So, you want a hosted contact center?

A hosted contact center with a third party raises visions of dollar savings for most businesses. However, there are certain factors to keep in mind if you wish to benefit from efficiencies that arise from a hosted contact center.

Be sure to provide a dedicated line for your contact center traffic so that it does not have to compete with email and other applications for bandwidth. Bifurcate corporate traffic and contact center traffic, you may have to invest in a new WAN connection and router. Another alternative is to increase your network bandwidth so that contact center performance does not suffer because of corporate staff surfing the net and sending large email attachments. However, you need to be aware of peak loads that can increase latency in contact center communication.

Get an SLA from the vendor to cover various performance parameters such as latency and uptime. Spikes and valleys in latency can cause frustration to customers and prospects that may be on line at that time.

So, an SLA, an internal infrastructure, and your own security measures are some pre-requisites that you need to consider for a hosted contact center solution.