The pursuit of excellence is the driving force for every contact center, regardless of size. When customers receive excellent service, customer satisfaction and loyalty improve and contact centers are successful. However, recent economic events and the overall volatility of the telecommunications manufacturing sector are now driving centers with outdated or non-upgradeable premises-based equipment toward a critical juncture: make significant new capital expenditures or risk customer-impacting declines in performance.

Forthese contact centers, finding an affordable contact handling and workforce optimization solution is a top business priority. Although premises-based equipment has been the de facto contact handling solution, it carries a high total cost of ownership (TCO).

This high cost is created by up-front capital expenses, internal IT maintenance/support staff and frequent upgrades to support critical advances in contact handling and workforce optimization. Until recently, there has not been a viable alternative. However, cost concerns, the increasing trend towards at-home workers and vendor instability have all given rise to an alternative solution that is rapidly gaining widespread acceptance:

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), also known as on-demand services. SaaS is now moving into the mainstream. This fact is supported by a recent Gartnerstudy revealing that nearly 90% of organizations surveyed expect
to maintain or grow their usage of SaaS, with more than one-third transitioning from on-premises to SaaS.1 For contact centers, SaaS solutions have the added benefit of integrating with existing on premises equipment, providing enhanced features and functionality without requiring additional hardware expenditures.