CRM - June 2008 - (Page 35)

because the equipment they have right now is depreciated and the internal departments may be very comfortable with it.” This doesn’t mean vendors aren’t trying to tap into the large-scale companies, though. Scott Manghillis, senior manager of Intervoice Hosted Solutions, which recently announced its foray into hosted offerings with IP Contact Center (IPCC) Version 4, says that his firm “determined that every existing Intervoice customer is a candidate for our IPCC. There may be certain business drivers or existing infrastructure that may prohibit that, but we are looking at taking the hosted IPCC model to the street to meet global organizations.” But getting street credibility, or market share, will take time, and the ability to address some key concerns raised by users of all sizes.“Our biggest trouble is getting in the door,” Manghillis admits. A HOST OF HOSTED CONCERNS Whether you’re looking at a contact center of 50 seats or 500, many pundits believe there are several common concerns with a hosted model: control, a vendor’s financial stability, and data security. “[Those] are the three most important [ones] we hear voiced right from the outset,” Markle says. The notion of a control issue is interesting, since one of the main benefits of a hosted model—besides saving on onpremise infrastructure—is being freed from the day-to-day operations of the contact center. You’re essentially leaving these worries to the vendor and going about your core business. The haggle between companies and providers can become quite contentious when agents need to be added or dropped, a new call flow has to be created, or other servicelevel agreements (SLAs) need to be addressed. “A company offering hosted services may get stiff penalties if it fails to make agreed-upon SLAs, and that looks good on the contract, but if you’re the contact center manager it only benefits the guy who takes your job when you get fired when the service company didn’t meet its SLAs,” Kraus says. “There’s so much perceived risk when you’re looking at systems that actually deal with direct interactions with your customer in a real-time basis that most companies still prefer to keep that in-house.” Manghillis notes this as a primary concern as well when pitching Intervoice’s hosted model to potential customers. “The day-to-day operation and administration of the platform becomes something that the customer wants to handle, and in a hosted model we generally don’t allow this for our customers in the voice portal market today simply because it may be able to impact the SLA,” he explains. “We’re doing a look in the mirror if you will, to look at what we can hand to our customers to allow them to fulfill those unique needs while delivering on SLAs so we don’t get into fingerpointing if and when there is a failure.” Markle says companies concerned about having proper control need to talk to multiple vendors and determine which one can provide a happy medium. Many vendors, he says, can alleviate customers’ fears. “By and large, the vendors that we’ve worked with and brought in to talk to our clients have demonstrated the ability to address those major concerns,” he says. Another potential deal-breaker revolves around the vendor’s financial stability. With CRM’s many mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships, this is a tough pill to swallow for vendors and companies alike. In fact, when Dawson McAllister’s Thompson was shopping around, he was forced to rule out Aspect Technologies because of concerns over product stability. “Aspect was one of the final vendors we were looking at to partner with, but they were going through a merger at the time and didn’t have a roadmap showing where the [hosted] product was going,” he recalls. “They didn’t know if the product they currently had was going to be supported in the next few months.” he says.“We needed to know that the product was stable, financially sound, and had a roadmap for where [it] was going.” Markle says Thompson’s fears are valid. “In the long term, if your provider THE Essential Guide for Maximizing Your Customer Relationships By Barton J. Goldenberg 384 pp/softbound/$39.95 ISBN 978-0-910965-80-4 “Vital real-time business advice for the customer-centric organization.” —Stan Davis, co-author, The Art of Business and Blur Ask for CRM in Real Time in Your Local Bookstore or Order Direct From the Publisher www.infotoday.com http://www.infotoday.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - June 2008

CRM - June 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Making Mashup Masterpieces Trouble in the Air CRM on Twitter Is SaaS Ready for Its Contact Center Close-up? CRM: In the Public Interest Required Reading Lollipop Loyalty Best Practices Series: CRM & eCommerce eGain NetSuite Infor Longwood Software Vovici The Second Coming of 2.0 Believe the Hype About Hosted Contact Centers All Talk So Hot It’s Cool Linksys Gets Shaken, a Community Is Stirred The Risky Risk Business Awana Hears a SaaS Sermon Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - June 2008

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