SaaS Continues to Revolutionize the Call Center

Adoption of the software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) model is accelerating across the enterprise, but particularly in the call center, as companies are discovering the advantages today’s hosted solutions offer over premise-based systems.


With SaaS, applications such as ACD, IVR, dialers, workforce management, call recording and CRM can be hosted on a shared platform in a data center and delivered to agents via the Internet, or dedicated IP network, enabling companies to deploy a full-featured call center system for a fraction of the cost of licensed software.

As many organizations have already discovered, SaaS brings numerous advantages to the call center. What follows are the main advantages it brings, backed-up with commentary from Terry Saeger, SVP and general manager of VoltDelta Enterprise Services and Solutions, a leading provider of enterprise-grade SaaS call center solutions:

 

Lower upfront costs

In general, the biggest factor driving adoption of SaaS is lower up-front cost. Companies that adopt hosted call center solutions save initially by avoiding the need to shell out capital for premise-based equipment and installation services.

With today’s hosted call center solutions, all you really need are broadband-connected PCs. Your agents can share the same system no matter where they are located – whether they’re all in a single, main center or spread across multiple locations.

Also, companies that go with hosted call center solutions avoid having to pay for the licensing of new software — instead they simply “lease” the software on a “pay-as-you-go” basis. Not only is this pricing model more economical, it’s easier to predict and manage, and affords simplified financial reporting: Rather than paying out chunks of capital for upgrades or replacements of on-premise systems, companies now have the ability to include the cost of their SaaS service in monthly expense reports as a recurring line item.

 

“The ability to convert CapEx to OpEx is critically important in today’s credit restricted marketplace,” says Saeger. “That combined with the ability to quickly right-size your call center operations, both up and down, without concern for invested capital really provides a level of flexibility never seen in the traditional premises equipment based model. The ability to create a five-hundred seat, multi-location and home agent enabled call center with almost no capital is a real advantage of using a SaaS provider like VoltDelta (News - Alert).”

Reduced ongoing costs

SaaS solutions also deliver lower ongoing costs because the hosted provider takes on the maintenance of the system, including software upgrades, equipment replacement and troubleshooting. This reduces the strain on existing IT staff and also lets companies avoid having to hire specialized IT teams. In addition, services can be added or customized quickly via a single, Web-based interface, without adding significantly to the overall cost of the service.

 

“By taking on the technology and capital risks and the difficult aspects of managing constantly evolving technology infrastructure, hosted call center solutions providers like VoltDelta ensure that our clients are focusing their IT and customer care resources on the highest value components of customer care,” says Saeger. “That is to say, actually providing world class care, driving new revenue opportunities and ensuring the highest possible customer retention in a fast churning world at the lowest possible total cost of ownership.”

Faster time to market

Rapid deployment is another advantage SaaS offers. Setting up a new on-premise system can be costly and time-consuming. One large headache for licensed software is that of integration with existing CRM and other business systems (and furthermore carrying out that integration without disruption to customer service).

Today’s hosted call center solutions, however, offer fast integration with existing IT systems. Most vendors are now providing pre-integration for legacy CRM and business systems. Plus, support for service-oriented architecture (SOA) helps companies save money because they can keep their existing legacy software and servers, yet they can access their customer data the same way they always have.

“Companies today really need the flexibility and speed to market that SaaS solutions enable,” says Saeger. “For example, with VoltDelta’s hosted call center solution, companies can deploy hundreds of agents in days and thousands of agents in a few weeks versus months with a traditional model. Likewise with IVR and speech automation solutions, our infrastructure and operational expertise enables deployment of very large and complex speech applications in very short order.”

Faster access to new technologies

The SaaS model also means customers can get faster access to new software and features. Most SaaS providers offer a range of software which customers can combine to make their own custom suites. Customers can quickly access and “trial” new applications as soon as they become available. The SaaS model is also ideal for call centers that are looking to adopt a unified communications architecture.

