the ultimate
buyer's guide
contact center
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Just as important is to do it the right way. Hence this guide. Our motivation is simple: to ensure that you deliver a killer service experience that customers love, while keeping your agents satisfied and productive.
It’s never been more important — or made more sense — to move your contact center to an AI-powered cloud-based solution.
A Step-by-Step Map for Your Journey to the Cloud
the Ultimate Contact Center Buyer's Guide
Intro
01
The short answer is that it makes life simpler. You can be up and running quickly and easily. And your contact center is available via any connected browser without a single download. Think about it — that’s a dream for both creative resourcing and consolidating scattered service centers. Daily life’s better, too. For instance, supervisors can monitor performance across regions — nearly impossible with an on-premises version. Also, functionality is standardized, so it’s much easier to nail down best practices across teams or the entire organization. Since there’s zero footprint, you don’t have to worry about data center space or the people to look after it. Yet a cloud contact center solution ticks all the right boxes for security, resiliency, and redundancy — absolute musts for disaster recovery and business continuity. What else? OPEX-based pricing allows organizations of all sizes to access cloud contact center capabilities previously out of budget. Also, cloud pricing is based on your demand cycle, so there’s no wasted licensing or other dramas during a crisis. You just rescale. In between such critical moments, there are regular software updates — fast, global, and without disruption. You stay at the forefront of the “latest and greatest,” focused on executing brilliant customer experiences. In big picture terms, the cloud is becoming home to lots of corporate data, applications, and workflows because it allows everyone to move much faster and connect all the dots. It also marks a change in approach for larger organizations that have probably been chasing the expensive and complex vision of an all-in-one suite of applications. Cloud computing reverses this logic — you can pick the world’s best application to meet every need, every user, and every business case. Using a cloud-based, contact center platform makes implementing AI easy. You can provide better self-service and automate transactional interactions, while AI assistants make agents more productive, help increase key performance metrics, and reduce costs.
But first, why buy a cloud contact center?
The cloud is making technology work as we always hoped. For many, it has been a way to escape legacy restrictions with stunning success.
A Quick Trip to the Cloud
More effective conversations at scale: Embedding your knowledge base into a virtual assistant enables streamlined, up-to-date responses that address a broad spectrum of customer inquiries more effectively. More dynamic interactions: Virtual assistants can directly answer customer questions without predefined questions and responses. Plus, with knowledge-based AI, a virtual assistant can flexibly handle customer questions and digressions to different topics during an ongoing automated conversation. More reliable conversations: Virtual assistants use contextual understanding and analyze user inputs to ensure they stay on-script. Trusted generative AI capabilities: Frictionless integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) with a centralized knowledge base results in greater accuracy of virtual assistant responses, ensuring that all generated responses have supporting factual evidence. Consistently updated Information: With a comprehensive and updated knowledge base, AI ensures your customers always receive current and accurate responses.
Seamlessly integrating AI into your contact center can help interactions in many different ways.
Adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI)
02
Reduce operational costs: An AI-driven platform can minimize the need for extensive human intervention and decrease training expenses for new virtual agents. Optimize your data: Centralize your organization’s documentation in one extensive, up-to-date knowledge base that complements and elevates a virtual assistant’s conversational AI capabilities. Easy Implementation: Leverage your vendor’s experts to help you seamlessly integrate knowledge AI with virtual assistants and quickly deploy them. Look for solutions with no-code, plug-and-play approaches that avoid extensive conversation-flow designs.
Automating self-service routines and simple transactions can give customers answers without engaging an agent. AI-based assistants can search your knowledge database for advanced Q&A, FAQs, and relevant articles to help either end-users or agents produce better outcomes. It also ensures that every AI interaction has the ability to escalate to a live agent as needed.
Adopting AI can drive:
AI-powered virtual assistants are like having a supercharged library, making every customer interaction smoother and promoting more positive outcomes at scale. How can AI positively impact productivity and reduce costs?
