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Article : Successful Call Center Implementations - Part 1

The Intro
A call center is a people centered business unit where the primary focus is on successful communication. We are living in an age where technology is revolutionizing those communications and successful call centers use a diverse range of applications: the Private Branch eXchanges (PBX) and Automatic Call Distribution systems(ACD) that route calls; the Interactive Voice Response systems (IVRs) and voicemail systems that provide automated answering and self service; the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that agents use to access and work with customer records, as well as the reporting systems, supervisory and quality monitoring systems that managers use to run the call center and measure its performance. It can be argued that almost every business system in an organization should in some aspect touch the call center. To integrate all of this into a single, cohesive solution that will satisfy the needs of communication-oriented end users, you not only need a good road map, you also need thorough knowledge and understanding of how the puzzle fits together, what the limitations and restrictions are, and what exactly you can achieve with the systems and budget you’ve got. You need some guidance.


This paper serves to engage you in a discussion of the steps that you can take to ensure a successful call center integration. Unfortunately, due to the difficulty of blending such a wide variety of systems with an unpredictable, real time customer communication, all too many implementations end up failing expectations. There are a variety of ways to fail: the project runs over schedule and therefore budget; the technology pieces do not work together as promised; the end users refuse to adopt the technology. Failure can range from ongoing hassle to complete abandonment. We define success as on time and on budget delivery, the technology doing what you expected it to, and the people who work your call center enthusiastic about the results.

Choosing Your Vendors
Before starting on a project, you must select your vendors. We have all experienced this dance - the prospective partners will present their credentials and make their proposals – you must choose the one who is going to be the most compatible partner.

By choosing a vendor for a technology, you are, broadly speaking, selecting two things: the technology that they sell and who they are. This is not a discussion of technologies per se, so we assume that you have done due diligence on the technology selection – you have evaluated solutions against competitors and have determined that this vendor's technology has all the features that you want, is compatible with your technology environment and fits in with the future vision of your organization. You now need to evaluate the suitability of the vendor as a services provider and partner/vendor for your business.

Call center industry statistics are pretty clear – if you are not careful, you have a significant chance of having an unsuccessful project, and an even larger chance of having costs that are up to 2 times what you expected them to be. When you choose your vendors you are taking the first step in determining whether you are going to keep your project within budget or you are going to take your place on the losing side of the equation. You need to choose someone who is motivated to make you succeed because they also succeed. You need to create a win–win situation, and you can best do that by keeping things above board. Make the effort to ensure that everyone understands the complete scope of the work involved and your vendors are on board for a fair price. Energy spent in beating your chosen vendor down to the lowest possible price will be balanced by the vendor ensuring that they deliver exactly what you have purchased and only what you have purchased. Lost margins will be made up in other ways -– unspecified changes, additional features from 'scope creep' and charges at every turn. Be sure when you negotiate that you outline clearly what you want from a vendor and how you expect it to be delivered. The solution is complex, so you need to be careful.

If you can create a win-win situation with your vendor – one where fair goods are delivered at fair price, there should be no reason for ongoing pricing issues. Of course, it takes two to tango. Many vendors will lowball the up front price to win the business and make the money up later. Beware of this tactic – as indicated above, industry dogma says you'll pay two times what you

thought you were going to pay. If any one price looks suspiciously lower than the others, review it skeptically and get a doubly clear statement of work to ensure that your vendor is committing themselves to delivering success.

Some Specifics To Look For:

  • Can the vendor talk meaningfully about how the solution will be implemented?

  • Can they intelligently address the ramifications of specific features they are providing?

  • Do they seek and develop a concrete understanding of your business and your environment?

  • When someone tells you this component will communicate with that are they telling you who is going to make it happen?

  • Is there additional software or middleware that you need that has not been identified or costed?

  • Who is managing what parts of the project? If you expect your vendor to manage the whole project, have you made that clear?

  • If development needs to be done on your existing front or back ends how are responsibilities divided?

  • Who is responsible for system testing, for setting up test environments?

  • How are end users being trained? If the call center agents are receiving new interfaces who provides the trainers?

  • Have they accounted for all interfaces?

  • What kind of documentation are you getting?

The point is not to make sure that your vendor is doing everything listed here, but rather to make sure that, going in, everyone understands who is doing what so that everyone can work together successfully in a mutually satisfactory arrangement.

Project Management
For a well managed project you need a good project manager. Hmmm that sounds circular…

What characteristics should you be looking for in a project manager? First and foremost technical project management experience in the call center field. Someone who has already guided successful call center solutions to implementation is far more able to get the job done for you than someone with a general knowledge of project management. A call center is a beast of a very particular kind and you need someone with experience who knows it well.

