Call Center Software Buyer s Guide Call Center Software Buyer's Guide By the purchasing experts at BuyerZone The term call center often conjures up images of hundreds of agents working for huge telemarketing conglomerates. However, that s simply not the case any more. Call center systems have progressed to the point that even small companies with as few as 10 agents can get the same powerful call management features as the big players. These days, companies large and small are upgrading call center systems for sales, customer service, and internal support. This BuyerZone Call Center Software Buyer s Guide is designed to help you evaluate and choose the right call center system for your business. The investment is a big one, so be prepared to spend plenty of time on making sure you choose the right vendor and platform. Why do you want a call center system?...2 Preparing for a call center software purchase...3 Features to consider...4 Hosted vs. local call center solutions...7 How call center systems are sold...9 Evaluating call center providers...10 Call center system pricing...11 Call center buying tips...12 To start, here's a quick look at some common price ranges for call center systems. Note that these are extremely rough estimates: your exact needs will have a huge impact on your actual costs. Type On-premise systems Hosted systems Costs $1,200 to $1,500 per agent for software $300 to $500 per agent for hardware Significant setup fees $50 per agent per month for the most basic systems $300 per agent per month for more comprehensive systems 2009 BuyerZone. All rights reserved. For reprint or excerpt requests, please contact content@buyerzone.com. www.buyerzone.com 1 of 12
Why do you want a call center system? Call Center Software Buyer s Guide Call centers increasingly called contact centers as they incorporate inquires from web, e-mail, and fax sources in addition to phone calls depend on technology. Call center systems provide benefits such as instant routing of important customers to the best agents, reduced hold times, more efficient scheduling of employees, and detailed reporting. One distinction to note is between call center software and customer relationship management (CRM) applications. Call center software manages interactions, helping customers and corporations communicate with each other more efficiently. CRM applications are more focused on collecting and acting on information about your customers. Call center systems can connect to CRM systems to be more effective, but they don t replace them. A modern call center system provides several distinct and important benefits. The three main categories, all of which are interrelated, are: improving customer service, increasing efficiency and reducing costs, and improving management and reporting. Your evaluation will depend on what s most important to you -- if you see a call center as a necessary evil, you ll want to focus on reducing costs. If customer service is a cornerstone of your business philosophy, you ll want to emphasize that aspect in your search. Improve customer service The right call center system can have an immediate impact on customer satisfaction. Reducing hold times, letting callers know how long they ll be waiting, and connecting them to the right agent or department the first time will all improve customers perception of your company. This can be an important differentiator for your business, particularly in highly competitive industries. In addition, customer expectations are higher than ever. They want to get the same service no matter how they contact you phone, email, or web. They expect you to have their information at your fingertips when they call, and if they called about a problem last week, they don t want to explain the situation again. Upgrading can help you meet these expectations and keep customers from getting frustrated. A good call center system works for people who are deaf or have a hearing or speech impediment, as well. This can include a special TTY number or text telephones and text-to-speech technologies. Depending on your customer base, you may also want to consider a system that can manage callers and agents who speak multiple languages. Improve efficiency and reduce costs Depending on the solution you choose, an investment now can reduce your costs almost immediately. You may be able to handle more calls with the same amount of staff, or the same number of calls more efficiently. Despite the hefty price tag for call center hardware and software, the biggest expense in a call center is people. Since improved call handling can shave 10 or 20 seconds off each call, a call center that takes hundreds of calls per day will quickly save hours of valuable time per agent. www.buyerzone.com 2 of 12
Better manage the call center Call Center Software Buyer s Guide Many call centers suffer from a lack of information. You may know how many calls come in per day, but do you know what times of the day are busiest? Which agents have the best time-per-call averages or upsell rates? Or how many callers hang up while in the queue? A call center system can provide a wide variety of reports that give you detailed information, from live statistics on hold times and drop-off rates to yearly overviews of the entire operation. This can allow you to improve your scheduling of agents, reducing under- and over-staffing with their associated costs, and help identify your most successful agents and those who need additional training. What about technology? Some companies approach call center system purchases from a technology angle, instead of one of the business reasons listed above. For example, a company may simply decide that skills-based routing is essential to their call center planning, or growth requires them to upgrade their entire call center. In those cases, there is usually an underlying business need, but the priority is on solving a technology challenge. For example, an upgrade might be driven by the desire to handle an increasing volume of email inquiries the same way you handle phone calls. This still has a business reason behind it: meeting customers expectations of your support processes, and making better use of your call center by integrating email management. If your purchasing decision is being driven purely by technology, we recommend that you consider what business drivers are important in addition to the technology. Recognizing your priorities will help you