In this series we discuss the process of acquiring new technology for your contact centre, and provide some suggestions to ensure a successful project.

This article is the fourth in the series.

Selecting a Solution and Vendor

It is often not realised that selecting a solution and selecting a vendor are quite different. Consider buying a new car – the process is often to select the preferred vehicle first, then select the dealer based on a combination of the dealer’s personality, price, showroom appearance, locality or a variety of other reasons.

A similar solution exists when choosing new contact centre technology. There are numerous solutions that are likely to meet your needs to different degrees, and there are usually different dealers that can sell each of the solutions – sometimes a dealer can sell multiple solutions.

When you issue a tender to the market, a variety of things can happen:

• A vendor may select the solution they think will best suit you, or the solution that provides them with the most margin to present to you.
• You may get multiple vendors presenting the same solution.
• You may not be presented some solutions that are very suitable to your needs.
• You may be presented a solution that you like, by a vendor that you don’t like.
• You have to base your decision on what is presented to you – you have little visibility of how that vendor or solution has performed in the past.

All of this adds up to a very confusing situation, particularly as this kind of technology is usually quite expensive.

Wouldn’t it be great to have access to someone who has insight into the past performance of different dealers, and the degree of backing and support provided by the vendors? This would also reduce the risk associated with a significant project such as the replacement of a phone system.

What if they also had an understanding of the different solutions in the market, and could recommend a short list of suppliers and solutions to reduce the time required to evaluate the different offerings.

Using an external, independent advisor (such as Contact Centre Action) significantly increases the likelihood that you will select the right solution from the right vendor, and that solution will be installed with minimal problems in the shortest possible time. While not always obvious in the beginning this can save you many thousands of dollars over the course of the project.

Remember that, similar to a car purchase, the purchase of a phone system commences a relationship with a vendor that is likely to last five years or more. It is important to get that decision right in the first place.

For more information please email spels@ccaction.com.au or call +61 3 8648 6577.

www.ccaction.com.au

In this series we discuss the process of acquiring new technology for your contact centre, and provide some suggestions to ensure a successful project.

This article is the third in the series.

Types of Solution Available

Along with choosing a solution and a vendor that will meet your needs, choosing the appropriate technical architecture is also critical.

You need to assess various considerations, including:

• Would you prefer the solution to be financed by capital or operational expense?
• Do you require flexibility in the size of the solution – do you experience significant peaks and troughs?
• What is the architecture of your existing IT solutions?
• What are the capabilities of your current IT staff?
• What are your business continuity or disaster recovery requirements?
• Are your requirements likely to change in the short to medium term?
• Are you anticipating significant growth?
• How many sites do you have?

The answers to these questions will go some of the way to determining which solution architecture will best suit your needs. There are three main architectures available (plus various combinations of all three).

The first is the traditional Customer Premise-based Equipment (CPE). In this case you buy the solution you require (capital expense) and install the physical hardware and software on your premises. You are entirely responsible for the provision of the physical environment, security, arranging maintenance and upgrades as well as the day-to-day operation and management. The size is relatively fixed and limited by the licences you purchase. If you require redundancy you need to provision a second system for business continuity and disaster recovery.

The second is a hosted solution. Very similar to the CPE solution, but in a facilities-managed data centre. The difference here is that the data centre provider is responsible for the physical environment. The cost can also be an operational expense, but is still largely a fixed cost.

The third alternative is a cloud-based solution. This solution is also physically located away from the customer premises, but whereas the hosted solution is installed in a single data centre, the cloud-based solution is often located in multiple data centres and the load is shared across the centres. This provides an additional level of redundancy because if one data centre fails the load should be distributed across the remaining data centres. It is also very easy to scale up and down because the hardware and software resources are shared amongst all customers – there is no concept of licensing individual users or ports. It is purely operational expense and you only pay for what you use – on a per-call, per agent, per agent/hour, per IVR second or similar basis. While you gain additional elasticity to handle peaks, and the system is always maintained at the latest version, you do lose some control over when upgrades and changes are made as the timing has to suit all users of the system.

A managed service (sometimes referred to as a private cloud) is more a management option than a technical option. While there are a number of different definitions, the most common is fully premise-based equipment (same as the first option above) that is owned and managed by the technology vendor and charged on a monthly operational expense basis.

Some companies also deploy hybrid solutions to reduce the size of the links from premise to the data centre. In this case the components that handle the voice paths (and the carrier trunks) are located on the client premises, but the application servers (the “brains” of the system) are located in a remote data centre.

The best design for you will depend on many factors, so ensure the vendor’s solution architects work with your IT team to design the most appropriate solution.

For more information please email spels@ccaction.com.au or call +61 3 8648 6577.

www.ccaction.com.au

In this series we discuss the process of acquiring new technology for your contact centre, and provide some suggestions to ensure a successful project.

This article is the second in the series.

Going to Market – The Tender or Proposal Process

There are effectively two different processes to use when going to market for a new technology solution. The first is a Request for Tender (RFT) and the second is a Request for Proposal (RFP). An RFT can be used by anyone, but is mostly used by Government departments and large corporations. An RFP is more frequently used by smaller organisations.

So what is the difference?

An RFT is more formal with very prescriptive processes and extensive compliance requirements relating to the response. An RFP is less formal and allows more collaboration between prospective vendors and the purchaser in evaluating the different solutions.