So where do you find that person – do you use someone internal, have a vendor provide one, or bring in someone external?

Internal PM
The advantages of using someone internal are that person knows your business and knows how to drive things through in your organization. If you have someone available like that available who also has a good grasp of the technical issues, they are probably your best choice to run the project. They need to be able to understand the high level picture, as well as be able to (with proper technical assistance) drill down on important details. This person should ideally be one of the prime decision makers in the choice of vendor for the project. If you are not sure of their technical grasp, you might want to consider the assignment more carefully and consider outsourcing it.

Vendor PM
Having a vendor supply the project management works well if that vendor is performing the bulk of the work or is managing most aspects of the solution. In that case, you may even feel that the vendor is obliged to run the project. But be careful how much you expect – certainly vendors should be able to manage their own share of the work and they should be able to manage all the areas of mutual effort where they have the expertise. But one thing vendors can't do very effectively is mobilize resources in your company or with any other involved vendors or suppliers. Even if you have arranged for a vendor to manage the project, you are still going to have to provide someone from your own side with the authority to drive your side of the bargain who can take ownership of the project. The area of concern with a Vendor Project Manager is they are not necessarily objective in their viewpoints, and this may affect the project's outcome.

Consultant PM
For a large project, it's often a good idea to bring in a project manager on contract if that person has similar experience with similar projects. This gives you the advantage of working with someone who is technically and professionally neutral with regard to yourself and vendors, and who can arbitrate issues impartially. Your contractor's main loyalty will be to the project itself. In this case though, you need to make sure that you give that person enough authority to carry out their tasks. There's no point bringing in an outsider, but not empowering them to get the job done.

A lot of focus has been placed on the technical aspects of the PM role. Does this suggest that a project manager has to be technically versed in all the technologies involved in a project? The quick answer is no – you are looking for someone who has a solid view of the overall project technology, and has the ability to understand the technical details as they are presented and explained. To illustrate this more clearly, let's look at a fictional case study.

Let's create an imaginary call center integration project. Our imaginary company is called Growth Corp. It has three existing call centers in 3 different time zones. Two of them are more or less identical from a technology perspective, having the same IVR and PBX but no CTI automation of the agent desktop. The third center is the product of a recent acquisition. It has a different PBX and IVR platform but it has a first class SmartCall CTI integration into its GreatService CRM. Currently there is no networking amongst the three call centers. GrowthCorp has decided that it wants a single virtual call center. Corporately it has also decided to adopt GreatService as its CRM system.

After examining many different solutions GrowthCorp decides (leaving aside the various business drivers) on the following:

It's going to network the three centers on the same PBX platform for a single virtual call center with good geographical redundancy across the three time zones. For the PBX platform it's going to stick with PBX A used by its two historical centers because it has a solid networking capability and a great story for future migration into the VOIP world. However it wants to use the IVR and CTI combo from center C, both of which support PBX A. In a nutshell, the overall projects looks like this:

  • Install PBX A into site C then network all three
  • Front the system with IVR C
  • Deploy the GreatService CRM across all thee centers along with the Smart Call CTI.

Representatives of the following groups will participate in the project:

  • Telecom service provider to determine how to route calls into and among the centers
  • PBX vendor to install the new switch and set up the network skills routing
  • IVR vendor to set up the new IVR programs for the networked center
  • CTI vendor to set up the CTI integration for the networked center
  • CRM vendor for support during the enterprise roll out

The chances that you will find a project manager with expertise in all these areas are pretty slim. But what you are looking for is someone who has managed similar integrations. It is not your project manager's job to understand the technical minutiae of such an extended project – it is the PM's job to coordinate the tasks and make sure it happens. So while your project manager doesn't have to understand the configuration details for each piece, he or she should understand the dependencies among all parts of the system. Your PM should understand how everything fits together and be able to weed through the various 'excuses' that will arise to determine what is real and what is not.

Above all, your PM must be able to create a team environment in which the dependencies are discussed, evaluated and added to the project plan. As far as the technical details go that is your PM's most important role -- he or she is an expeditor, making sure that all the details get aired and added to a comprehensive plan.

Read Part 2


About Upstream Works:
Company LogoUpstream Works provides Omnichannel Contact Center software. We are passionate about creating solutions that help organizations exceed their customer experience goals. . We bring the omnichannel customer journey together across all applications and platforms with a single, integrated agent desktop with management simplicity. For over 15 years, organizations around the world and across all industries have benefited from Upstream Works’ experience and expertise, gaining operational efficiencies and transforming the customer journey.
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Today's Tip of the Day - Keep Cost In Perspective

Read today's tip or listen to it on podcast.

Published: Monday, October 31, 2005

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