Evaluating Contact Centre Solutions: Discover how to select the best option for your contact centre project

A contact center is something that a business needs for handling customer interaction and managing relationship. In fact, these days, it is not possible to handle customer calls, orders, complaints and services effectively and efficiently without a contact center equipped with an adequate solution. Therefore, most customer-centric organisations are setting up or enhancing their existing contact center set-ups.
Getting a contact center solution is one thing, but getting one that can deliver timely results, make your team productive and reduce your cost of service delivery is another matter altogether. Imagine if the contact center solution was a box like a CD player or a multimedia projector. Life would then be so much simpler because one could go out and get one from the best known manufacturer and start getting the results.
The reality, however, is that a contact center solution is not a black box. It is a combined and integrated package that is made up of key areas such as technology, business software applications, capabilities and knowledge set from an experienced provider. If any of these key ingredients are missing or weak, then the desired objectives and results cannot be achieved.
In order to successfully deliver the timely results for the management and your customers, a contact center solution must have the best ingredients including reliable and proven communication technology layer, a flexible suite of business applications that can be tailored and expanded frequently in a short duration, the availability of software customisation team that can fulfil frequent change requests and a committed and experienced solution provider that holds a proven and undisputed track record of performance. By keeping a close watch on these factors in your evaluation phase, you can be sure of getting the results that match your expectations.
The evaluation phase
Proven best practices suggest that the evaluation of a contact center solution can be divided in two key areas. The first area covers the evaluation of the available contact center technology solution and the other evaluates the merits and strengths of the solution provider that is offering the solution.
1. Evaluating the solution
In this phase, the evaluation team looks into the areas that are directly responsible in the day to day operations and results of the contact center. These include the technology architecture and solution and design, the customisation provision available and the installed base of the offered solution in your market.
For the solution design and technology architecture, in-depth questions need to be answered like is the complete solution based on components from a single company or is it a mix-and-match of sub-solutions from 3, 4 or more providers. In case of a multi-vendor component based solution, how tightly are the components from various vendors integrated with each other and what happens to the other pieces and overall functionality if one vendor releases upgrade for its component?
There have been cases in the market, where in a multi-vendor component based solution, one of the component maker announced discontinuation of the component and released a newer version that in fact could not work with the other installed components, forcing the contact center owner to invest a whole lot of money and time to just keep operating.
The next area is the provision of application software customisation in the solution that is being evaluated. As a contact center needs to deal with changing market dynamics, the solution often requires frequent additions and modifications in the functionality and integrations. The evaluation team needs to explore to what extent the solution components can be customised and how frequent modification requests are managed. Where would the customisation work take place and what would be the turnaround time approximations. In case of multi-vendor component based solution, how many parties are involved in each cycle of modifications and what type of availability of skills is there.
Finally both of the above areas need to be confirmed by independently checking with actual sites that have been using the same offered solution configuration for at least a couple of years and have successfully been through various cycles of modification phases with complete satisfaction.
2. Evaluating the solution provider
This phase of evaluation is as important as the underlying technology, if not more. It is a well known fact that even the best equipment can still fail to deliver results if the local provider behind the solution is only a reseller that does not add any intelligence and real value in the technology solution. Therefore, it is necessary for the prospect buyer of contact center to evaluate merits and strengths of the solution provider in the areas of provider's experience with the offered brands and technology, the level of technical ownership and result delivery and the offered service model.
For the provider's experience evaluation, you should find out that for how long has this provider been engaged with the offered solution, brand and technology. Is the provider offering the configuration or the underlying components for the first time and you will be a testing ground? Was the provider offering other brands and models that they have now discarded or abandoned by moving to other platforms, brands or versions. Find out the underlying reasons and judge the merits. This has happened at many companies in this region and the horror stories are well known. It is important to independently check with the sites where the provider was previously engaged and not simply accept the vendor's claim.
In order to evaluate the level of technical ownership and result delivering capabilities of the solution provider, you should be prepared to ask tough questions such as does the provider have an in-house team of developers readily available to handle feature customisation? How large is the team and has the same team delivered timely results at other sites? How easy would it be to have direct meetings with the key solution developers and how frequent. Again, getting references of the sites that have gone through this cycle and checking them independently will help you in judging this important area.
And last, but not the least is the evaluation of service model offered by the provider. The key questions for this area should include things like who is responsible for providing support of the various features of the solution. Will the provider be providing support directly or will they simple forward the support request to remote regional or head office of the maker of the said components. How many parties will be eventually involved in second and third level of support of all components? What are the experiences of other companies with the offered model of support?
A word of caution
Having faith in big and glamorous global brands is one thing, but having a blind faith on the entire project simply on the basis of the reputation of the provider of one of the component may result in painful surprises along with loss of time and investment of your business. Industry experiences show that technologies and solutions that may be the successful in other regions but cannot be quickly adjusted, modified and timely supported by the local dealer for your particular project will not be able to deliver required results for your business, no matter how big the brand of the underlying components may be!
Brand hype and glamour aside, there is just no alternative for on-the-ground reality applicable for your region and your business sector. The previous performance of the solution and the provider can pretty much give you a clear indication of a safe bet. If you are going to recommend to your management a solution requiring serious investment, you will be putting your reputation and your standing on the line. You will be known in the market for the eventual outcome of your initiative and it will be a matter of great pride, professional achievement and personal satisfaction to be associated with a project that turned out to be a successful endeavour.
(Ms Nazish Kanwal is a marketing specialist working for ZRG International. ZRG has delivered successful contact center and CRM projects to over 50 prestigious organisations in sectors such as Banking, Telecommunication, Insurance, Shipping, Energy and Media, including sixteen leading financial service organisations and seven large-size telecom service providers in the markets of Gulf, Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh. She can be contacted at info@zrg.com)