Attention : Is Your Call Center Ready for a Disaster?

Hosted contact center solutions help to insulate small to medium-sized businesses from disruptions – and offer additional benefits as well.

Hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, storms, power outages, terrorist threats … you never know when or how your business might be disrupted. But you do know that you must have a business continuity plan because customers don’t stop calling and e-mailing when you have an outage. In fact, volumes may increase. Your agents need to be available to customers. One negative experience with your company and you could lose that customer forever. Add the average number of customer contacts you have in a given time period and it is easy to see how quickly the damage to your business can multiply with any outage.

Large companies with established national or global operations typically have the resources to create redundant systems to overcome a local or even regional outage. If there is an outage or problem at one location, contacts are simply routed to the other open sites. However, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) typically don’t have the resources to build comprehensive disaster recovery plans and are left with few options other than rebuilding the system as quickly as possible.

Hosted contact centers to the rescue

Hosted contact center solutions provide SMBs with a cost-effective and reliable solution that minimizes business risks during an emergency by enabling agents to work from virtually anywhere. The latest hosted solutions require only a web browser, phone and internet access to provide the same complete contact center functionality as if the agents were actually on-site. Because all software and hardware are housed off-premise in a secure hosting facility, the “contact center” can continue to operate without disruption.

In fact, a hosted contact center can provide even greater flexibility and security than redundant physical contact centers. For instance, even if a company with multiple contact centers were able to re-route incoming contacts to one of their other centers, the remaining locations may not be able to handle the increased volumes or have the proper training to adequately handle the re-directed calls. A hosted solution enables you to automatically route communications to available agents wherever they might be. And if employees did have to be evacuated, re-establishing operations is quick and inexpensive, since agents only need a web browser, a phone, and access to the internet. This makes nearly any home or hotel a potential temporary outpost. The end result is the business continuity that your bottom line and customers require.

A virtual contact center for real-world events – and a global economy

Because the hosted solution places the hub of the contact center outside of the organization, it makes the virtual contact center a reality. By strategically locating agents in geographically diverse locations, you can dramatically reduce the impact any single event could have on the business. Far greater than even multiple contact centers, this can make the business nearly immune to local outages or disasters.

Fine Art By Hyatt is one company that can testify to the advantages of a hosted solution in an emergency. When Fine Art By Hyatt made their original decision to go with a hosted solution from Cincom Systems, Inc., a lot of factors other than emergency preparedness entered into the equation. However, when Hurricane Wilma stormed ashore less than 20 miles from the company headquarters in Naples, Florida, this ability moved to center stage. Larry Block, president of Fine Art By Hyatt, says “our agents in the Midwest and western states were able to cover the phones while we were covering our heads to protect from Wilma. We never missed a beat as far as taking customer orders was concerned!”

Under non-emergency conditions, a hosted solution can provide unmatched scheduling flexibility for agents and managers. It enables the business to employ the best agents available worldwide – creating a virtual contact center for businesses of any size.

The flexibility of hosted solutions also offers advantages during call spikes. Because no special hardware or software is required, you can quickly engage non-contact-center personnel to take customer calls. In essence, your entire organization can become a pool of backup agents for unforeseen load conditions.

The importance of multi-channel capability

A key component in the success of hosted solutions when addressing business continuity planning is the ability to integrate multiple channels. For example, if your customers’ phones are out of service due to an outage, they will try to utilize other channels of communication, such as e-mail, until they reach you. During Hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 attack, this situation became reality as millions of telephone lines and cell phones were inoperable; yet e-mails could be sent from many locations. The ability to substitute contact channels proved vital in this situation.

Also, if your business involves utilities, certain government agencies, and other organizations, call volumes are likely to increase during emergencies. The ability to direct customers to alternative communication channels that are operational or to agents located outside the affected area could be critical. Today's hosted solutions make all of this possible.

Hosted contact centers on the rise

The business continuity and global business advantages of today's hosted contact center solutions haven't gone unnoticed by businesses. According to Datamonitor, hosted contact centers will be the fastest-growing sector of the market, and by 2008, will account for 38 percent of the global market. Additionally, DMG Consulting reports that by 2007, 20 percent to 30 percent of all new contact center seats will be hosted. By providing an economical and viable alternative to the on-premise contact center, a hosted solution enables SMBs to establish business continuity capabilities and global customer service that was previously not feasible. The end result is a leveling of the playing field for SMBs and minimized exposure in the event of a disaster.

Key business continuity advantages of hosted contact center solutions

Some of the key benefits of the best hosted contact center solutions in a business continuity plan include:

• Agents anywhere – Agents and other knowledge workers can log in remotely and receive phone, e-mail, chat, and fax interactions.
• Minimal capital outlay with no hardware or software investments - Typically a simple monthly per-seat licensing.
• Inherent security with off-premise hosting that places your contact center infrastructure in a secure, redundant location.
• Eliminates the expense and time-consuming process of buying, installing, and maintaining a backup site.
• Quick, simple, and inexpensive relocation with only a web browser, a phone, and access to the internet required.
• Enables non-contact-center personnel to take customer calls as backup agents to accommodate unforeseen load conditions.

By Randy Saunders

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What to Look for When Selecting a Hosted Contact Center Solution

According to Datamonitor, by 2008, the global market for managed and hosted contact center services will have more than doubled, reaching a value of more than $5 billion. So the odds are good that if you haven’t already implemented a hosted solution in your contact center, that you will soon.

But once you make the decision to implement a hosted solution, finding the right service provider is critical. What should you look for? Here are five areas to investigate:

1. Experience and capabilities

The vendor’s ability to provide a complete solution is as important as its ability to execute the solution.

