It's Getting Complicated

Agent and Web Scripting, Cloud-Based Applications, Virtual Servers, Click-to-Chat, Video Conferencing for the Contact Center, Real Time Speech Analytics, SIP Proxy to perform day-to-day load balancing; it's getting complicated. For some contact centers, the offerings available may be leaving behind a significant portion of the marketplace.

There are a significant number of small contact centers that are staffed with some great people who know enough to be dangerous when it comes to being able to support operations. And it's not a fault but a reality for most of these centers. The challenge is the ability to support what is sometimes taken for granted in today's contact center. Supporting some of the applications that run today's contact center can push the smaller operator to the wall, and it's getting more complicated.

That makes for some interesting discussions when operational decisions are being made, because the overall success of the operation will be dependent on the ability to support the buying decision.

There are some acquisition decisions that are being made on the need to have that tactile sense of where the equipment is. Cloud is not an option because of a need to be able to point and say "that's where the equipment is." If it doesn't work, there might be the ability to get the system going again by a well-meaning "support team" staff member.

Disaster recovery also takes on a slightly different model. Platform decisions could be made based on what other similar businesses are using in other near-by centers. That way if a center suffers an outage, all that would be required is to re-direct one center to another, knowing that the staff would be familiar with the operating system and associated apps. That's about as basic and straight forward as disaster recovery gets, but it allows for business continuity.

Another challenge that the smaller center has is being able to get the attention of the vendor or channel partner in the event that support is required. With the increasing complexities of some of the current offerings, not being able to effectively troubleshoot a problem with on-site support staff will pose operational challenges.

Large organizations move and function in a manner that is completely foreign to a small entrepreneurial operator. This has and will lead to some significant frustrations in having issues addressed in a timely manner...like having the problem addressed when the vendor/channel partner is contacted. For any client, getting issues addressed in a timely manner is important, but to the smaller contact center the issue is always magnified.

There may be opportunities that the smaller center is unable to address. One is the ability to make any changes to the business solutions once a system is acquired. The challenge goes back to the on-site skill sets. Some centers may be very comfortable in addressing software or application adjustments, but others will lean heavily on the vendor or channel partner to be able to assist in addressing changes to the business model.

This poses a significant risk for the smaller contact center as business offerings may not be changed for a longer-than-normal cycle. The impact of what can be done from a technical perspective needs to take into consideration what should be done to minimize the complication on the end user.