ask the right questions to narrow your options. Preparing for a call center software purchase Most call center software purchases are for call centers that already have a system in place even if it s a basic business phone system that simply hunts for open lines. Gather some information about your current message flow and call center procedures: How many requests do you handle per month? Where do your requests originate from? (phone, fax, email, web, online chat?) What are your primary calls? (inbound or outbound? sales or service? internal or external?) How many agents handle these calls? In how many locations? What metrics do you currently use to measure performance? What phone system are you currently using are you set up for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP)? What systems will the call center need to connect with (existing phones, databases, CRM, etc.), and will your current software systems interface with the call center software? What s your budget for this purchase? What IT resources are available to help integrate and maintain the system? How will you measure the success of the new system? www.buyerzone.com 3 of 12
Plan for the future Call Center Software Buyer s Guide Answer these questions for your current operations while also considering the future. Think about your needs three to five years from now if you re planning significant growth, you should purchase extra capacity now. A small extra investment now will save you considerable expense later. Ready for VoIP One technology decision you should make is when not whether you re going to switch your telephone system to support VoIP. Voice over IP has moved past the cutting edge into the mainstream, even for essential operations like call centers. Plus, the cost savings are so significant that you simply can t ignore it. Most call center software systems support VoIP some even require it. Knowing where you stand on a VoIP rollout will help frame your discussions with potential vendors, including open source options. Involve the right people Specifying and deciding on call center software requires input from both IT and call center management. One of the surest paths to disaster is to give either one complete control over the decision, minimizing the involvement of the other. Make sure that both are deeply involved in the process from the start and you ll avoid problems down the road. Call center software has such a dramatic impact on your agents day-to-day operations that you should try to include them in your decision making, as well. They don t have to be at every meeting, but having actual agents who try different solutions can give you some unique insight into the pros and cons of the system. Talk to vendors Once you ve gathered the basic data, start talking to potential vendors. Often, they ll ask you questions that will help further refine your requirements. Remember that call center software isn t a commodity or off-the-shelf type of purchase: you won t be buying the standard 25 agent package. Features to consider Before delving into detailed feature descriptions, here are some general considerations you should keep in mind: Timeframe to deploy/integrate Installing and integrating a call center software system can take anywhere from a few weeks to six months or longer. Find out what a typical timeline is for each product you re considering. Ease of use Every provider will tell you their software is easy to use. Try it yourself and see. Are controls clear? Can you get to important information quickly? This question is one that your call center agents can help you evaluate. Flexibility Again, every vendor will tell you their product is flexible and customizable and to some extent, they all are. However, true customization is more than just changing some labels and colors. Find out how well the system can be made to match your existing business processes. www.buyerzone.com 4 of 12
Call Center Software Buyer s Guide Maintenance/administration You ll want to be able to make minor changes to the system and create new reports without placing service calls or depending on your IT staff. Look for a system that lets average staffers learn how to do routine administration and maintenance. Once you understand those key attributes, another part of preparing for your purchase is deciding which specific features are most important to you: reporting, automatic call distribution (ACD), and computer telephony integration (CTI) features can make or break your decision. Doing your homework in advance will make it easier to compare different packages. Automatic call distribution Automatic call distribution is one of the defining characteristics of call center software. ACD uses caller ID information to match an incoming call to your customer database. If a match is found, the call is routed according to which products the customer uses, how much they spend with you, their contract status, or any other piece of information you have about them. You can even specify individual agents who should help particular customers. Advanced ACD applications include conditional routing, which changes call routing based on specific situations. For example, If group A s queue times exceed two minutes, and at least one agent in group B is available, route group A calls to group B until hold times are less than one minute. ACD goes a long way towards increasing customer satisfaction: by connecting customers to the right agent before the line is even picked up, you greatly reduce additional hold times during transfers. You can also improve sales results and reduce call handling times by playing to your agents strengths. Skill-based routing allows you to list each agent s strong points sales, specific products, or technical skills and have callers distributed based on those skills. Reporting options Reporting is probably the single most important feature of a call center solution. There are two types of reporting to look at: real-time information on how your call center is doing right now, and overall reporting on performance over a given time period. In most cases, the pre-packaged reports that come with the system will answer many of your needs. Since call center activity and metrics are fairly consistent across different industries, the software creators have a good sense of what reports are most valuable. However, every company s reporting needs are different, and you may want more specific reports than are available out-of-the-box. For the most flexibility, look for a system that either includes an interface for generating your own custom reports or allows you to export the data to Crystal Reports or other reporting software you might use. www.buyerzone.com 5 of 12