Your first task in successfully steering your buying project is to get the right people on board. How complex this becomes depends on the decision-making culture within your organization and how difficult it is to find and engage the right people. For smaller organizations, the route is usually simple and obvious. In larger organizations, you might first need to find a sponsor — someone who can help point you in the right direction and provide ongoing advice. To win senior commitment and sponsorship, you need to confirm two things: There is an organizational intent to invest. The decision-making process will be backed at a senior level to ensure it stays on track. By the way, it may take a few steps to get final approval. Large organizations sometimes break this process into a number of “gateway” decisions, the first simply being permission to gather the facts needed to formally present the case. However, more nimble organizations might condense the whole decision to invest into a far shorter period of time. In many cases, a face-to-face session with those who control the budgets is a smart move to build trust and learn their priorities. In return, let them know what matters to you and what you want to achieve. What kind of person makes a great sponsor? They should be central to the final decision-making process, either as a powerful influencer or final arbiter. Before that point, they might help remove roadblocks or act as a champion for the project. Choose your sponsor with care — they can make a crucial difference in the final outcome. You have your senior endorsement covered; now it’s time to win over the operational teams. At this point, you’re simply introducing the idea of investing in a cloud-based customer service solution. Gathering detailed user requirements happens later. It’s always smart when “selling” an idea to think through what you want to say and anticipate how your audience will react. What matters to them? Will they see your project as a threat or an opportunity? In their reality, do they win or lose as a result? Just provide the main details — avoid over-selling. Listen closely to their reactions. Note anything they want you to take into consideration. Then later, you can address their concerns when you sit down for a more detailed discussion on user requirements. Who should you include in this phase? Well, that depends on what you intend to use the solution for. If it’s entirely service-centric, then just talk to those in the existing contact center. If you don’t have a contact center, determine who else needs to be consulted — sales, customer experience leaders, or others. The principle is simple: Talk to the people who would feel they deserve to have a voice in choosing a cloud contact center, and let them make an early contribution. In that way, you start with them on your side.
Gaining internal buy-in
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Winning Senior Commitment and Sponsorship
Get the right people on board
Find out your business technology purchasing process
List decision makers
Seek advice from seasoned colleagues on key issues for the business and how to talk about them
Build a timeline of key activities – be as realistic as you can
Conduct internal research and find some key statistics to base the initial case on
Identify a suitable sponsor to help you influence key decision makers
Have your "elevator pitch" well rehearsed ahead of engaging your sponsor
Internal Buy-in Checklist
Engage sponsor and verify your timeline and where you need help. Identify next actions
Repeat the exercise with other important internal influencers - Customer Service, IT, Marketing and Sales
Check you have internal buy-in before moving on
Investigate opportunities to take advantage of AI capabilities for both transactional interactions and powering agents
Operational buy-in
Write it out Write out your key headings and the main points you intend to cover under each heading so the flow of your argument is clear. Share this with the decision making team to make sure you are on the right track. Compare TCO Comparing TCO between an on-premises and cloud solution over a 3-5 year period needs to be "like for like." Cloud solutions have innovation and latest features baked into the standard pricing, estimate the additional cost of upgrade and replacement that an on-premises solution would require to keep pace. Compare operational costs A similar point applies when comparing ongoing operational costs. For instance, remember to factor in internal IT support staff and the apportioned overheads for housing on-premises equipment versus a cloud solution.
Justify why the intended investment makes commercial sense.
Building the Business Framework
04
How to assure you're on the right track?
Your next task is to justify why investing in an AI-powered cloud contact center makes commercial sense. Organizations usually focus on the usual three-letter acronyms — like ROI (return on investment) and TCO (total cost of ownership) — as the core of their business case. But in truth, it should be more than that. It should capture the full scope and reasoning for making an investment. This will include both “hard” and “soft” benefits. For instance, what is the quantifiable value of customer satisfaction? Few organizations can articulate how this directly impacts their commercial performance, yet many regard it as a central benefit for this kind of solution. Business cases can range from comprehensive and highly structured to informal and brief. It all depends on your decision-making culture and what’s considered adequate proof. It’s important to include the benefits that an AI-powered platform will bring. This includes better contextual interactions, reduced operation costs by utilizing self-service, and reduced call times by empowering agents with knowledge-based tools like automated summarization, next best responses, and pertinent articles. What does this mean in practice? If this is your first time, ask for examples of successful ROI/TCO models. Make sure you understand how your own organization frames a successful business case. Anticipate that the decision-making criteria may be only partially set if this type of solution has never been purchased before. And make this topic an early discussion with your sponsor. A couple points to remember: Make a clear argument. Write out your key headings and the main points you want to cover under each heading. Share this with the decision-making team to make sure you’re on the right track. Compare “like for like.” Say you’re comparing TCO between an on-premises and cloud solution over a 3-5 year period. Since cloud solutions have innovation and latest features baked into the standard pricing, remember to estimate the additional cost of upgrading and replacement that an on-premises solution would require to keep pace. The same goes for comparing ongoing operational costs. For instance, remember to factor in internal IT support staff and overhead costs for housing on-premises equipment versus a cloud contact center.
