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It’s true for any major investment in new technology: The time to ask questions is before you buy, not afterward. Whether you’re creating a first-time call center, switching your existing center from analog to VoIP, or considering outsourcing some or all of your call-center functionality, look before you leap. The following checklist is a good way to start planning your move. Most vendors will need to know the answers to at least some, if not all, of these questions in order to make a reasonable recommendation — whether they’re selling you an on-premise system or a hosted alternative.
-- Are you primarily interested in an in-house call center, a virtual call center or a hosted/outsourced call center? If your company prefers to keep life simple and can aff ord to pay for a hosted/outsourced solution, by all means go ahead and look into contracting a call-center host to take over your system. Some hosted solutions claim to handle 100 million calls per year with fully automated, state-of-the-art callcenter equipment and custom software. One of the biggest benefits of outsourcing your call center is that most hosts implement high data security and data redundancy to ensure full service 24/7, 365 days per year. Of course, running your own call-center operation, whether it’s entirely on-site or a virtual system, gives you greater control and flexibility.
-- What is your estimated number of calls per month? Break the numbers down into incoming and outgoing calls, and characterize each set of calls as to its purpose. Sales? Tech support? Telemarketing?
-- How many employees work for your organization? Also, if you’re already running a call center, how many agents are currently on staff?
-- Will your company be in growth mode over the next five years?
-- How quickly are you looking to deploy a call-center solution? Setting up a hosted/outsourced call center is fast, especially if you hire one of the more experienced companies with large numbers of agent seats. Of course, it’s possible to start with a hosted center and cross-fade to an onpremise center as equipment, software and personnel become available.
-- Do you have the in-house IT resources to support an on-premise solution? For customers, dealing with any voice-mail system can be harrowing. Dealing with a voice-mail system that’s not working properly is unbearable. To avoid disconnecting callers or routing them to dead-end locations, your IT staff needs to be fully trained and qualified to manage a VoIP call center.
-- What degree of customization are you expecting from a call center application? On-premise solutions tend to be more easily customizable than outsourced or hosted solutions where, all too often, one size fits all. If, for instance, you need tech support but no telemarketing, you shouldn’t have to pay for telemarketing capability that you’ll never use.
-- Are security safeguards in place to safely manage your in-house data center? This is one area where outsourcing your call center could be worth the money. VoIP runs on the same network where your confidential data ( such as customer records and proprietary technology) resides, which means that a high level of security (wired, wireless or personal) is a must. If an IT security staff is already on the job, you’re good to go with an on-site center, but if you can’t answer “yes” to the question at the head of this paragraph, hiring a host that deploys a full set of security safeguards might be the smartest move your company makes this year.
-- How might you benefit from monitoring your call-center agents? Most call-center systems include a powerful set of reporting capabilities. If you know, going in, what sort of information you need, it will help you select the right package.
-- How could you benefit from a geographically diverse callcenter staff ? One of the key benefits that a VoIP call center brings to the table is the ability to create a virtual center, one in which your agents may be spread across a far-flung constellation of cities, states or even countries. Among other benefits, a virtual call center means 24-hour availability without paying overtime, as well as cost savings from hiring agents abroad.
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