A study of over 200 US contact center operations has found that contact centers are being held back from adopting hosted solutions by inertia and misplaced concerns about the need to replace existing equipment.

“The US Contact Center Operational Review”, sponsored by Intelemedia, looks in depth at salaries, attrition, training, multimedia, IP, self-service, strategies, outsourcing, planning and many other elements that are key to understanding how contact centers can best be run. Amongst other areas, the report explores in-depth how contact centers are using hosted solutions within their operations.  A free copy of the study can be obtained by visiting www.intelemedia.com.

Building an effective contact center can be very expensive due to the capital expenditure required to purchase, install and integrate client premises-based technology (CPE). There has been a genuine alternative to the traditional approach of purchasing and managing CPE for a few years, but a large proportion of the industry is either unaware or misinformed of the abilities of network-based or hosted solutions, due in part to somewhat-understated marketing by the solution providers themselves.

The target audience and the overall market share these providers have secured have been growing rapidly, fueled in large part by the effectiveness these solutions have had the opportunity to prove. However, much confusion remains about the potential advantages or even the exact nature of the various non-CPE solutions. Put simply, a service provider owns and operates a contact center technology platform and leases its services and features to end-users for a monthly or usage-based fee.

The research suggests that the biggest negative issue around hosted solutions has nothing to do with any concern around cost or effectiveness, but rather a feeling that it is difficult to justify replacing the current technology in place. There is a common misunderstanding within the industry that the choice is either CPE or a hosted/network solution. Where expansion is required, superior hosted/network solutions can be easily integrated into existing CPE ancillary systems, allowing the business to experience the functionality and advantages of a hosted solution without compromising existing investment. From a financial perspective, most hosted solution functionality is paid for as an ongoing operating cost, rather than requiring an upfront major investment: this should make it easier for contact center management to persuade the budget-holder to upgrade the systems in place.

Around one-third of respondents feel that although their existing functionality could perhaps be bettered by a hosted solution, they feel that there would be too much upheaval involved in moving away from their existing system. Businesses should certainly make sure that their proposed supplier of hosted solutions has the resources to assist a quick and smooth changeover before committing to a new way of operating, as well as guaranteeing support service levels. Medium-sized contact centers are most likely to feel that moving to a hosted solution is more effort than it’s worth.

“Loss of control” is quoted as the third most important reason for not choosing a hosted solution, and is linked with the perceived inability to alter or fix issues as quickly as is necessary. While this has been a negative in the past, new hosted solutions allow the enterprise to control the application themselves and receive real-time management information about what is going on in the network. Large contact centers - which may have had negative experiences with this before - are most likely to have concerns around ceding control. 

Table 1: Perceived problems with using hosted solutions

Whether delivered by customer premise equipment (CPE) solutions, by hosted or network systems, or a mixture of both, enterprises always demand control, choice and intelligence in a financial framework that is acceptable. Hosted solutions offer businesses the opportunity to deal with operating costs rather than capital expenditure which will always get a positive hearing at the budget-holder level of a business.

The bottom line is that a successful hosted/network solution should offer everything a business could achieve with CPE, but yet be available on a pay-per-use or pay-as you-talk basis (per minute or second / call / month, etc), be scalable and reliable, and offer easily-added functionality if required.

About Intelemedia

Intelemedia Communications helps call centers manage internal resources while improving the caller’s experience by delivering IP based, customizable solutions that combine automatic call distribution (ACD) with speech recognition, interactive voice response (IVR), and other common call center technologies (call recording, agent scripting, CTI, etc.) into one easily-deployed application. You get a user friendly interface for managing agents, the ability to quickly change your route plans, standard and custom reports that you can use to make critical business decisions, agent scripting engines that increase efficiency and much more. For more information about Intelemedia’s powerful call center solutions, call 1-800-300-2150 or go to www.intelemedia.com.

About the US Contact Center Operational Review

A 250-page online report, “The US Contact Center Operational Review" looks in depth at salaries, attrition, training, multimedia, IP, self-service, strategies, outsourcing, planning and many other elements that are key to understanding how contact centers can best be run.

Displayed in over 200 data tables, the results have been segmented by industry sector and contact center size, so that readers can compare their own operations with those that are most similar. The report, researched and authored by the industry analysts, ContactBabel, is entirely free and can be downloaded from www.contactbabel.com.