• A service provider offering a hosted solution should deliver a full, robust suite designed for the hosting environment. It should include advanced analytics that track and measure all elements of the contact center at both an operational and business level, interaction channels with universal queue, and an agent desktop that provides a universal view of the customer.

• Companies can gain insight into the capabilities and support the company provides by checking customer and partner references.

• Most importantly, companies must understand the hosting infrastructure.

2. Functionality and security

As the demand for hosted solutions rises, traditional vendors have begun to retrofit their premise solutions to offer them as a service. The buyer should be cautious of these solutions, as they may not have the same benefits as a solution that was built to be both hosted and on-premise. Understanding the functionality of a hosted solution is key to understanding the vendor’s ability to customize, integrate, and provide security for your existing resources.

• A multi-tenant architecture can improve the operation of a hosted solution. It is an inexpensive and comprehensive method of providing a shared architecture down to the last table. With a multi-tenant architecture, multiple clients with distinct needs, tools, processes, customizations, and workflow can all reside in the same infrastructure – each with its own completely separate, completely unique set of processes.

• A Net-Native Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) solution can eliminate the need for client/server applications on user desktops. Additionally, it utilizes the internet as a global delivery system for maximum uptime and flexibility while ensuring full security.

• Integration should use a common platform based on open standards. This easy-to-program, goes-anywhere framework can summarize data from any system (transactions, interactions) and transmit it to agents using a single, web-based interface.

• Secure data transmission is also very important. Solutions should provide best-of-breed hardware, redundant firewalls, restrictive internet protocols, good authentication, and secure virtual private network (VPN) lines between the client and the service provider. With the multi-tenant architecture, core tenants of the security framework for hosting keep everything separate.

3. Scalability and flexibility

Having a hosted solution that can grow with your business is critical to long-range success and a long-term partnership with the service provider.

• The solution needs to be flexible and customizable to your business. The ability to configure and adjust communication channels, workflows, processes, knowledge and application access, desktop presentation, and configurations are all critical.

• A hosted solution should also offer a variety of deployment and financing options. Purchase a license and let the service provider manage the logistics and infrastructure for you, or start with a hosted version and confirm that it works for your business before investing in a licensed version. Or stay with the hosted model indefinitely.

4. Processing speed and availability

As hosted solutions physically reside outside the user’s network, companies should ensure that the service provider is able to meet processing-speed and availability requirements.

• The service provider should have a commitment to meet service-level agreements and the solution architecture and infrastructure to do so.

• To ensure redundancy, the service provider should have multiple data carriers.

• The internet service provider must provide adequate bandwidth, as well as meet latency and reliability requirements.

5. Feedback and measurement

Business intelligence functionality provides the insight necessary for managers to make informed business decisions. Thus, analytical functionality has transitioned from being a luxury to being a necessity for decision-makers in the enterprise.

• The hosted solution should provide real-time or near-real-time reporting that provides managers with immediate access to logical and intuitive reports based on the company’s operations.

• Flexibility in the controls of data manipulation is also important. Not only should the vendor offer standard reports, but it should also give managers the capability of creating custom reports that meet specific needs. Companies should look for online analytical processing (OLAP) capabilities that allow business users to flexibly manipulate or “slice and dice” operational data, using familiar business terms, in order to provide analytical insight.

If you fully investigate these five areas, you should succeed in implementing a solid software solution for your unique customer service needs.

This article is an excerpt from the white paper “The Hosted Model: Simplifying Contact Center and Agent Desktop Solutions." To download the complete white paper, go to www.cincom.com/hostedmodel

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An Outlook - Call Centre Software Market

The market for call centre software is only expanding. This because companies realize that keeping in constant contact with customers will help them enjoy a steady growth. According to the Everest Research Institute, the market for contact centre outsourcing has grown rapidly to a US$55 billion opportunity. And if a Frost and Sullivan research is to be believed, the call centre outsourcing market is set to reach $27.5 billion in 2013, up from $20.7 billion in 2006. Business Insight opines that Indian Agents Positioning is projected to rise over the next five years, from just fewer than 180,000 in 2004 to nearly 365,000 by 2009.

Having mentioned such wonderful projections, the contact center projects are also likely to feel the impact of recent “temporary” recession. On the other hand, contact center technology remains the best lever for extracting more value from employees and make better use of customer data.

The need for innovation remains, and attempts are constantly on to extend the reach of customer contact and to make it more and more affordable. Few reports suggests that while service has been a key differentiator for a number of companies, how the organization manages and maintains its customer relationships will be of even more important if an organization is to remain solvent and competitive. Hence continuous and sustainable innovation would be required from technology provider.

The idea is not only to drive sales but also to evolve a lasting customer relationship that works for a longer duration with better results. It starts from getting the right calls to evolving the appropriate responses that are required to meet the client’s needs. It would be imperative for call centre to

• improve customer satisfaction levels, thus enabling companies to increase lifetime customer value;
• increase revenue generation by providing business users with the customer information necessary to make relevant offers to each customer; and
• enable companies to cut costs through advancements in operational efficiency.

Contact center and communications technology vendors are well placed to assist organizations in building the customer-centric enterprise. Traditional contact center outsourcing markets are maturing in their adoption of these services. However, newer industries like retail, manufacturing, power, etc appear poised to engage these technologies like never before. According to few reports the largest single emerging vertical investor in outsourcing services through 2012 will be the travel and hospitality sector with next largest portion to be energies and utilities. Hence there might be temporary slower rate of growth however I do see the future promising, provided organization can bring value to its customer and its customer’s customer.

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