Outbound Call Center Featured Article

Hosted Contact Center Solutions Deliver True and Measurable Value

Just how important is social CRM in today’s market? The presence of this platform is strong enough to demand a colocation with this year’s ITEXPO (News - Alert) West 2010 that took place in Los Angeles earlier this week. 

One panel that took place during this event was conducted by David Van Everen, VP of Product Management for Five9 (News - Alert). Entitled, “Hosted Contact Center Solutions,” this panel covered the advantages of hosted contact centers; real-world TCO results; and how to evaluate hosted solutions. 

The first important point from this panel was that Social CRM is not just hype as cloud computing delivers real TCO results. And, when selecting call center software, it is important that decision makers ask two specific questions: why buy hardware and why install software. When hardware is purchased, the equipment and extra IT staff needed represent 6 percent of the hardware-related costs. If the company has multiple sites, they will have to buy the hardware for each location. If software is installed, there are huge capital outlays, high deployment costs, no seasonal flexibility and high maintenance fees. 

Hosted solutions truly deliver a lower TCO simply because there are no additional hardware costs; no additional IT resources are necessary; resources are virtualized, which delivers a cost savings; and on-demand service offers usage-based license costs, which saves a significant amount of money for seasonal businesses. While these benefits are certainly meaningful, they are not the only advantages to the company. 

Hosted solutions also allow users to access the software more easily; managers have greater operational insight; companies can provide better customer service and support; and businesses can adapt faster to change than their competitors. Vonage (News - Alert) is one company that needed to put hosted solutions to the test. 
The challenge for the company was that they needed to implement a robust call center quickly for customer retention, revenue assurance and technical support. The company also needed to align outbound capabilities with marketing campaigns and the selected solution needed to be easy to use and manage. The results of the hosted solution implemented for Vonage were very strong. The company achieved aggressive win-back and customer satisfaction goals; implemented a flexible and cost-effective call center; and deployed the solution in just four days.

Before a company should make any changes in their software or computing processes, there are specific questions they must ask: is it reliable? Is it secure? Is it scalable? Is it flexible? Is it easy to use? Is it well-supported? Can I trust the vendor like I trust my own employees? If the answers are all yes, it is assured the hosted solution will deliver what the company needs for success.

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Juliana Kenny