What to look for when buying an ACD
Sabio’s Adam Faulkner outlines some key areas that organisations need to consider before investing in new ACD technology.
At Sabio we’re finding that many of the organisations who bought a new ACD system or upgraded their existing technology to get through the Y2K crisis some six to seven years ago, are now finding that their current ACD systems are holding them back in terms of their ability to improve customer service levels. A lot has obviously changed during the intervening years, not least the widespread deployment of IP technology, and the advent of new developments such as virtualisation and emerging technologies such as SIP. Given that most organisations’ investment in their existing ACD technology has now been written down, many businesses are now looking again at the ACD market and considering their options.
When it comes to optimising the performance of key peripheral solutions such as IVRs, dialers and multimedia systems, it’s important for contact centres to be at least running current ACD software versions to make the most of the latest versions of these peripherals.
While earlier generation ACDs were typically dedicated boxes that would be installed either on their own or “piggybacked” on to a company’s telephone system, today’s ACD systems come in many different guises and are generally moving towards a software-based product that acts as a hub for a range of different contact centre solutions. There’s a broad range of different ACD technologies available, from traditional TDM solutions through application-based ACDs and the latest IP-based systems.
Look for deep contact centre experience
Before considering technology issues, it’s important to establish that any ACD vendor you work with has both the capabilities and experience needed to work in the specialist contact centre sector. That sounds obvious, but ACDs are all about handling business-critical calls from your customers, so it’s simply not smart to underestimate the importance of a vendor’s proven capability and their ACDs reliability. This means finding a solution that offers 5x9 levels of reliability, and a vendor with the pedigree to match.
You first need to establish that the ACD solution you’re being offered can actually give you the business benefits you’re after. Has the vendor implemented the same solution for other similar-sized organisations in your market sector? How long have they been in the contact centre sector? They may have strong IP expertise, but contact centres demand deep voice and applications capabilities – your vendor needs to demonstrate both. Also, how many agents do they actually have already successfully using the solution that you’re about to invest in? If the answer to any of these questions seems vague, just walk away.
The next major consideration depends on the type of contact centre you’re currently operating. If you’re building a new contact centre in a green-field location, then you’ll get better scalability if you go for a purely IP-based ACD approach. If, however, you’ve got an existing contact centre infrastructure with an ACD in place already, then you need to find out whether your ACD vendor offers a hybrid IP approach that would allow you to share some of the benefits of IP while still retaining your existing ACD investment. This is a key issue, as some vendors don’t offer this flexibility.
You should also check that your ACD vendor offers a clear forward technology roadmap. Technologies such as IP are still evolving so, for example, you need to find out where your vendor stands on open protocols such as SIP
Accommodating trends such as virtualisation
IP isn’t just a technology, it can have a fundamental impact on how your business operates, effectively allowing you to virtualise or pool staff resources across your organisation, whether they are contact centre agents, branch workers, back-office staff or home workers. A new ACD solution will play a key role in managing this shift towards virtualisation, and you need to ensure that your ACD technology partner is able to help you take advantage of this shift.
It’s also worthwhile understanding some of the major technology shifts that are currently driving change in the ACD sector. You can now download an open source, SIP-enabled IP telephony server, load it onto a standard PC and attach an IP handset that you can buy at Tesco or PC World. Technically that’s an IP phone system with routing capabilities – admittedly not one that could run an enterprise contact centre – but the fact that this technology exists can have an impact on your negotiations for a new ACD system.
The decision to upgrade or exchange your ACD should depend on the future roadmap of your existing ACD, your relationship with your solution provider over the lifetime of your ACD and, most importantly, whether or not it can manage your organisation’s future growth plans. This has always been true, but now pressures from open source and IP-based solutions are leading to a highly competitive ACD market with extremely attractive pricing. And that means there are a lot of smart buying opportunities out there for informed ACD customers!