Why make the investment?
Track down successful business case examples and find someone who can brief you on which parts really matter and the minimum you need for approval
Work with your sponsor to build a rationale and decide on how you want to describe and give weight to the "hard" and "soft" benefits
Check format and logic with the decision making team
Undertake analysis needed to populate ROI and TCO
Build presentation. Rehearse.
At this stage, you may need to gain approval for investment before progressing, in which case you are presenting the case for investment using whatever industry average costs you have sourced
Check you have achieved what you set out to accomplish at this stage of the journey
Business Justification Checklist
Capturing the benefits
Probably the most common mistake is choosing a solution without fully understanding business needs. It’s easy to become fascinated with what a solution can do rather than checking to see if that’s what you actually need. This section helps you avoid such pitfalls by developing a laser focus on user needs. Every organization has its own language to describe the topics we’re about to discuss, starting with “strategic needs” — those that relate to the broader, more impactful issues in your organization, particularly Customer Service, Marketing, and Sales. How do we deliver value to our customers? Can we use customer service as a competitive advantage? What’s important in our ability to succeed at customer acquisition, retention, and growth? How can we move beyond functional silos with our customers? How do we balance our “cost to serve” goals against our “customer satisfaction” goals? What style of interaction represents our brand values? What do we mean by a multichannel strategy in today’s market? What is the future role of any existing on-premises applications versus cloud-based versions? How does this solution need to integrate into our overall ecosystem that manages the customer lifecycle? All great questions. But how do you use them to define needs? First, briefly consider each question. Then concentrate on answering the ones relevant to your organization. Finally, ask yourself: “Given each answer, what must the solution be capable of delivering?” What you should end up with is a list of key capabilities, such as “proactive service,” “personalization,” “seamless customer experience,” etc. Your task is complete once you’re satisfied that: All relevant strategic issues are identified The way in which the solution needs to support them is articulated and clear
Develop a laser focus on user needs, helping to avoid pitfalls
Understanding requirements
05
Selecting the right solution
Devise a process for gathering stakeholder input
Define strategic and operational priorities and connect with required system capabilities
Produce "day in the life" scenarios for demo briefing
Use the Priority Matrix to draw up a shortlist of solutions
Right Solution Checklist
Prepare a requirements document and ensure business and IT needs are equally and fully communicated
Create an evaluation template with the procurement team
Spend time calibrating your collective view
Start the evaluation process
Detail how AI virtual assistants and knowledge-based activities can provide better outcomes, increase agent productivity, and reduce operational costs
After completing strategic needs, repeat the process for operational needs. This time, the focus of your questioning is quite different. Operational needs are those that relate to the day-to-day running of your customer interaction center (or whatever you choose to call it), like efficiency, effectiveness, user experience, compliance, security, decision-making, etc. Here are some examples to get you started: 1. What levels of resourcing and site flexibility are needed? 2. What information do we need for strategic and operational decision making? 3. What matters to customers and colleagues in terms of user experience? 4. How do we cater for our home workers (if used)? 5. What compliance needs to be baked into the solution? 6. How can we deliver an outside-in view of our performance? 7. What are our complete security needs? 8. How will information and activity move between on-premises and cloud applications? 9. What existing “transactional interactions” can be automated using an AI virtual assistant? This process is particularly effective for existing call centers that wish to highlight important needs by comparing the old way of doing a series of tasks with a new approach — even more so when the difference between old and new is a step change.
Remember to include the strategic context for each capability since it helps the solution provider understand your need.
TIP:
One really effective way of defining and communicating operational needs is to invest time in "day in the life" scenario planning. These are typically designed for each major role such as agent, team leader and site manager.