“The risk of obsolescence is still very real in the call center world,” Saeger says. “Many companies invested before the Y2000 ‘bug’ hit and have been trapped in end of life technology because the market is evolving so quickly. With a SaaS solution those companies that thought they were trapped now have a virtually risk-free and truly elegant migration path to the state-of-the-art. Instead of risking millions in capital to move to VoIP-based technologies or the latest speech recognition software they can migrate to our hosted call center solution with almost no upfront cost and no risk of obsolescence going forward.”

Enabling the ‘virtual call center’

SaaS solutions are ideal for facilitating geographically distributed and/or virtual call centers. Perhaps most compellingly, SaaS enables the increasingly popular home agent model. Additionally, SaaS enables companies with multiple call centers to tailor or customize the solution for each individual center’s needs. The SaaS model is also an enabler of what’s known as the informal call center, which allows companies to extend the call center out to other knowledge workers in the organization.

“This really is an important aspect of the SaaS model,” Saeger says. “Our platforms currently support over 2.4 billion agent calls per year and over 1.9 billion speech enabled automation calls worldwide. Our core platform technology supports over 100 customers in 55 countries and the nature of our architecture allows those agents to be anywhere in the world at any time. Work at home or work in a bricks and mortar facility it doesn’t matter anymore. A laptop with Internet access and a headset are all that is needed to enable an agent in our environment. So if a company is struggling with managing multiple contact centers, possibly in multiple countries simultaneously, our hosted call center solution provides centralized call management, monitoring, recording and reporting for the entire virtual call center, no matter where the agents reside.”

Improved agent efficiency

Today’s SaaS solutions bring improved efficiency through more intelligent routing of customer calls. Calls can be distributed intelligently among all agents at all locations, leading to improved agent performance. This has obvious benefits for multimedia call centers that handle a range of IP-based channels, such as VoIP, video-over-IP, IVR, Web chat, text messaging and e-mail. If an agent’s phone queue goes quiet, that agent can switch to answering e-mail or Web chats in other queues, instead of wasting time waiting for the phone to ring.

“Multi-modal, multi-channel communication is the key to true one-to-one marketing and customer care,” Saeger says. “SaaS providers enable a unified solution for all forms of communication and again enable an elegant migration path to these new technologies.”

Scalability

Because they are hosted at a provider’s data facility, where there are ample server resources, SaaS solutions enable organizations to scale rapidly to meet sudden spikes in call volume.

“Scalability truly is an advantage of hosted service providers like VoltDelta,” Saeger says. “When we are expanding our platforms we are thinking in terms of thousands of IVR ports or thousands of agents per growth step. Our facilities are designed to scale, provide geographic redundancy and overall provide for more reliable service performance than a traditional customer managed premises solution. This allows our customers to focus on growing their business without concern for the infrastructure needed to support rapid growth.”

Better analytics and reporting

Most hosted call center solutions deliver best-of-breed call recording, speech analytics and reporting capabilities, which can help a company gain detailed insight into customer habits and agent performance and then package those data into useful reports. These solutions give call centers a way to measure performance and customer satisfaction, in some cases via today’s advanced speech analytics solutions which can search through thousands of hours of stored call data very quickly.

“SaaS providers are intensely focused on performance of the systems, applications and related technology components like speech recognition,” Saeger says. “Our ability to provide for full call recording, including both parties on the call with synchronized agent screen recording allows for detailed analysis of care operations and agent performance. It is important that the users of our SaaS services are able to feel comfortable with the on-going performance of the platforms but also to manage their business more efficiently than if they ran the technology themselves."

Better control over business rules

Hosted call center solutions also offer the ability to apply business rules across the whole center, so agents can log onto the system only when they’re scheduled to; can access only the applications and network resources they need to see; or can call others within the company based only on their “presence” or availability. Calls can be routed to each agent based on pre-defined rules based on which types of calls or customers the agent is best suited to handle. Agents can be instantly delivered custom scripts during a call, helping them to calm an irate customer or up sell and cross-sell at specific junctures pre-determined by management.

