We often see comparative write-ups about call center software in blogs and Web-sites. It is not practical to expect a true comparison of the various contact center solutions available in the market. An objective analysis requires clear performance indicators with benchmarks. As you can imagine, it is unlikely that someone will have the opportunity to do a comprehensive study of the different call center technology solutions available, let alone experience it in actual production. It possible to define a common set of functionality and performance objectives and determine how well the various call center software solutions stack up against it.
Contact centers over the last decade have gravitated towards becoming “profit centers”. The large scale trend towards out-sourcing has greatly reduced the number of call centers that operate as “cost centers”. The cost of acquisition will play a significant part in the selection of your call center technology. A broad measure of a call center software can be had from,
- The telephony platform driving the call center software
- Cost per seat for the overall deployment
- Functionality available within the call center software
- Level of technical support from the vendor
Telephony platform
The telephony platform is a big part of the acquisition cost and requires careful consideration. Depending on the contact center technology vendor, this cost may or may not be an explicit line item but is bound to show up in some form. It is important ensure that your contact center has the capability to use both TDM ISDN PRI(E1/T1) and IP telephony. It is also important that the underlying telephony platform has a sophisticated PBX. PBX feature-set should be a part and parcel of this call center platform. Here, Asterisk as your telephony platform for the call center software will provide all the benefits without the cost of a proprietary telephone switch. Asterisk runs on standard x86 servers and provides the IP telephony capability. For TDM, you have Digium, Sangoma and Red-fone providing interface hardware for PRI(E1/T1).
Cost per Seat
The cost per seat is a detailed calculation. It includes the cost of the infrastructure, the cost of the call center software license and the cost of setup, training, 1st year support etc. As a thumb rule, all the essential features for your your contact center should come, right out-of-the-box. The intent is to minimize the risk of turning the deployment into a project. Projects tend to become expensive and a contact center deployment should always use a COTS (commercially of the shelf) call center software.
Call Center Software Functionality
A thorough and detailed analysis of the call center software functionality available out-of-the-box, is a must. For outbound, lead and list management, Customer agent interaction script development, predictive dialer, dialing multiple phone numbers within an account, real-time and statistical reports and quality monitoring are critical. For Inbound, it is skills based routing, Queue prioritization, IVR and the flexibility of the ACD.
Support
Contact center technology platforms are becoming more complex to manage. With a wide technology frame work involving IP telephony, Web servers, Database servers, networking, and hardware management, an internal team for individual domains will not be economically viable. Therefore your call center software provider should be willing to identify and solve problems in all these domains. It is important to consider redundant setup with high availability to ensure that you can keep your contact center up and running.