Is Your PBX Vendor a True Contact Center Expert?
Over the past several years, I’ve had the opportunity to witness several of my call center customers upgrade their telephone systems to the latest virtual telephone environments offered by the leading vendors. Each had a good reason for the initiative “disaster recovery, operational efficiencies, and cost savings” but while the prospect of a virtual telephony environment seemed compelling, the act of transitioning their call center to such an environment proved to be daunting. The phone vendors came armed with their standard upgrade playbook that was supposed to be “best practices.” But in the end, while these best practices proved to be appropriate for a telephone switch migration, they failed to take into account the complexities of today’s call centers.
Call centers operate with a wide array of integrated technology, interfaces and operational flow, each tuned over time to balance their customer’s needs while remaining cost effective. These additional components such as Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems, digital recorders, workforce management, Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are intertwined with the agent/customer interactions in such a way that it is difficult to impact one without affecting the other. It is here that we found the standard vendor playbook falls flat.
The telephony vendors look at upgrades from the perspective of dial plans and telephone devices. Vendor testing is typically limited to verifying whether telephone devices are working or that calls can be placed and received. But very little testing (if any) is done to verify the impact to the call flows.
Business Case for a Contact Center Design Expert
This is where a knowledgeable system integrator comes in. A specialist or consultant familiar with the call center operations and the technology behind it, including the telephone switch, is vital to ensuring such an upgrade is performed properly. While the telephony vendor is focused on ensuring the new telephone switch components are functioning properly, the system integrator is ensuring that all of the telephone switch components, the integrated technologies, and the agent operations work together. Documentation such as call flows, data connectivity diagrams, networking infrastructure schematics, and acceptance test plans are key requirements to validating that the call center operations are functional after the new telephone switch is in place.
As you plan your phone upgrade, don’t underestimate the value of a good system integrator to lead you, and your PBX vendor, through the process, and help to deliver the ROI you were counting on.