“Flexibility is a key component in the success of SaaS deployments and not just in where agents physically reside,” Saeger says. “Detailed agent profiling, skills based routing, call control and resource management based upon business rules and real time performance management give users of our platforms a level of control down to the agent level that enables broad detailed control over customer care operations.”

Improved customer/agent satisfaction

All of the above advantages combine to create a radically improved customer and agent experience. By virtualizing the call center and unifying all call center functions into one cohesive whole, agent performance is improved and customer satisfaction is increased.

Today’s hosted call center solutions can identify customers based on their historical data and thus streamline the interaction. A common complaint many customers have today is the need to re-enter their account information via the IVR or repeat it to the live agent: With today’s hosted call center solutions, the customer’s information arrives on the agent’s desktop along with the call, enabling the agent to provide more tailored service, helping the caller to feel like more than just another call in the queue. What’s more, these hosted call center solutions help agents do their jobs effectively, which improves agent job satisfaction and retention.

“A unique feature of the VoltDelta platform is the tight integration of our IVR and agent resources as well as personalization and unique data capabilities,” Saeger says. “The ability to seamlessly move a caller between any automation resource and any agent resource and between agent resources provides another level of flexibility not usually seen in a traditional environment.”

“This tight integration and seamless call control enables sharing of data between the IVR and agent resources and creates the opportunity to personalize caller experiences based upon any number of data drivers including: calling frequency, recent care choices, recent purchase behavior and other customer unique data,” he adds. “The agent population is then focused on interesting and high touch or revenue generating calls and in those cases of the routine and mundane the caller is satisfied very efficiently driving higher customer and agent satisfaction.”

Guaranteed 24x7, 365, uptime

For some companies, it can be hard to relinquish control of precious IT assets to a third party. But be rest assured: Today’s hosted call center solutions providers have their facilities fully-backed up and what’s more, they use state-of-the-art security to protect sensitive company information. These data service providers know that just one failure or breach could spell then end of their business, so it’s in their own interest to protect your data.

By the same token today’s software vendors have a vested interest in ensuring that their applications meet their customers’ needs: If the application performs poorly or turns out to be a bad fit for the customer’s business, the vendor loses a revenue opportunity. And because SaaS can be turned on and off just like a utility, it’s relatively easy for organizations to switch to another provider in a short amount of time. That gives the software makers all-the-more incentive to roll out tested, reliable applications that help companies meets their business goals.

“Our experience in the extreme environment of carrier directory assistance has driven our operational experience to five nines and created an intense security culture ensuring the highest levels of availability and performance,” Saeger says.” We don’t make money if we don’t answer the call; it is a simple model and drives obsessive behavior with regards to building rock solid platforms and applications.”

It took a while for SaaS to live up to its promise – and it’s no wonder many companies have viewed it skeptically, considering the debacles of the ASP models of the past. But with the reliability of today’s platforms and the speed of today’s networks, among other advancements, it appears that SaaS is finally gaining serious traction in the enterprise call center space.

VoltDelta’s DeltaTouch hosted call center solution combines voice and data on a single platform. Advanced features and capabilities of this hosted call center solution include inbound/outbound voice recognition applications, SMS and email support, call progress and voice recognition information “whispered” to agents, call recording, and end-to-end tracking of agent performance. The company, which has served the directory assistance market for decades, partners with Nuance (News - Alert) to deliver advanced speech-enabled IVR technology for self-service and advanced call steering.

VoltDelta’s hosted call center solutions can be readily integrated with CRM and other back office systems. With the platform’s data integration capabilities, agents can have real-time access to customer records, including call data, which can be used to deliver improved customer service and a personalized caller experience. For more information, visit www.voltdelta.com.