Computer telephony integration CTI Call Center Software Buyer s Guide Computer telephony integration isn t so much a specific feature as it is an integral part of any call center system. The most common CTI feature is screen pops having records from your customer database or CRM system appear on agents screens as they answer each call. It saves valuable time and improves customers impressions of your business. CTI also includes soft phone functionality where agents can use their computer to control phone calls. CTI is one of the most recognizable features of a modern call center. Another popular CTI option is predictive dialing, which takes advantage of the fact that a large number of calls never reach a live person. The computer automatically places calls and only connects them to an agent when someone answers. Busy signals, disconnected phones, and answering machines never waste your agents time. Predictive dialing allows you to place a significantly larger number of calls without hiring a single additional agent. Be careful, though. If your predictive dialer software doesn't place enough calls, agents will sit idle waiting for a call. If the predictive dialer places too many calls, no one will be available to speak with the person who answers the phone. If you're even answered the phone only to hear a recorded message saying, "Please hold the line for the next available agent, you've experienced a predictive dialer failure. Interactive voice response - IVR Interactive voice response (IVR) is another hallmark of modern call center software. While pressing multiple buttons to navigate through automated telephone systems can quickly get annoying, properly designed IVR systems help customers get the information they need while reducing the burden on you call center. If a large percentage of your calls are customers seeking a single piece of information like their current balance or your store hours, IVR can provide them with better service than a live agent. Modern IVR can collect basic customer information while calls are in queue for a live agent. Some include text-to-speech capabilities, allowing you to update messages on the fly without re-recording: you just type in the new messages. If IVR is not included the base package, it can be an expensive add-on, so make sure you ask upfront. Workforce management Real time monitoring can alert supervisors whenever hold times or drop-off rates hit certain thresholds. Call monitoring and recording can be valuable training and evaluation aids or invaluable insurance in case of customer complaints. And scripting capabilities make it easy for staffers to handle multiple situations with the right messages. All of these options are fairly common in call center software make sure you know in advance which are most important to you. Call blending For larger call centers, call blending offers another productivity boost. Call blending allows agents to switch between inbound and outbound calling as call volumes dictate, allowing you to maximize your www.buyerzone.com 6 of 12
Call Center Software Buyer s Guide agents time. Agents can also be assigned to outbound calls only, which is helpful when training new employees, allowing them to master one task at a time. Call blending features can eliminate or greatly reduce their need for ACD software. Setting up call blending is fairly straightforward, but once again requires your input. To start, your provider will need to know your monthly calling volumes as a whole and also the volume broken down by the hour of the day. Auto dialers An auto dialer calls a list of customers in a specific order so you don't have to. This can save lots of time when you need to send out appointment reminders or notify clients of upcoming events. Auto dialers can perform different actions when they reach a live person, a busy signal, or voicemail. If a person picks up, they can even collect feedback by prompting the customer to enter responses using the telephone keypad. Multimedia handling The ability to handle email, web, fax, and chat inquiries along with phone calls is very important to some companies, and barely on the radar for others. Remember that you re planning for the future, so even if electronic inquiries make up a relatively small percentage of your total right now, you should expect that to increase. Well-integrated multimedia handling systems will use agents downtime on the phone to handle other types of inquires and make sure that all questions and orders are tracked and measured in the same detail. Remote access Whether it s a small handful of home workers or an entire team that s scattered across the country, more and more remote workers are contributing to call centers leading to the term virtual call centers for widely distributed groups. Most installations can support remote workers if they have a broadband connection, giving them access to the full functionality of the call center applications. Even if you don't have many offsite employees now, it's still an important feature to obtain up front if it's in your future. Again, if it s important to your business, make sure it is high on your list of vendor questions. Hosted vs. local call center solutions There are two ways call center solutions can be set up. You can choose an in-house setup, where you run the software in your own data center. Alternatively, the software vendor can run the software for you in their data center and connect to your agents through a broadband Internet connection. This remote delivery is referred to as an on-demand, application service provider (ASP), or hosted call center solutions. Hosted call center solutions have made great technological advances in recent years, and so the ASP model has become very popular for various enterprise applications. While some very high-end capabilities may not be available in the hosted model, by and large all the features you ll want are available in both. www.buyerzone.com 7 of 12
