When you’re evaluating new call center providers, it’s easy to race to the bottom on price.
Who offers the best rates? Who has the cheapest license per user? And what solution is the most economical to implement?
These must always play a factor, sure. But there are a ton of other criteria you must consider before you start crunching numbers.
Things like feature set, deployment help, and security and reliability should be high on your priority list. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a cheap solution that doesn’t cater to your business’s needs.
Call Center Providers: What You Need to Know
When looking for a new call center provider, consider these four key criteria:
| Features and functionality | Does the solution cover everything you need today and tomorrow? Is the interactive voice response (IVR) configurable per your needs, and are all your customer communication channels supported? |
| Deployment and integration | Will your call center provider help with migration and setup? Is there a two-way information exchange available with your line of business apps? |
| Security and reliability | Have you checked for satisfactory uptime service level agreements (SLAs)? What is the service credit procedure? |
| Support and reputation | Do customers of a similar size and from comparable industries say good things about the provider? Are review sites consistent? |
Up next, we dive into the ins and outs of each category to help you make the best decision for your business.
How to Choose a Call Center Provider
While every business is different, there is a common set of items you must review when shortlisting a provider.
None of these should come as a surprise. But some items often fall by the wayside as you get caught up in technical discussions and product brochures.
Features & functionality
When you opt for a hosted call center rather than an on-premises type, you open the door to a wealth of features at your fingertips.
Check out these features, now considered table stakes, available with the top call center providers.
Call routing & IVR
When customers call in, how do they make it through to an agent?
You can configure your call routing to work with an IVR system, ensuring customer inquiries are directed to the most suitable agent efficiently. This means you no longer need a dedicated help desk solely to redirect calls.
When customers dial your phone number, they are prompted to choose from a numeric menu, e.g., 1 for Sales or 2 for Support. You can make this menu as many layers deep as you need. Then, after a number is chosen, route the call to an agent with the relevant pre-configured skill assigned to them.
There’s less time waiting and higher customer satisfaction when the caller doesn’t need to get transferred and repeat themselves.
To streamline the customer journey, look for features like skills-based routing, IVR for self-service FAQ, and call queuing with announcements.
Omnichannel support
Omnichannel support means managing more than just incoming calls. In fact, it means supporting multiple digital channels like phone, email, chatbots, SMS messages, and social media from a holistic perspective.
Not only do you get access to web chat, but you have all previous customer interactions at your fingertips when doing so.
Do you need to retrieve a call recording from the past or check an email they sent last week?
You get a single pane of glass for customer service, arming live agents with all the information they need to drive a great customer experience.
Another key element to consider here is whether you need inbound call center services or support for outbound call center services too.
Whether you operate a basic answering service or provide a full customer care function may determine the type of call center you need. Likewise, you might be a market research company or a telemarketing company specializing in appointment setting. These types of businesses need specialist outbound dialing options.
While modern VoIP call centers have the ability to dial the outside world, there are plenty of reasons why you might restrict an agent from doing so.
Consider an inbound vs. outbound call center or whether you need a mix of both (blended), and make sure your chosen call center service provider can empower all your support services and sales staff.
Agent & supervisor tools
It’s not just agents you must take care of when checking for features and functionality.
Evaluate features like call recording and quality monitoring to ensure supervisors have the access they need to maintain standards and step in where needed.
At a minimum, supervisors need a dashboard view of activity so they know what’s happening at all times.
From there, you might want to enable features like “whisper” and “barge” for real-time coaching.
Those with more customer-centric appetites should look out for sentiment analysis and speech analytics to always be aware of how customers are feeling during conversations.
Rather than waiting for survey results like net promoter score (NPS) to filter in, nip customer problems in the bud by detecting high levels of stress and negative words during customer calls and live chats.
Reporting & analytics
In addition to functionality like call recording and agent scoring, your call center provider should offer a robust range of reporting options, including a comprehensive analysis with key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics.
Standard reports found in a call center include:
- Call volume
- Channel mix
- Cost per call
- Occupancy rate
- Agent utilization
- Agent performance
- Customer satisfaction
- Customer effort score
- Call abandonment rate
- First call resolution rate
Call center reporting takes all your interactions and turns them into patterns and preferences. With this information to hand, you can be more confident making key business decisions, knowing you’re doing the right thing.
Ask to see a demo of what your call center reports and analytics will look like pre-deployment. The last thing you want is to be handed a login only to get lost in a bad user interface.
Scalability
If you need to scale customer support, the last thing you want is a call center solution that can’t facilitate your newly hired call center agents.
Always check if the software can adapt to your business growth, accommodating future increases in call volume or agent count.
It should also be quick and easy to add new agents, allowing you to hire short-notice temporary staff as well as plan for seasonal uplift.
Deployment & integration
Sure, features are fun to review. But they’re no good if they don’t work in your environment.
Make sure you also consider the following three key areas when evaluating your next call center provider.
Cloud-based vs. on-premises
If you’re currently running an on-premises call center, consider the cloud for faster deployment and lower upfront costs.