Establishing priorities
Once you’ve produced both strategic and operational lists, your next task is to sort your needs into “essential” and “nice to have” — this helps you focus on the right priorities when you get to selection time. It will also give you a point of reference to ensure that some of your non-essential needs are met later on. This priority matrix allows you to assess the impact of filling a need in two ways — first, on customers and colleagues, and second, on organizational priorities. Plot the locations for all your strategic and operational needs. Obviously, those located in the upper right-hand box are top priority. Once you have filled in the matrix it can be used to screen potential solutions and assess vendor responses. It should get its final airing as a key source to build your implementation plan – check you are delivering against the needs you originally said were important.
Low
High
Impact on Customers & Colleagues
Impact on Organization's Priorities
The Priority Matrix
In the last two sections, we concentrated on needs analysis. This section looks at the options you have for collecting the data. Most organizations will want to gather stakeholder views to make sure all relevant voices are heard. Who is ideally included? It should be key representatives from all the functional teams who will be impacted by a cloud contact center. Many of them will have already been part of your first milestone — winning internal buy-in. Only this time, you’re in listening mode. Collect views through one-on-one interviews, online surveys, or workshop-style team exercises. If you’re under time pressures, you could complete the strategic and operational needs analysis alone or with a small team. Then simply share the output with your wider audience, so all they need to do is vote on pre-defined features. This allows the wider stakeholder group to still contribute by helping establish priorities. The procurement process You might think this topic would be central to a buyer’s guide, but we’re going to say comparatively little. That’s because every organization has well-defined processes and protocols for buying, which everyone is expected to follow. We will make the obvious point that the success of this phase is all about clear communication — even more important than adhering to a checklist.
Gathering operational input for your contact center
Pricing options Pricing options range from per seat, per user, per minute, per concurrent user, per call and usage-based Contract Lengths Standard contract lengths can run from monthly to multi-year depending on the number of seats Vendors Some vendors have minimum purchase requirements in terms of seats, contract duration or monthly contract value
Solutions will differ in their commercial terms
Be aware that each vendor has their own preferred way of positioning contractual terms. Some might become showstoppers for you. Here are some of the most obvious ones used for cloud based solutions:
Operating under deadlines that produce poor-quality choices. Failing to distinguish between “needs” and “wants”. Issuing RFPs that are so light on business needs that vendors respond with everything in the hope that something sticks. Ignoring the practical value of demos and selecting entirely from vendor’s written responses. Failing to invest enough time on customer references. Not getting “under the skin” of the differences between on-premises, hosted, and cloud-based solution. Not making an accurate comparison between upfront and hidden costs (e.g. provisioning and integration for the former, or database administration, help desk, and change management for the latter).
Avoiding these most common mistakes
There are all sorts of “gotchas” that can emerge along the buyer’s journey. Here’s a list of classic mistakes that are worth avoiding:
There are all sorts of “gotchas” that can emerge along the buyer’s journey. Here’s a list of classic mistakes that are worth avoiding: Operating under deadlines that produce poor-quality choices. Failing to distinguish between “needs” and “wants”. Issuing RFPs that are so light on business needs that vendors respond with everything in the hope that something sticks. Ignoring the practical value of demos and selecting entirely from vendor’s written responses. Failing to invest enough time on customer references. Not getting “under the skin” of the differences between on-premises, hosted, and cloud-based solutions. Not making an accurate comparison between upfront and hidden costs (e.g. provisioning and integration for the former, or database administration, help desk, and change management for the latter).
Questions to ask In addition to your selection team’s formal evaluation process, there are always opportunities for further insight. A well-timed question can sometimes reveal much more about the type of partner you’re considering than anything conveyed in an RFP. Here are some you might want to fire off at some point during the selection phase: Talking to the organization 1. Why are you our best choice? 2. What extra value do you offer over your competition? 3. What does your CEO believe makes your organization special? Talking to reference customers 1. How close was reality to what was promised? 2. What’s the best and worst thing about working with them? 3. Which of the benefits that you’ve gained matter most and why?
