Cloud Call Center Software: 3 Common Mistakes

If your company is replacing your call center software, there are a lot of pitfalls you need to be aware of.

In this video, Mike Smith talks about 3 common mistakes companies make when evaluating a new cloud call center software solution.

Want to know which cloud call center software vendors Mike recommends for your company, specifically? Click the button below and ask him today!

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About Mike
Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards and in 2011, he was honored as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. You can also hear him as the host of the popular Information Technology podcast, ITsmiths with Mike Smith. Follow Mike on LinkedIn, Twitter or SpiceWorks.

Transcript

So your company is looking into a new cloud call center software. Maybe your current call center software is end of life. Maybe your PBX is end of life and it’s attached to your call center solution, so you’re having to get rid of it. So very common, we’re seeing that quite a bit, and I’m sure you’re looking at cloud contact center solutions. Well, there’s three common mistakes I see companies making when they’re researching a cloud call center software solution. Number one is they oftentimes think they have to pick a cloud call center solution that matches their cloud PBX solution. So maybe they’ll be looking at both at the same time, the PBX and the call center software and they’re only looking at vendors who can do both. And they’re trying to find a great PBX vendor that also has a great contact center software solution. That is a big mistake.

A lot of these solutions can be used interchangeably. In fact, there’s a lot of reasons why you might want to separate the two. Companies will often say, “Well, what if we want to transfer calls between our PBX and our call center?” Don’t worry about it at all. Every company needs to do that and it’s not a problem. So don’t make the mistake of assuming you have to have the same vendor for your PBX as your call center. Oftentimes they’re different because they are completely different animals. You want to find the best cloud PBX solution for your company and you want to find the best cloud contact center solution for your company. And oftentimes those are not the same vendors. That’s mistake number one, you do not want to make.

So the second mistake I see companies making when they’re researching their cloud contact center or cloud call center solutions is they don’t involve other departments in the evaluation process. So oftentimes we get called by the IT team to start looking into this, which is great. That’s totally normal. But what’s different about today’s call center software solutions is they’re actually called contact center software solutions. And the reason being is the technology is so advanced, it can do a lot more than just affect your call center solution. It can really improve your company’s branding, your customer experience. It can affect your workflows and the way you’re staffing people internally. It can affect the way your management’s operating. It can affect your social media presence.

There’s so many things these solutions can do, that you really have to involve other departments because otherwise what’s going to happen is the cloud contact center solution provider is going to bring up these things to you in the IT department. And you’re going to say, “Ah, I don’t know if we need that. I’m not sure. I doubt we need that.” And you’re making a false assumption, because if you actually talk to those people in the other departments, I bet you they’re really interested in these things.

So second big mistake we see is IT departments not bringing in their customer experience department or their operations department or their marketing department into these cloud contact center software evaluations.

The third and final most common mistake I see companies making when they’re evaluating cloud contact center solutions is they’re only looking at price. As I mentioned in mistake number two, cloud contact center solutions involve a lot more than just calling these days. So when you’re looking at things like being able to staff your call center more efficiently or being able to make sure that you can manage and train your call center staff more efficiently or that you can offload call loads to chat and other people and you can share call queues between your chat folks and your call folks and your social media folks and the fact that you can improve your customers experience. These are all things that involve a lot more than just price.

So if you get the other departments involved, like we talked about in mistake number two, you get those other departments involved and you start talking about operational costs or improved efficiency of your payroll for your employees or like, “Hey, what if we improved our customer experience one percent, what dollar amount would that bring to our company?” Those are the things you want to think about when you’re evaluating today’s cloud contact center solutions, not just look at price because if you look at price by itself, it’s going to seem way more expensive than you’ve ever paid for a call center solution. That’s because it’s not just a call center solution anymore. This is an operations and a marketing and a branding and a user experience thing. It’s a sales thing, it’s a revenue thing. So you want to involve those other departments and make sure you’re finding some type of logical method to evaluate the soft dollar costs that this new solution can have on your company.

So I hope that helps a little bit about researching cloud contact center solutions or cloud call center solutions. Which cloud contact center solution is the best for your company? Well, don’t just Google it. Actually call me (714-593-0011), or email me, reach out. I’m happy to take a couple minutes to ask you a few questions about your company and learn about your requirements and give you my recommendations. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years. I know all the players in the marketplace and I’m a broker for all the major cloud contact center service providers and call PBX providers and SD-WAN providers and ISPs. So I know a lot of these things. I know there’s different ways you want to look at these providers. They all have their sweet spot and you don’t want to just start Googling this stuff because you’ll end up spending hours of time and ending up with the wrong service provider.

And the good news to you is there’s no cost for you to reach out and contact me. All the service providers pay our company’s broker fee. And we always guarantee that our customers get the best quotes and promotions from the service providers that we recommend.

So long story short, don’t Google this stuff. If you’re wondering which service providers your company should be quoting, reach out to me. I’m happy to give you some advice, and I hope that helped a little bit today. So I’ll see you on the next video. Have a great day.