Unless you have a compliance need or technical restraint, moving to the cloud is a welcome shift into the 21st century. There is still a place for on-premises setups, e.g., healthcare industries with governance guidelines around data storage, but they involve major hindrances when it comes to innovation and access to new features.
Cloud deployment not only opens the door to call center features like self-service portals, artificial intelligence (AI) assistance, and extended integration, but it also removes the potential for maintenance contracts, on-site support teams, and downtime for future changes and scaling.
Ease of integration
When agents use an app like a customer relationship management (CRM) or phone system all day, you need to make sure these integrate with your call center solution.
What’s more, this needs to happen without weeks of planning and technical deployment. Out-of-the-box integration is another key feature you get when opting for a cloud call center over an on-premises deployment.
From here, you can create information exchanges so agents reduce time spent looking for information and hunting down back office users for help during phone calls.
You also remove the need for duplicating information across systems. For example, when a contact gets updated in your call center service, the same happens automatically in your CRM.
Implementation time & training
Getting set up with your new call center solution must include minimal disruption to your day-to-day operations.
While you’re rolling out new technology, you must appreciate that agents’ and customers’ lives go on. They can’t just take a break because you’re upgrading your business tools.
In this case, make sure you plan to the finest detail how and when changes go live and training will occur. If you need professional services support or project management for large deployments, make sure to check early in the process that you’re getting this without any surprise charges.
Security & reliability
Often left until last, but always the most important factor, pay attention to the accreditation and uptime guarantees associated with anyone on your shortlist.
No matter how many bells and whistles your call center provider throws at you, they’re no good if they don’t work half the time.
Data security
Your call center provider should have robust security measures to protect customer data, including encryption and compliance with relevant regulations (HIPAA, PCI DSS, FINRA, etc.).
Failure to provide evidence of these is a red flag. Most providers will make this clear on their website, so you won’t get a surprise when you’re already halfway through implementation.
With modern innovations like AI assistants becoming more commonplace today, checking data retention and company information policies is also a must.
Business continuity & disaster recovery
In the case of an unplanned event, it pays to understand your provider’s plans for handling system outages or natural disasters.
As the saying goes, failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Even if you don’t think your business is likely to suffer an outage due to adverse weather or freak incidents, having a plan for continuous service will, at a bare minimum, give you peace of mind.
If you’re located somewhere that suffers frequent storms or hurricanes, this is likely business requirement number one. A well-formulated disaster recovery plan is a must.
SLAs
Ensure your chosen provider offers SLAs that guarantee uptime, performance, and support response times.
If you’re offering X level of technical support to your customers, you need to know you’re getting it yourself.
It’s common for high-quality cloud call center providers to offer a 99.99% uptime SLA. Nextiva, for example, prides itself on world-class reliability and security, with 24/7 monitoring, N+1 redundancy, and multiple points of presence to ensure geographic resilience.
Support & reputation
So you’ve checked out how secure and reliable your call center provider is.
Job done?
Sometimes things will go wrong, and you’re going to need help. It might not even be the provider’s fault, but you’re going to call them anyway. It’d be nice if they answered.
Customer support
The first thing you want to check is the customer support and troubleshooting options (like phone, email, and live chat) offered. If you prefer to contact your provider via email and receive asynchronous updates, it’s no good if they only offer a phone support line.
Next, check their availability hours to ensure you get timely help. If you offer 24/7 support to your customers in different time zones, it’s non-negotiable that you receive the same from your call center provider.
It’s also worth checking for a formal escalation matrix. If you raise a support query that isn’t getting the attention you need, knowing who to contact and when speeds up the process.
Industry reputation & references
There’s no better way to see what other customers think about a call center provider than to check genuine reviews.
Seek references from existing customers by reading case studies on the vendor’s website, and check review sites like G2 and Trust Radius.
Did you know? Nextiva is voted a top contact center solution on G2 based on over 2,290 5-star reviews.
Training & ongoing support
Look for providers offering comprehensive training programs and ongoing support resources for your agents and technical staff.
The most supportive call center providers realize that running a call center isn’t a one-and-done exercise. As well as initial adoption training programs, ask about on-demand tutorials, videos, and user guides for new features and new users as your business grows and starts to use more of the functionality available.
Nextiva: Your Trusted Call Center Provider
Scouting a call center provider is a lot.
You’ve got to check for best-in-class features, preferred methods of deployment, ease of integration, and whether you can trust your vendor to be there when you need them the most.
Nextiva supports small businesses and medium-sized organizations with their new call center setups by providing everything they need in a single pane of glass, easing deployment.
Whether you need to get up and running immediately, taking advantage of self-service setup and training, or you have complex integration requirements and need assistance from an experienced project team, Nextiva is here to help.
With customers ranging from growing businesses like Canyon Coolers to major brands like San Antonio Spurs, every customer is different, and we get that.
“We have to connect with our customers. Connection is everything. And Nextiva helps us to do that.”
~Jason Costello, CEO and Founder at Canyon Coolers
Backed by our 99.999% uptime SLA, chock full of modern features, and consistently recognized for great customer support, we’re confident Nextiva is the best call center service for you.
