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Be Wary About Going 'All In' When Shopping For A Cloud Contact Center

by Chuck Hudak, Regional VP Sales, Connect First - November 18, 2015

Be Wary About Going ‘All In’ When Shopping for a Cloud Contact Center

By Chuck Hudak


Recently, a lot of customers have been inquiring about all-inclusive cloud contact center pricing models, which provide a variety of services at flat rates typically advertised as a “low monthly subscription.”

Everyone wants to know: Is it actually cheaper to invest in an all-inclusive pricing model as compared to one where you pay for individual services?

In short, not always. Purchasing an all-inclusive contact center plan is a bit like paying for a buffet where you can eat your fill of low-quality food but must devour twice your body weight to get your money’s worth.

Based on our calculations, in order to break even in a typical all-inclusive pricing model, an agent would need to achieve an average of 6.8 hours per day on calls, which averages out to be about 9,000 minutes in a month with 22 work days.

The average contact center agent in a medium- to large-sized organization, however, only spends approximately 5.5 hours per day on calls. So, unless your agents are working at a breakneck pace, getting the value out of an all-inclusive cloud contact center package is difficult.

Further, you can’t expect to invest in a low-cost plan and then receive premium-quality services. The vast majority of these types of plans offer limited talk—or transmission—paths, which results in poor-quality data transfers between customers and agents. What’s more, these types of plans typically run on outdated legacy infrastructure, which tends to result in call problems like latency, packet loss and jitter. Problems like these can easily lead to increased customer hang-up rates.

Making matters worse, outdated network infrastructure opens the door to security vulnerabilities and, of course, downtime.

Still, there are more problems. One of the major downsides about all-inclusive contact center pricing models is that they most often require named agent licensing policies as opposed to licensing policies built around concurrency. A concurrent model involves purchasing a set number of flexible licenses based on your expected usage rate. So, if you have 50 agents, but only expect 25 to be on call at a given time, you will purchase 25 licenses. Users do not have to be “named” as they do in a named licensing model. In a named licensing model, you would need to purchase 50 licenses—that is, one for each agent. It’s more expensive and more restrictive.

Additionally, be wary about plans offering tax-free telecommunications policies. Don’t get hoodwinked into a policy that allows you to avoid paying taxes up front, as you will pay higher rates—and possibly added fees—for paying at a future time.

As you can see, it makes much more sense to pick and choose the services that you need to avoid paying a blanket rate for your cloud contact center services. Cutting corners now may come back to haunt you in the end.


Chuck Hudak, Regional VP of Sales at Connect First

Chuck has been helping partners and customers in the contact center industry acquire the solutions that will improve the productivity of their organizations for over 15 years. He has received consultative sales training from Xerox and Dictaphone, providing him the tools to be a trusted advisor to customers and partners.

Chuck resides in Peachtree City, Georgia with his wife and son who attends Reinhardt University. Chuck has been involved with youth baseball and softball for over 20 years.

www.connectfirst.com - info@connectfirst.com - (888) 965-1588

 
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