A rapid overview of options
Selecting the Right Partner
06
Draw up your own partner criteria — think broadly about what matters to your ongoing success and practically how you are going to assess that
Get to know potential partners, online and face-to-face
Prepare questions for their reference customers; make sure you take the time to engage them fully to learn from their insights
Keep notes and build a profile of each one
Right Partner Checklist
As we mentioned in the previous chapter, solutions and partners normally go hand-in-glove — if you buy one, you get the other. But that’s not always the case. Solutions can be sold through a third party, such as an outsourcer or a hosting specialist. And for some, these options can make sense. For instance, an outsourcer might provide both the solution and people. However, to simplify what is now an increasingly busy market, your choice of partner falls into one of two groups. Premises-based vendors — They initially were skeptical of the appeal of the cloud. However, their customers are on board with the cloud, so these vendors are now in the process of producing hosted and cloud versions of their core solutions. But they face the fundamental mismatch that cloud solutions introduce into the heart of their culture and operating model. They struggle to match the speed of innovation from “pure play” cloud vendors, given their own longer R&D cycles. And finally, many are suffering the consequences of how they have historically dealt with customers. The younger cloud vendors come across as more responsive and customer-focused. Cloud-based vendors — They’re still typically in rapid growth mode as the market expands from small-sized deals to the opportunity of upgrading medium-sized contact centers. Their core issue is that they are typically smaller than the premises vendors and are still catching up to 30 years of R&D. But their general agility and speed of innovation means that the functionality gap is rapidly closing. A key issue at this point in the market’s development is to select a partner who has a strong, creative, forward-thinking vision with enough stability to stay the course. How to assess a potential partner There are many opportunities to check out whether a potential partner fits your criteria. Such scouting might even start months before any formal tender process. How you go about this is obviously up to you. But we’ve identified some points that warrant careful consideration, yet can be easily ignored in tick-box evaluation cultures:
The organization’s vision for cloud-based innovation and the quality of their leadership team The cultural fit between their people and yours The financial stability of the organization The quality of relationship they develop with customers Their attention to detail and commitment to being the best The level of passion for what they are doing The solution and its forward momentum as described in their roadmap
Even if these are not the defining characteristics you look for, use them to source your own list and then work out how you are going to verify them.
Although this is primarily a buyer’s guide, we wanted to include a few thoughts on this final phase, since it requires as much attention as the other steps you’ve taken so far. Compared to premises-based installations, provisioning a cloud contact center is lightning fast. In Vonage’s case, the average time required to implement a 50-seat single-site contact center is 1–2 weeks, and 4-6 weeks for a 250-seater. What about more complex situations? A Vonage client who needed to consolidate customer interactions across 20 countries had their three regional service hubs up and running in eight weeks. This included all the behind-the-scenes changes implicit in such a project. Implementations can be completed on-site or remotely. In fact, one of our fastest ever turnarounds happened off-site at a previous Dreamforce event. Following a challenge from senior management, 20 seats were up and running in under 25 minutes! Planning for a successful implementation One of the great joys in buying a cloud contact center solution is that there’s still creative energy to make sure the new solution really works. Often, the time and costs of training, changing workflows, and generally bedding things in were ignored in on-premises implementations. Technology dominated the agenda. The net result was that little actually improved, and the expected ROI fell short. This time, things can be different. Go back to the original reasons why you wanted to invest in this new capability. What improvements had you envisioned? Imagine once the technology is working — what else needs to change? The answer will be a cocktail of people, behavior, policy, and workflow. Each of those might have their own challenges. So make a plan. Use the checklist below to ensure you’ve identified all the important topics and that everyone is aligned with the changes you're introducing.
A few ideas on this final phase
Implementation timescales
07
Agree solution implementation timescales with chosen partner
Design and schedule user training plus any workshops needed to review workflows and policies
Configure call flows and design call routing plans
Configure dashboards and alerts
Design an internal communications plan including everyone who initially contributed
Customize presentations for each audience and re-use your ‘day in the life’ scenarios if you created them previously
Upgrade performance management strategy and operational model; create a detailed plan for how this will be introduced
Wrap everything into an overall rollout plan
Implementation Checklist
In particular, keep checking that everyone’s motivation is aligned to the changes you are introducing. Conflicting goals and rewards is the single most common reason for failure to make change stick.
