There is much debate in the contact centre community over the hosted contact centre. In fact, even the definition of hosted contact centre varies according to different sources. Datamonitor defines managed and hosted contact centre services as “the provision of contact centre technology from the network level by a service provider. The technology may be provided as a multi-tenant (one platform, many customers) or dedicated (one platform, one customer) hosted or managed service. Payment for the technology must be usage based, either on a per agent/solution/port per day/week/month basis or based on actual technology usage, i.e., per minute/phone call/email/transaction/etc.”

For the most part ASP would agree with the above definition; however we feel that customers may not always desire hosting from the network and may prefer hosting on their own premises. Hosting on a customer premises maybe seen as similar to a managed service, but hosted contact centres are as much about the commercial payment model as they are about the hosting location. If a customer is on a usage based payment, we consider this to be a hosted model. However, we do recognise that there will always be some interchange-ability between the ‘managed’ and ‘hosted’ terms.

Datamonitor also predicts substantial growth in hosted contact centres (see diagram), and this area is predicted to take up much of the future growth in contact centres over the coming years. ASP agrees with this prediction and already offers a number of hosted propositions, based on partnerships with leading technology vendors and ASP home grown developments. These propositions are designed to address small contact centre operators as well as large multi-national operators. But whatever the size of the call centre, we believe the customers are all looking for the same functionality they would expect with CPE type solutions with the added benefits of hosted/managed services.

The number of customers buying hosted services from ASP has always been strong. We have many customers using the ASP feature net services for many years now and also have customers hosted on our new wave propositions like ASP ICM., ASP IPCC and multi-media contact centre. ASP also feels that choice is important for customers as not all services are alike, so we are always willing to work with new technology vendors who have an interesting or differential go to market proposition.

A subject which is not very well understood, and we believe is confusing for customers, is how to evaluate one hosted service offer against another. This paper sets out the ASP CRM practice opinion on what are the most desirable features a hosted contact centre proposition, and how it would ideally, be commercially packaged to appeal to the widest range of customers and meet their key business goals. The paper is intended to provide the reader with an insight to hosted contact centres and some of the key issues faced by suppliers and customers alike. The paper is not reflective of any single proposition offered by ASP or by other suppliers in the industry. We have purposely kept the subject matter abstract from any particular offer (except where used in examples), to drive discussion in this area. Through feedback from the wider community, we hope to increase the attractiveness of hosted contact centre products to our customers.

It is recognised that the operational design of many contact centre infrastructures, can often be a complex one. It is not uncommon for customers who are considering upgrading the contact centre infrastructure, to choose one contact centre technology over another, purely down to one or two technical features. Some customers also have a favoured technology based on previous experiences. For these customers, the decision making process in choosing the technology or supplier to use, is often led by a specific requirement (e.g. refresh, expansion etc.). It is sometimes difficult to identify a more applicable solution which better fits the strategic needs of the business or wider group (e.g. lowering total cost of operation, simplify operation, re-structure the commercial contract etc.).

The decision on which technology to buy is important to any call centre manager, who will then need to live with that decision for maybe 5 years or more. And it is understandable why many call centre managers would currently stick with tried and trusted customer premise equipment (CPE) installations, in the absence of any change of strategy within their business. Hosted contact centre propositions are still a new concept to many people and the arguments for considering this type of proposition is usually best made, only when the customer’s business strategy is taken into consideration. ASP understands that the hosted contact centre proposition is best represented as part of a consultancy led sales approach to ensure customers have the appropriate solution for their business needs.

ASP is now working with customers who traditionally chose CPE solutions, but are open-minded to the hosted contact centre concept and are looking for a suitable solution. Looking around the current set of hosted contact centre providers, it quickly becomes evident that not all hosted contact centre propositions are alike. A customer might favour the commercial terms of one proposition, but then be confounded by the lack of functionality. In the past 5 years, the market has been dominated by new entrants, offering feature rich packages which did a little bit of everything (IPT, ACD, workforce management, outbound dialler etc.) and were generally targeted at the small contact centre market. In the last 2 years, the traditional switch vendors have changed or re-invented their switch platforms and commercial purchasing models to make it easier to offer their products as well. There are now many different call centre products which can be hosted. Some are suited to single tenancy (one customer per instance), and some are suited to multi-tenancy (multiple customers sharing the same instance). ASP feels that with all the different options now available, it is worth defining at this point what we believe should be the ideal characteristics of a hosted contact centre service and how we ourselves evaluate the different offers from suppliers.