Call Center Software Buyer s Guide Local solutions Most business software used today is locally hosted the application runs on a server in your office that your IT staff maintains. This familiar setup, sometimes called a clientserver solution, gives you the greatest control over every aspect of the system. Having this total control can be a drawback, though. It requires a considerable investment in servers and staff you ll need quite a bit of IT expertise to maintain and update the system. If you choose this route, you ll pay a large lump sum up front to buy and set up the system, including software and servers, and usually a small annual fee for access to upgrades and customer support. Hosted solutions In hosted solutions, the application resides on the ASP vendors servers and most of the processing is done there. Calls are delivered over the Internet to your agents desktops using VoIP. The main advantage of hosted call center solutions is how easy it is to get started. With a hosted service, you can get access to enterprise-level features even if you have only a handful of agents. You can add agents any time with just a phone call, and instead of a huge capital investment, you ll pay a much more manageable monthly bill. In addition, hosted vendors offer very robust systems. Multiple layers of firewalls and security, uninterruptible power supplies, fail-over (instant switching from one computer to another in case of a crash), and reliable backups are all standard operating procedures. Together they virtually guarantee that your call center will always be up and running without taxing your internal IT staff. The downside of hosted call center solutions is that no Internet connection works 100% of the time. Your internal network may fail, your ISP may experience an outage, or an Internet worm may cause congestion so even though the hosted call center is running, you could lose access to it. These types of outages are quite rare, but you should be aware that the possibility exists. Which is right for you? Many business executives are more comfortable with in-house solutions. However, next-generation IT staffers who are most familiar with the benefits of hosted solutions are gaining more of a voice in many companies, so the balance is expected to swing towards ASPs in coming years. Here are some areas you should consider: www.buyerzone.com 8 of 12
Call Center Software Buyer s Guide IT staff. If you have in-house IT staff, a client-server solution may be your best option but make sure you involve IT in the purchasing decision. Smaller businesses with little to no computer expertise are probably better off choosing an online solution. Customization. ASPs can easily make basic changes in appearance and functionality, in effect giving you more control over the application than you would get from an internal IT team. However, if you need extensive customization and integration, in-house call center solutions give you the most control and flexibility. Finances. An in-house call center solution requires a large capital investment; a hosted solution does not. For cash-strapped or risk-adverse companies, this alone can make the decision fairly easy. How call center systems are sold When it comes to outfitting a call center, only the largest companies get to take a best of breed approach, choosing the most appropriate components from multiple suppliers, then hiring integrators to tie it all together. Small and medium-sized companies generally turn to full-service telecommunications resellers who offer complete call center systems from multiple manufacturers, or dedicated dealers who specialize in one manufacturer s offerings. These call center systems vendors typically carry integrated hardware and software packages since the call center software is dependent on the phone system hardware. In most cases, you ll be pressured to upgrade your phone system to get access to the software features. Be prepared for this either be open to a phone system upgrade, or be ready to stand your ground and only look for software that can work with your existing phone system. Other providers offer call center systems that are independent of your phone hardware. This is almost always the case for hosted solutions, and some on-site vendors offer call center software that integrates with existing PBX systems or switches. If you go this route, make sure you know which vendor is responsible for integrating the separate systems. While connecting to your phone system can be the tricky part, connecting to your existing databases is generally easier. The vendor you choose will analyze your situation and give you the specifics, but integration with SQL, Oracle, and other popular databases is usually straightforward. Comparing multiple systems Simply checking off features and specifications on a checklist won t give you enough information, so most vendors will show you the software in action. Whether it s in-person or via a web conference, a live demo will give you better sense of the software. Again, try to include someone from IT, the call center manager, and a regular agent in these demonstrations. Online providers will sometimes give you a username and password to log in to a sample account. This gives you the freedom to evaluate the system on your own without a salesman looking over your shoulder. If you're looking to slash costs while you add powerful new communications and call-support capabilities, look into open source solutions. For example, open source call center platforms based on the Asterisk open source PBX are now available from several different sources. Open source solutions can offer the full features of proprietary software at dramatically lower prices. www.buyerzone.com 9 of 12
