© Global Speech Networks i
Everything you
need to know
about Hosted
Contact Centre
Solutions
Reference: A Global Speech Networks
Whitepaper
Version: 1.1
Global Speech Networks Pty Ltd
Level 8, 636 St Kilda Road
Melbourne, Victoria 3004
Legal Notice
The content of this document is proprietary information, and is the intellectual property of Global Speech Networks Pty Ltd (GSN), and must not be used in any manner without the prior approval of GSN.
The GSN name and Trademark logo must not be removed from this document without the prior written permission of GSN. Should permission be granted, then it is mandatory that GSN must still be acknowledged as the author.
Table of Contents
Legal Notice
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4 Everything you need to know about Hosted Contact Centre Solutions © Global Speech Networks – Commercial in Confidence
1. Executive Summary
Companies aiming to grow into major players face a classic investment dilemma. It is essential to put in place the resources you need to support the type and size of operation you plan to become. But the cost of doing so can hold you back, impacting growth, and running the risk of landing you with unused resources and undersized profits.
Success breeds the need for new capabilities as customer numbers grow, customer expectations diversify and new channels develop. New models for sales, service and customer interaction are becoming increasingly complex, and powerful new customer database and call management systems offer vast new productivity and performance opportunities. In this document we look at how you can always ensure you have the IT and Telecommunications resources you need to drive your contact centre operation in the right direction, without ever needing to slow due to CapEx commitments. We show how a new breed of hosted services providers can reduce the risk of providing contact centre infrastructure, including:
latest generation Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
computer-telephony integration (CTI) and speech systems
pay-for-use ROI certainty
lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
improved all round customer-facing performance
seamless integration with in-house IT systems
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2. Hosted Solutions – the Key Business Drivers
The risks and challenges of technology purchases can be significant.
However technology is a necessity and organisations need to deal with the following challenges effectively to be successful in achieving their
objectives:
Future Proofing technologies from rapid obsolescence, as
technology upgrades for both hardware and software are fundamental.
Changes to legislation cannot be predicted but when they arise
can have significant and costly implications on your business.
Skills within companies are difficult to maintain as systems
managers are required to support more than one business
application. In addition, the departure of a key systems manager can have dire consequences to the business.
Deployment of technology - organisations need to be able to
move quickly, not just on the initial roll-out but on changes and/or scaling to existing technology.
Ensuring suppliers are accountable for business outcomes not
technology. When projects fail to deliver the intended business value, who is accountable?
Return on capital – will your technology investment deliver a
return equal or better than if you had invested in your core business. What was the opportunity cost?
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3. The Role of the Hosted Services Provider
Hosted services - sometimes called managed services or network managed services - have traditionally been a cost-effective option available to large organisations with complex technology bases. But hosted services are not restricted to large companies alone. Business processes such as CRM have increasingly migrated to the model in recent years, and outsourced web hosting has always been a feature of the corporate internet landscape.
Today, the key fact for managers is that hosted services capabilities are now within the reach of medium sized companies as well.
So what exactly can the new generation of more flexible and scalable hosted providers do for you?
Your provider should do more than simply make capital investment in technology on your behalf. Hosted services today are about delivering a complete business solution. Typically this will include network carriage services, application development, and pre-purchased system usage (similar to ISP or mobile phone usage plans) - wrapped in service level guarantees.
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4. Exploring the Benefits of Hosted Solutions
“Under a traditional premises-based contact centre model, organizations must purchase technology in order to meet their peak rather than their average usage requirements.” Source: Managed Services for the Contact Centre, Datamonitor (Published April 2005).
Innovative hosted service providers are now enabling companies to obtain the benefits of technology such as IVR without incurring high capital
expenditure and risk – and they are doing so in the context of a total managed solution for a company’s wider IT requirements.
A hosted model enables you to realise the following benefits, which can provide companies with clear advantages over CPE solutions:
Freedom from hidden or unexpected expenses - from technical
support to consultants, from unplanned downtime to ongoing license costs.
Investment return certainty.
Future-proofed technology - and the knowledge that you will
benefit instantly from the technology to meet the evolving needs of next-generation contact centres.
