"Point systems work best for contact centers."
Smart companies know they can capture a huge competitive advantage by raising the performance of contact center agents, who typically handle more than 70% of customer interactions.
Buyers of performance optimization solutions for the contact center face a range of choices. Perhaps you're familiar with the ongoing debate in IT circles over the merits of choosing a tightly integrated product suite from one vendor, or choosing so-called "best of breed" solutions from multiple vendors.
A contact center performance optimization suite consists of several applications focusing on customer interaction recording, performance analysis and e-learning management. Sometimes a contact center, after implementing part of a suite to address a key need, will find appealing capabilities for a related area using another vendor's "point" (not part of a suite) solution. Is this a wise move?
The pitch could be a curveball
Contact centers are a tough, competitive market for vendors. The competitive exuberance has led to exaggerated claims and outright myths. This article deals with a myth we're hearing in the marketplace: "Point systems work best for contact center requirements."
To appreciate how this myth perpetuates, consider the pitch you're hearing from point system vendors. It probably goes something like this:
"Our company specializes in just one application, so your contact center will reap the benefits of our superior ability to keep you on the cutting edge with the latest innovations. The ROI on this application is tremendous because you're focusing only on immediate needs without getting bogged down in implementing a suite. Moreover, since this is a mix-and-match, best-of-breed application, our experts can integrate our software with your existing contact center applications, quickly and painlessly. And when you're ready for the next step in your performance optimization plan, we have a partner that can help you with that."
At first blush, the point system arguments seem compelling-indeed, there may be degrees of truth to all of them. However, mythical elements of the best-of-breed-is-best story will emerge when you seek answers to some penetrating questions:
Who is in charge of integrating the disparate applications, how long will it take, and what will it cost?
CNET.com quotes Chuck Phillips, a senior enterprise software analyst with Morgan Stanley: "Customers have spent billions with systems integrators and integration-software companies to integrate applications that weren't designed to work together."
Can you demonstrate how a point product's unique features will generate sufficient advantages to outweigh the time and expense of integrating multiple systems?
Assuming the point system vendor is a true innovator, getting the hottest new features may not be worth the drawbacks, such as hefty integration costs, complex support, and multi-vendor training issues.
What happens when one vendor issues a major new release? Who is responsible for reintegrating the other point applications with the upgraded product?
Upgrades can disrupt product integration and even cause another application to cease functioning totally.
That means your integration work will be costly and continual. Says Phillips: "The job of integrating heterogeneous software from different companies is never done. Applications always change, as do their interfaces and data models. Consequently, the integration backbone must be constantly upgraded to accommodate these changes."
What happens when a problem seems to transcend applications? Who will take charge of troubleshooting and problem resolution?
Buyer beware: Best-of-breed environments create a haven for finger-pointing among vendors.
How will your company, your partners, and other application vendors assure the integrity and consistency of information among the applications?
Even if your integrations group does a superb job, it can't work miracles. Linking disparate systems so that they can pass disparate data back and forth will not provide a cogent, integrated picture of performance optimization activities.
How can a contact center work efficiently with applications that have different user interfaces, procedures, training programs, and support resource?
It may be tough to quantify, but there's considerable value to having the unified training and support, the consistent user interfaces, and the consistent data and procedures of a tightly integrated product suite.
How can multiple vendors effectively help us to unify and amplify our support of corporate goals?
The contact center is the eyes and ears of your company's brand. It processes mind-boggling amounts of information from customers. An integrated performance optimization suite can extract market intelligence from mountains of information and leverage these insights into more revenue and higher customer satisfaction. Point solutions, however, lack the suite's ability to unify technology behind corporate objectives. Integration groups can bridge the applications, but they can't compensate for the varying philosophies underlying each application.
Help me summarize everything that goes into the cost of ownership of your company's product.
Incremental costs of the point system approach, compared to an integrated product suite, can include:
Increased time and internal resources for training and support
Lower agent productivity due to more complex usability
Duplicate data entry
Redundant data storage
Higher implementation costs due to systems integration
Reintegration costs, including downtime and lost productivity, with each upgrade of each product
Forfeited discounts for multi-application licensing
Best-of-breed, or best value?
According to Summit Strategies' president Tom Kucharvy, a noted IT trends analyst, "The move away from mix-and-match, best-of-breed solutions, and toward integrated, single-vendor offerings . is an inevitable, continually accelerating trend that will cover virtually all segments of the IT and Internet industry."
Remember, any vendor can call its product "best-of-breed." But you're not buying products in a vacuum just to heal the current point of pain; you're buying solutions to support the contact center's long-term mission. You want the solution set that's the best overall value for your business. For example, Witness Systems' eQuality® suite provides a powerful solution set for optimizing your work performance and capturing customer intelligence.
As you evaluate the best solution for your contact center, carefully weigh each product's functional capabilities with the total costs of ownership. You may find that a sizzling new capability in a point system is a planned upgrade with the suite vendor. The cost of waiting may pale in comparison to the costs and headaches you'll experience with multi-vendor issues in the contact center.