Evaluating call center providers Call Center Software Buyer s Guide In addition to carefully comparing features and prices, you should take extra care to evaluate potential call center providers on their overall business, not just their product. Call centers are fairly similar across industries, so most call center software providers don t specialize in one particular type of call center. Do look for a vendor with plenty of experience dealing with customers of your size: to get the best service, you ll never want to be the smallest or largest customer in the vendor s portfolio. Look for a company that is stable and successful. Ask how long they ve been in the business, what their long-term plans are, and how they will continue to update your purchase. Industry analysts or market reports can help give you a sense of this. Make sure that the company can support you: if your call center runs 24/7, you ll want their support to be available around the clock as well. And good training will help your agents get the most out of the system right away, so ask what training options are available. Having a trainer come to your call center is preferable, off-site classes are good but can be inconvenient, and canned demos or online courses are easy to access but less effective. Integration of the system with your existing hardware and software is essential. Most call center software providers will quickly assure you that they can integrate with your systems, and that s usually true, but the amount of effort can vary. Ask more detailed questions: have they done projects with databases like yours before? Can your existing phone hardware support all the features of their software? Will they need to install any extra hardware or create custom programs to connect to your customer database? Get and check references of three current customers for any call center software providers you are seriously considering. Ask these types of questions: Overall, how happy are you with your call center software? How long did they tell you it would take to install the system? How long did it actually take? Did the vendor provide adequate training? Does the software do everything they said it would do? How responsive is the vendor when you have problems? How much downtime have you experienced in the last year? If you were starting over, would you work with the same vendor again? What do you like least about the system? If you re dealing with a reseller or value-added reseller, make sure you also evaluate the software companies they are proposing for your system. You want to choose a solution that will continue to be updated and improved look for companies that have demonstrated a commitment to their call center product. www.buyerzone.com 12 10 of
Call center system pricing Call Center Software Buyer s Guide Building call center systems from the ground up is a very expensive proposition. If you re running the software in your own data center, you ll need hardware, phones, and software, as well as staff to run the system. Choosing a hosted solution will reduce your total costs, but will still carry a substantial monthly bill. Keep in mind that as with any major business purchase, you should be considering the total return on investment, not just the initial expense. Many vendors will help you calculate the potential savings you could realize due to better staffing, reduced hold times, and increased upsell rates. Over the long term, you should be confident that the new system will result in a boost for your bottom line before you commit to the expenditure. On-premise (locally hosted) As a very rough guideline, an on-premise system for smaller call centers will range from $1,200 to $1,500 per agent for the software alone. If you choose to include new telephone hardware, add another $300 to $500 per agent. Keep in mind that systems are not usually priced per agent like this, but it can give you a sense of what you might expect to pay. Prices go up as you increase the scope of your operation. Equipping a new call center for 50 to 100 agents from scratch can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. You ll almost always have an installation or setup fee that can be as high as $25,000 for a large call center. Fees that large include training and integration work. Other vendors may charge much smaller setup fees, but charge separately for training and integration. Also factor an annual support or maintenance fee of between 10% and 20% in your budgeting as well. This cost includes additional development and software upgrades, as well as gives you access to technical support. Make sure that all the costs are broken out for you. It ll be much easier to compare multiple vendors when you can consider each portion of the fee separately. If you re buying telephone hardware in addition to the call center software, consider leasing. You ll be able to spread your payments over time and potentially buy the equipment at the end of the term for a token fee. Even if you re not leasing, you may be able to spread the payments over time: when you re spending tens of thousands of dollars with a vendor, they re likely to be flexible in developing payment plans. Hosted Pricing for hosted solutions is quite different. You ll pay a monthly fee for each user that can range from as low as $50 for basic CRM functions to as high as $300 for a more comprehensive solution. The per-agent fee will drop as you add more users and as you increase the length of your contract. In a hosted solution, make sure you ask whether your licenses are for named users or concurrent users. Concurrent user licenses are more expensive, but you ll only have to pay for the total number of licenses in use at any one time, instead of paying for each user of the software. If you run a multiple shift call center, you can slash your costs with concurrent user licenses. www.buyerzone.com 12 11 of
Call Center Software Buyer s Guide The largest call centers cancel out the cost advantages of a hosted solution: at around 200 agents, an on-premise solution becomes a more economical choice in terms as short as one year. Call center buying tips Get ready for VoIP. If your business has multiple offices, switching to VoIP is probably already on your mind. A call center upgrade can be the incentive you need to get it done. Take a test drive. If you re not sure a new call center system will help you, or if you just want to test the hosted model, don t be afraid to sign up a couple of agents for a short-term hosted solution. You ll be able to evaluate both the performance of the system and the hosted model. Don t overdo the prompts. According to Call Center Magazine, IVR systems should have no more than four options on each menu to keep customers from getting confused, and no more than two menus in total. More than that and you ll start losing calls. And always include a way to reach a live agent at any point. Think distributed. Some businesses are using call center software to create virtual call centers. No physical center is needed: instead, the system connects callers to employees in different locations across the country or even the world. This can save money and provide better customer service. Longevity matters. If your organization plans to be around for the long run, go with a solutions provider that has demonstrated its staying power with a proven track record. www.buyerzone.com 12 12 of