VoIP Service: How to Set Up a VoIP Contact Center

Given the wide array of VoIP contact-center solutions that companies have to choose from, selecting a vendor is no easy task. Said Fluss, “You have to go through an entire selection process to make sure that you get the functionality you need and that you have the core infrastructure to support it.” For most companies, the question comes down to whether it’s best to go with a hosted or on-premise solution. Without a doubt, more and more businesses are handing over the VoIP contact-center reins to a third-party provider. In fact, DMG Consulting predicts that by the end of 2011, 30 to 35 percent of all new contact-center seats will be hosted. But despite cost and infrastructure benefits, a hosted environment isn’t necessarily a contact-center cure-all. “You still have to make sure you have the bandwidth,” warned Fluss. And as for in-house expertise, Fluss noted that, “Some hosted solution vendors have a tremendous amount of expertise, but some of them don’t. In fact, if you’re a mature call center, you may have a lot more internal expertise.”

Many companies that migrate from a traditional phone system to a VoIP contact center don't think about the possibility of having to hire a whole new IT team. That’s a dangerous oversight, seeing as how operating a TDM (Time-Division Multiplexing) -based contact center can differ greatly from one that relies on IP telephony. Said Fluss, “If you’ve been supporting TDM environments, you have to make sure you have the right knowledge to support a VoIP infrastructure.”

The single biggest reason that VoIP-based contact centers fail is that companies neglect to include business process and operations into their planning. The new contact center needs to be properly integrated into how your organization conducts business, or all the cost and time benefits will be wasted. Make sure that your company has a team on the operations side that is involved in selecting and installing the solution so that the new contact center will be effective.