An RFT is used where it is necessary for a company to be able to demonstrate its processes were fair and objective, and did not unfairly advantage or disadvantage any one supplier. Because it is more prescriptive there is less opportunity for the purchaser to ask additional questions or seek clarification of responses, and less opportunity for the vendor to provide additional information that may assist in their response.

An RFP allows less formal interaction between vendor and purchaser, which facilitates the exchange of information and allows purchasers to explore functionality that might be most relevant to them. It often results in a better, more appropriate solution for the purchaser but can make claims of favouritism harder to defend.

Another key consideration is deciding which vendors to send the RFT or RFP to. Some companies have a policy of always using an open tender – this often means the existence of an RFT/RFP is advertised in the newspaper and the documents are available to anyone to lodge a response. This will often result in a large number of responses that require evaluation, including the same solution from multiple vendors or resellers. However, it is a better alternative if you are not sure which vendors are in the market or which solutions are available.

Some companies use a Request for Information (RFI) step to do a very high level cull of prospective vendors, then follow up with an RFP or RFT. There is little benefit in doing this because the requirements are specified at a high level with little granularity (otherwise it would be an RFT or RFP – not an RFI). This effectively means that most vendors will be able to meet those high level requirements, resulting in very few vendors being eliminated at this stage (remember – the differences between solutions is often in the detail). The other differential is price – and an RFI really doesn’t give vendors enough information to provide even a budgetary estimate on price. Because of this there is a real danger of a strong vendor being eliminated at this point because they have been honest (or provided a worst-case scenario) in relation to price. Another vendor may have provided a very low price just to get to the next stage.

The other alternative is to put out a ‘closed’ tender – only send the tender to a small number of vendors to respond to. This requires an understanding of the vendors and solutions in the market but usually results in a lot less work to evaluate the responses.

Consider engaging professional assistance that is independent and had no commercial links to any technology vendor. Engage someone who has a view of the solutions and vendors in the market, and can advise which are likely to be able to meet your requirements.

For more information please email spels@ccaction.com.au or call +61 3 8648 6577.

www.ccaction.com.au

In this series we discuss the process of acquiring new technology for your contact centre, and provide some suggestions to ensure a successful project.

This article is the first in the series.

 

Business Requirements.

The first step in acquiring new technology is to thoroughly understand the requirements of the contact centre. As obvious as it may sound, it is quite difficult to get right as often the current processes and procedures are viewed as the business requirements, whereas they may have been designed to overcome shortcomings with current technology. This involves objectively assessing ideal work practices, as well as additional functionality that has become available in the market. When you are close to the processes it is very easy to fall into the trap of believing the current process is the best process and the new technology has to enhance this. In reality, it is a good opportunity for a ‘spring clean’ – getting rid of old, redundant processes and implementing a better way of doing things.

It is actually surprising how many contact centre executives don’t actually understand their own processes – or appreciate there are often better processes available. It is here that an independent opinion can assist – someone who has seen ‘best practice’ in other companies and can assist to implement changes that best suit your business.

Business requirements don’t just apply to today’s environment – you need to cast your eyes forward and consider how the company may change, as well as how the competitive environment may change. We have all seen the explosion of social media, but how many companies are using it well, and how many have technology to treat social media as another customer service channel? What is going to be the next ‘big thing’ in the contact centre or customer service environment.

Contact centre technology typically lasts longer than five years when properly maintained and upgraded. Getting the initial decision wrong means either more cost to replace the technology early or substandard customer service and lower profits because of the functionality limitations of your technology.

Business requirements also includes technology requirements, and this is where you require the input of your IT department. What is your Standard Operating Environment? What is the strategic direction of your IT department? Is there a preference for on-premise, hosted or cloud? What will the new system have to integrate with? The new contact centre technology has to compliment and enhance the existing IT environment.

Lastly, involve your customers. What do they think of your service & how should it be improved? Your opinion of your service is unlikely to match your customer’s opinion, and in the end it is the customer that counts! If you conduct customer satisfaction surveys, include findings from this in your requirements. If not, find out what other contact centres are doing and what customers expect in other industries.

Technology is expensive and it pays to get the requirements right from the beginning. Whichever technology you choose has to support your customer’s present and future needs as well as your present and future business needs.

 

For more information please email spels@ccaction.com.au or call +61 3 8648 6577.

www.ccaction.com.au

Many articles I have read and presentations I have been to recently are claiming that, for a business to survive they have to offer more than just the voice channel for interactions with their customers. This is usually justified by statistics illustrating how social media usage has taken off across all age groups, and the infamous Generation Y only want to use non-verbal communication channels. Anyone with teenage children can relate to this!

How much of the data presented can be actually attributable to the end customer? In other words, how many consumers are surveyed to find out how they would like to deal with the companies they are customers of?

The implication that every contact centre has to offer their customers the ability to interact with them via phone, and email, and web chat, and SMS, and social media, and a custom-built smart phone app is simply not correct. [Read more…]

Anyone reading the newspapers in Australia may be concerned about the economy in the short to medium term.

The press constantly reminds us that overseas orders for Australian resources have fallen, the exchange rate against the US$ has dropped (is that a bad thing), interest rates are dropping indicating Reserve Bank concern, and unemployment has risen slightly.

Interestingly, in our experience, contact centres are investing in new technology which indicates quite an optimistic outlook. [Read more…]