The Best Call Center Software: Combine it or separate it?

You’re searching for the best call center software for your company, and you’re wondering: Should we combine it with our phone system software or purchase each, separately?

In the video below, Mike explains when it’s best to combine it and when it’s best to separate it. He even goes so far as giving you pricing examples.

Want to know which call center software vendors Mike thinks you should quote? Click below to ask him today.

About Mike

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

Your company is looking into a new call center software solution. Of course, you’re looking into cloud call center software solutions because that’s where the marketplace is right now. The on-prem stuff is kind of going away, it’s all about cloud these days, so you’re looking into it. One of the things I wanted to talk about in a video was whether or not you should look at a standalone cloud call center software solution that only does call center, or if you should look at a solution that also does your company’s phone system software. In my industry’s terms, that would be called, the normal phone system is called UCaaS, Unified Communications as a Service, and call center is called CCaaS, Contact Center as a Service. Should you use the same vendor for both your phone system and contact center software (because that’s what it’s called now instead of call center), they call it contact center. Or should you use a totally separate contact center software solution?

There’s definitely an answer to that and when I talk to customers about this, which is every day, a lot of customers really aren’t aware of the difference. I wanted to make a video on it and explain it a little bit because it is really important for you to know, and there are some definite advantages one way or the other depending on what your company’s requirements are.

What does Mike think about your company?

Okay, but before I get too deep into the video, just a quick plug if you’d like my recommendation on the best technology for your company, whether or not you should do two-in-one or do it separately, or if you want to know which vendors you should be quoting for contact center software solutions, don’t hesitate, just give me a call (714.593.0011), shoot me an email. At least ask me my opinion. It’s absolutely free, so there’s no excuse to do so. I’m happy to help. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, so I really know the industry pretty well and can save you a ton of time and can save you from a lot of mistakes of signing up with the wrong vendor. More on information on that at the end of the video.

Also, don’t forget to hit the like and subscribe button down below. That’d really be a big favor to me. I’d really appreciate it. All right, so let’s get into it.

Multi-Tasking?

Should your company look into using the same vendor, same service provider for both your phone system and your contact center? The first thing that you want to think about is your contact center agents. Are they multitasking? Meaning are they just sitting there answering contact center calls all day long and that’s all they do? Or are they multitasking? Meaning that sometimes they’re answering contact center calls, but sometimes they have nothing else to do, so they’re actually doing other tasks within the business. Maybe they’re doing some operational things or some marketing things or some filing or whatnot, but are they multitasking or are they only answering calls all day long?

Now, if they’re only answering calls all day long, maybe you want to look into a contact center only solution because that makes sense. That won’t hurt. If they’re multitasking during the day, they’re also going to need a phone system software solution, most likely because things like chatting with other users. Do they want to interact with other people within the company?

Communicate with Non-Contact Center Employees?

Something else to think about. Do your contact center agents need to communicate with non-contact center people within the organization on a regular basis. Through chat, they want to interact. Well, if that’s the case, they might need both software solutions. They’re going to need a phone system software solution and they’re going to need a contact center software solution. That’s a reason why you may want to get two-in-one.

Also, do your contact center agents need to see the presence of non-contact center folks within your organization? Like people sitting in collections or things like that. They might say, “Hey,” your contact center agent might say, “You know what, you need to speak with so-and-so. Let me see if they’re available and I can transfer that call.” They’re going to have to see the presence of other people within the organization and either chat with them or see if they’re available for that call to be transferred over to them. Does that happen a lot within your contact center? If it does, again, another reason why you may want to look into the same company to supply both the phone system software and the contact center software. Those are a few reasons right out of the gate that you want to think about.

Advanced Features?

One of the biggest things that you need to think about is how advanced are your call center software requirements? I mean, how complicated are you getting? Are you going to need omnichannel? That’s a big one. What that means, you can look at some of my other videos on it, but omnichannel is when you want to receive communication from the outside world into your contact center through means in addition to phone calls.

For instance, do you want contact center agents to be able to interact with people on chat from your website? Do you want them to be able to field incoming text messages? Do you want people to be able to text and get ahold of people within your contact center that way? Do you want to be able to handle emails through your contact center? Meaning that you can actually manage how long it’s taking you to respond to emails, to chat messages, to text messages. Be able to see, hey, who got that text message? How long did it take them to respond to it? Are we getting back to the customer in a good amount of time? Because they’re emailing us, so what’s our response rate on that kind of thing? Do you want to integrate things like social media? If somebody tags our company on social media, how long is it taking us to get back to them? What’s being said to us? Should we be alerted if something inappropriate has been said to one of our agents or vice versa? Things like that.

Call Center Light?

How deep do you want to get into contact center functionality? One thing I talk about a lot is it just call center light? Contact center light? What that means is it’s just phone calls. Is it just phone calls that are taking place and you just have to field phone calls? You only want phone calls, you don’t need any omnichannel. All you need to do is look at reports on hold time and, for instance, how long people are sitting on hold and sitting in queue, and how long the conversations are taking place. Who’s logged in, who’s logged out, how many agents are logged into the queue? Some basic reporting. Well, if that’s the case, I would call that, contact center light. It’s only phone calls that are taking place.

