www.cybertech-int.com)
Ed Kawecki, Marketing Manager, CyberTech North America

When it comes to monitoring recording solutions in this environment, it is all about cost of ownership and flexibility. Expensive packages that run on propriety hardware can no longer be justified and customers want to leverage their existing infrastructure. Enterprise customers are also looking closely at the costs to implement these solutions and prefer solutions that can be quickly deployed by in-house technical support staff.

Certainly new media is working its way into how executives acquire and share knowledge. There are numerous discussion groups on platforms such as LinkedIn and industry associations where vendor experiences are shared. As a result, I find consumers of this technology are much better educated and able to communicate their needs more quickly. At CyberTech, we embrace new media and sponsor the industry's first RecordingWiki. This is a new media platform where the user community can collaborate and share strategies, processes and experiences around call monitoring.

The benefits of well engineered, cost effective stand alone recording/QM solutions are well documented and understood by the consumers of this technology. As more vendors embrace open standards such as SOA, incorporating point solutions onto a custom communications fabric is no longer a challenge.

The real challenge is on the part of the WFO suite providers to deliver enough value in those suites that that they will compensate for the added complexity and cost that gets layered into them.

The selecting and buying best practices are all about cost of ownership, flexibility and global support. These are:

• No proprietary hardware. The recording solution and other applications must be able to run on a firm’s existing/preferred server hardware. Archiving to existing storage devices must be part of the standard offering and the existing production support staff should be able to change power supplies and hard drives, and monitor solution performance

• Understand VoIP migration costs

• Select a provider that can provide support in the same markets that you operate

TelStrat (www.telstrat.com)
Kevin Smith, President

Contact centers are increasingly seeking solutions that offer quicker ROI and provide a full range of tools to help them improve customer care quality, operational efficiencies, train and retain agents, and reduce OPEX (News - Alert).

Today’s tough economy has made it imperative for business to maintain market share and minimize customer churn by providing the highest level of customer service and satisfaction. High-quality contact center operations are critical to that effort, so it’s still a growing market, especially for mid-size to smaller companies.

Across the board, companies are being more judicious, taking the time and putting in the effort to make sure they implement solutions that, not only are cost effective to start with, but that are scalable enough in size and capabilities to grow their contact center operation. With the degree of uncertainty in the business climate, they’re best served by solutions that provide seamless PBX (News - Alert) platform flexibility.

There’s an ever wider array of sources for information on contact center solutions. Traditional business media and tradeshows are still a primary means to gain initial notice and product knowledge, but the Web is providing tremendous opportunities to highlight solutions, both with canned presentations and webinar-based product demos.

As to social media playing a part in product decisions, Forrester estimates three in four online U.S. adults use social media to connect with each other. Obviously, online communities such as LinkedIn, Facebook (News - Alert), and MySpace have tremendous reach in numbers, but their impact seems to be better directed to the consumer space rather than B2B. To be sure, Twitter is the buzz du jour and, while there may be some value in the word-of-mouth wisdom of crowds, we don’t see flash mobs gathering to cut purchase orders for WFO.

These days ROI and maximizing capex impact are crucial. Companies need solutions that let them effectively meet their initial needs without burying them in unnecessary expense and complexity. They also need a solution that lets them add capabilities as their needs and organization grow. So what they really want is a modular product approach so each component can shine in a standalone role, yet seamlessly integrate with other elements of a total WFO solution suite.

We see SaaS as an emerging trend. Every day more computing applications are moving to ‘the cloud’. There are trade-offs in control, security, and other areas that must be balanced with possible cost/infrastructure advantages versus resident solutions. The ideal situation is a product that offers both and that allows migration in either direction.

Too frequently such operations have a “one size fits all” attitude, because it’s not cost effective to tailor operations to what are expected to be temporary situations. Contact center operations are incorporating more sophisticated capabilities such as e-learning, call automation, workforce management and other functions. Once implemented, their overall business impact makes these capabilities valuable assets. Businesses expecting to remain viable should look to retain and grow these.

Prices seem to remain consistent. What is happening is that the value received for that price is increasing. Solutions now offer high-end capabilities at mid-range prices. Virtually any size organization can now afford QM.

There is increasing demand for solutions that are simple to install, configure, and use and which provide rapid ROI. Prospective customers should look for vendors that offer online demos and product trials. The ideal solution should be available through an extensive reseller network that can provide local sales and support. If the reseller network contains major telecom vendors so much the better, as they serve as a barometer of a product’s overall value and reputation.

When buying QM products do your homework. Look at solutions that do what you want now and can cost effectively grow to meet your future needs in size and added capabilities. Don’t back yourself into a corner when it comes to PBX technology or platform. Check out ease of implementation and use. Get demos and/or arrange a product trial. Don’t think you have to pay the high end price to get high end capabilities. Talk to the vendors. Talk to your dealer. Talk to other contact center managers.

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