No need to constantly trouble-shoot IT issues - instead you can focus
on adding value to the customer.
Invest capital in core business areas - managers are freed from
technology issues and left to focus on core strategic business issues - confident that decisions will be supported by the latest technology.
Flexibility to move quickly and meet both scale and functional
requirement demands.
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CFOs will want to see real financial benefits from the beginning, with
a detailed allocation of costs and revenues, together with facts and figures on usage of the hosted infrastructure.
Senior executives will need assurance not only that there is a good
business case in theory, but also that there is a solid contract underpinned by deliverable Service Level Agreements (SLAs) together ith a fully accountable process to ensure that the partnership works well in practice.
The IT team needs to be certain that with the hosted solution they
will have sufficient control to address any operational or change requirements.
For the contact centre management team itself there are a number of must-haves. A hosted provider will have made the investments and will have the delivery methodology to offer a menu of services which can be diversified and expanded as the partnership grows and new business
needs develop. They should be able to demonstrate how they can deliver clear time, cost, and above all performance benefits when compared with CPE equivalent solutions. And they should ensure you keep total control and ownership of important business data and decisions.
With the right provider there are clear advantages to be seized:
Productivity at the customer interface is increased by state-of-the-art
call handling and call routing technologies.
With a significant reduction in IT CapEx, and with no unplanned
running costs, you can invest more in products, services and customer relationships.
Deployment of solutions to meet changing needs is far more rapid -
you can buy into the services you need as and when you need them with minimal lead-time.
Your information infrastructure is future-proofed - for example as
9 Everything you need to know about Hosted Contact Centre Solutions © Global Speech Networks – Commercial in Confidence
Minimise risk while maximising your flexibility and scope to
embrace new opportunities and to expand your contact centre resources as your customer base grows.
Leverage existing assets and adopt hosted solutions for discrete
business processes as required.
Deploy technology incrementally at a rate that meets business
demand. Hosted solutions are not an “all or nothing” proposition.
5. Global Speech Networks Hosted Solutions
Global Speech Networks Hosted platform is a highly redundant, scalable, feature-rich solution that enables your company to manage remote agents or multiple call centres more efficiently while providing a unified call
delivery platform and enterprise-level reporting.
Our hosted contact centre platform is fully integrated with our IVR platform and can easily incorporate advanced features such as call recording, CTI, speech recognition and text-to-speech into every solution. GSN is also an ideal alternative to traditional Business Continuity solutions, allowing critical employees to work from a remote location in the event of a disaster. Leveraging the industry-leading capabilities of software provider Genesys, our hosted services allow you to leverage the entire Genesys suite so you can have an integrated solution providing Call Control, Routing,
Outbound, IVR, Speech Recognition, Text to Speech and CTI. The hosted Genesys platform is available on an on-demand basis, scaling instantly to meet your requirements.
The Genesys platform is deployed within carrier grade infrastructure providing availability and functionality on demand.
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GSN has created an extensive range of pre-packaged applications and solutions that automate labour intensive and repetitive human interactions. GSN specialize in the provision of pre-packaged customer interaction management solutions encompassing Contact Centre and IVR products and services, including Speech Recognition. A host of specially developed applications for business process outsourcing developed for both specific vertical markets and for generic business processes are available to our clients.
6. Conclusion and Next Steps
Any company can now gain the same strategic benefits from hosted services formerly reserved for large scale contact centre operations. New models that can scale to the changing needs of mid-sized
companies, offering pay for use terms and providing on-demand access to the most powerful call and customer management capabilities mean that organisations can plan for growth with confidence.
There is no longer a need to allocate significant capital expenditure to call centre IT - and no need to limit ambition in terms of new channel adoption, geographic location, or 24x7 availability. A hosted service can deliver more effectively at a far lower TCO.
GSN hosted solutions featuring Genesys allows you to adopt the most advanced IVR and speech recognition systems without upfront investment and without having to worry about deployment or integration with existing systems.
With GSN hosted services you can gain access to the full menu of Genesys services and solutions including on-demand options, ensuring you only pay for what you use.
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7. Contact Details
Address: Level 12, 114 Albert Rd