If it’s only phone calls that are taking place as opposed to the really advanced stuff, you should definitely think about getting everything under the same umbrella, your phone system and call center because it’s basic. A lot of the phone system vendors can add some basic call center stuff for a very low price. You don’t have to get into the advanced stuff.

Now, if you’re going really advanced with the contact center, that’s when again, another factor might come in that you may want to look at a separate contact center only solution because those are the service providers that specialize in contact center and they can do a lot of really cool, really advanced things with their contact center solution. That might be a big separator. How advanced is your contact center?

The Pricing Differences

Alrighty, so let’s talk about the math a little bit. We all know that, hey, if you get your contact center solution from the same vendor as your phone system vendor, having everything in one piece of software, well that’s a benefit no matter what. We know that that’s there, but there’s some math that I want you to know as well.

If you go to a separate third party contact center solution, because those are more advanced, those are a lot more expensive. For instance, those are going to start at around $125 per month per user if it’s a standalone contact center solution because their target market is more advanced contact centers that want omnichannel, that want AI, they want to be able to know customer sentiment, they want workforce management, they want quality management when it comes to managing their contact center agents and making sure their calls are very good quality and their customer experience is of utmost importance to them. That’s their target market. They offer a lot of features and they’re a lot more expensive for that reason. $125 per user per month is the starting point, really. A lot of them are closer to $200 per month per user. Depending on what features and functionality you want, it can get kind of expensive.

Call Center “Light” Cost

On the flip side, remember that contact center light that I talked about, well, that can be like a bolt-on to a cloud phone system software company. If you just get your cloud phone system from a vendor and you want to add some contact center light feature functionality, which is essentially a call queue and some real time reporting on things like hold times in the call queue, how many people are logged into the queue, things like that, that’s what I would consider contact center light. No omnichannel, no AI, no workforce management, no quality management, things like that. They don’t have all that, but they have the basics. They have call queues, they have real time reporting, they have historical reporting, they have software integration with your favorite CRM applications, things like that. If that’s all you need is just phone calls, that bolt-on is only going to cost about 20 to $60 per month in addition to your phone system license.

Let’s assume your phone system license is going to cost you $20 per month per user. Well, add another $20 to that and that’s $40 per month per user for contact center light, 40 to maybe 60 at the most-ish, something like that. $60 per month per user, and you’re getting both the phone system software and you’re getting the contact center light functionality both combined on the same pane of glass, on the same window, on the same software application.

Compare that to the cost of Separate Apps

Look at that math as opposed to, remember what we talked about before, if your contact center agents are multitasking, they might need both the phone system software and the contact center solution software. If they’re multitasking and you get those two separate, you’re going to pay $20 per month per user for the phone system software and then on top of that, you’re going to pay minimum $125 per month per user for the contact center solution software. Do that math as opposed to, remember the 40 to $60 per month total, if you just need contact center light functionality. It’s going to change your price significantly if all you need is contact center light, all your company needs is that, and you get them both through the same vendor. That’s the math behind it.

Know this Before You Shop for Call Center or PBX Solutions

Now, why that’s really important is because when you’re shopping for a new phone system software service provider or a contact center software service provider, it’s good to look at both at the same time. A lot of times customers will come to me and say, “Hey, we have a contact center as well, but we’re going to do that in six months from now. Right now we just want to talk about switching out our phone system software.”

Well, that’s not a good idea to only look at one in a silo because six months from now you might realize, man, we should have looked at providers that could do both. We signed up with a company that can only do phone system software. We really needed a company that could do phone system and call center both in the same one because it would’ve reduced our per user cost by 50, 60, 70%. It’s a big cost factor if you don’t look at them at the same time. You want to look at those things at the same time if you are a candidate to get both your contact center software and your phone system software from the same vendor.

Okay, that’s a lot to take in, I know it is.

Ask Mike for help with your company’s comparison.

If you need some help on this, just give me a call, shoot me an email, I’m happy to help. This is what I do and this is what I’ve been doing for 20 years. If you want my recommendations on the best phone system software solution providers to quote for your company, or the best contact center software solutions to quote for your company, just shoot me an email, give me a call (714.593.0011). I’ll ask you a few questions about your company’s requirements, and within those few questions, I’ll be able to tell you the small handful of vendors that you should be quoting that my customers have had a great experience with, and I can introduce you to the right people within those service providers and oversee the quoting process, all that stuff. I’m a broker for every single major vendor out there. I’ll look at all of them for you and I’ll get you paired up with the right one and help you prevent the mistake of getting with the wrong company or paying too much for the company you got, all that stuff. It also will take you a lot less time than if you’re scouring the inter internet on your own.

How much does Mike charge?

The cool thing is, is that I won’t charge you a dime for my service. The service providers pay my company the broker fee, so you don’t have to pay me anything. There’s absolutely no excuse not to at least try it out. Just shoot me an email, give a call, ask me what my opinion is. Especially if you’re a mid-size to large company, there’s a lot of good options out there and I can really help you narrow the field very quickly.

All right, well if you like the video, don’t forget to hit the like button down below and subscribe to the channel. I will catch you on the next video.