Vonage Contact Center: An Overview VCC is an enterprise-class, omnichannel communications platform delivered via globally available, cloud architecture. We take security seriously, and VCC has a comprehensive set of security measures based on best-practices, certifications and compliance. Vonage provides multiple interfaces to our Vonage Contact Center solution. Each focuses on customer engagement in a particular way. You can choose the best interface to meet the needs of individual agent roles, giving them access to the customer data they need to keep them effective. There are also standard and advanced versions of Vonage Contact Center to suit your needs — from as few as five agents up to many thousands. Let’s look under the hood A quick note about two of our call-recording features: First, recordings are automatically attached to a CRM customer record at the end of the call, making them instantly shareable across sales, marketing, and service. Second, call recording also works for mobile users of Vonage Contact Center, such as “on the move” sales teams. You choose whether to use PSTN or VoIP. Voice quality over IP can sometimes be a challenge, especially across globally dispersed centers. We recognize that and cater to both needs. Routing options, including skills-based, conditional, personalized, context-based, and real-time adaptive routing, let you get very smart in how you design traffic flows. This enables personalized services by customer segment or even individual, which works especially well when a CRM is deployed with Vonage Contact Center.
Learn How Vonage Can Help
Performance management
08
About Vonage Contact Center
Insight analytics
Search-based routing
Advanced routing
Cloud CRM routing
Next gen workforce management
Cloud "CRM Lite"
Contact Us To Learn More
We know a thing or two about contact centers, and we’ve used that knowledge to build Vonage Contact Center. Vonage has over 15 years of delivering award-winning contact center solutions. Our highly reliable and scalable Vonage Contact Center (VCC) platform is the underlying engine, and we have multiple agent interfaces that can provide the right solution at the right price for all of your agents and the roles they provide in delighting your customers. With Vonage, you can put awesome customer service front and center. Our seamless integration with major CRMs gives your agents the context they need to quickly resolve customer calls. Advanced routing ensures that customers are connected with the right agent. And we join your contact center and the rest of the organization into one powerful, reliable communications platform.
How Vonage approaches cloud innovation We code our own solutions. We control our own roadmap. Your life doesn't suddenly crash if something happens to a third-party piece of the overall solution — more common than you might think. That’s why we can offer proven availability and are one of the few cloud contact center providers to publish performance data. This allows you — and for that matter our competitors — to check if all our services are currently operating within expected thresholds. At the same time, having our own coding team presents a huge creative opportunity. You'll find proof in the many patents we’ve secured, each developed around a piece of core functionality, such as routing, workforce management, or analytics.
Reports: Real-time and historical reports are easy to build as one-off or standard reports from a library of templates; they can be scheduled and sent via email on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Dashboards: When reports aren’t fast enough, use real-time configurable dashboards allowing everyone to focus in on what matters minute-by-minute. Alerts: Team leaders can set up alerts delivered as emails or SMS that trigger whenever SLA thresholds are reached. Quality Monitoring: Team leaders can monitor live interactions, whisper coach, or conference in on a call as needed; post-call survey results can be used for agent evaluations. Messaging: Team leaders can influence performance during a shift using a broadcast feature to distribute information to agents.
And some of our biggest differentiators These modules also deserve a mention: 1. Vonage Connect Dialer is perfect for outbound activities, like sales calls and prospect qualification, and can boost a team’s productivity. 2. Vonage Contact Center’s self-service IVR helps your customers when they don’t actually need to speak to you. 3. Vonage’s speech analytics tool, Conversation Analyzer, monitors up to 100% of all calls, fully transcribing all phone conversations recorded in the system and ensuring that the correct phrases are being said and identifying incorrect or undesirable phrases. 4. Vonage’s AI Virtual Assistant, integrated with Vonage Contact Center, adds intelligence to any conversation in a customer’s journey, delivering enhanced self-service interactions that engage every caller in natural language. 5. Vonage Contact Center includes a fun gamification option to reward employees when they reach a personal or business goal. 6. Global Voice Assurance routes calls through the most efficient path by leveraging the local telephony infrastructure — regardless of where the caller and agent reside — to deliver exceptionally clear voice quality.
Some of our key management features ... You’ll find a wealth of information about Vonage Contact Center’s capabilities here. But let’s look at a number of features that together provide an effective performance management framework:
