choosing the right telemarketing contact center solution for bpo's

WhitepaperInteractions Simplified

Choosing the Right Telemarketing

Contact Center Solution for BPO's

Choosing the Right Telemarketing Contact Center Solution for BPO's Whitepaper

[email protected] © 2013 Drishti-Soft Solutions Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. www.drishti-soft.com

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Kind of technology 2

2.1 Globally Renowned Solutions 2

2.2 Free or White Labelled Solutions 2

3. Ameyo contact center solution 5

4. Ameyo vs Free (Free based White Labelled) 6

4.1 Robustness and Reliability 6

4.2 Intelligence 6

4.2.1 Predictive Dialer 6

4.2.2 AMD 6

4.2.3 Lead Management 7

4.2.4 Ameyo PACE 7

4.2.5 Call Back Management 7

4.2.6 CTI (Screen Pop) Speed 8

4.2.7 Supervision and Reporting 8

4.2.8 Voice Quality and Voip Handling 8

4.3 ROI 9

5 Success Stories 9

About Drishti 10

Customers 10

Awards and Appreciation 10

1. Introduction

Contact centers have been around for more than a decade and continue to show slow but steady

growth. Most of the contact centers today run tele-sales processes with 10-100 seats on an average.

Usually a BPO starts with one telemarketing process and acquires multiple processes over time. These

BPO's run telemarketing processes wherein revenue is generated on a pay-out per success (usually

sales) model. The outsourced telemarketing processes get paid in USD's whereas they pay their

business costs in INR. The conversion rates thus make it a highly profitable venture. However, due to

intermediaries, human errors or other dependencies payment such business usually turn into a bad

investment. For instance: The middlemen simply delay the payment or in the worst case scenario

frauds may happen. In this atmosphere the survival of a telemarketing contact center depends on its

business continuity and ability to acquire and deliver over multiple processes.

Broadly the three pillars of such businesses are

Historically, these startups are mostly entrepreneur driven businesses and micro management of all the

three pillars is done by a one man team. Who wishes to achieve as much cost optimization as possible.

Such entrepreneurs instead must focus on BD and customer management rather than operations and

fire-fighting of technology issues. The latter should ideally be handled by hiring good resources or

finding good technology partners.

However cash-flow problems and stringent budgets in a small setup, push entrepreneurs to curtail

expenses on basic infrastructure and agent quality and thus the entrepreneur is always left to

managing the operations internally rather than focusing on business development.

This vicious cycle on one hand leads to many call centers shutting down the shop and on the other

hand spawns many call centers due to an opportunity in place.

Contact centers are primarily ITeS which means they are IT enabled Services and IT obviously plays one

of the most important role amongst the three pillars. Therefore it should not be compromised to below

hygiene levels. In fact it is highly disturbing to note that very few startups that choose to ignore

technology in their initial phases, survive (less than 10%).

The rest tend to do away with suboptimal IT infrastructure and move to better technology and IT.

We at Drishti are operating in this domain since the past 10 years and our experience says it's mostly

due to erroneous focus and poor technology specifically in terms of IT infrastructure and connectivity

that leads to premature business death. Today, we replace around 4-5 such sub-optimal technologies

every month wherein customers have invested in capex, only in small measures.

We have witnessed very few businesses who are yet able to survive with sub-optimal technology.Those

that do survive are mostly doing so because of exceptional entrepreneurial efforts, however even these

end up highly under-utilizing their true potential.

l Business development and Customer management

l Quality of Agents and operations

l Connectivity and Technology

[email protected] © 2013 Drishti-Soft Solutions Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved. Page-1


2. Kind of Technology

2.1 Globally Renowned Solutions

2.2 Free or White Labelled Solutions

Now the most important question facing such companies becomes what are the technology options

available to the telemarketers and what parameters should serve as a lamp post for choosing an

optimal solution which offers a decent ROI. Especially for telemarketers one has to follow the

methodology of doing it right the very first time therefore a hit and miss method is unadvisable.

Being legacy provisioners of contact center technology, these solutions are so well known in the

industry that they are usually bought through peer references or after a brief introspection of

their products.

What makes them an unpopular choice among the contact centers is the cost implications with

each seat costing around $2K+ dollars including other add on costs like software OS/DB/Server

licenses or hardware implications.

Also as with any solution that is implemented there are recurring cost considerations on its

service and maintenance. It is erstwhile to note the expenditure involved in renewing. Keeping

all these factors in mind, it can easily be deduced that these solutions are not affordable for a

contact center.

These are almost free solutions that can be downloaded off the internet and sold or white

labeled by few companies at costs as low as $500 for limitless licenses in a setup costing upto

only $200 per seat.

Since most of these solutions are cloaked they show implemented features as tick-marks but

rather they lack intelligence for any good productivity and are unstable (constant system

failures and unreliable operations). They are not meant for serious business and are at most a

short term fix. All it takes is one rotten apple to spoil the bunch, non-productivity is a cost that

a business cannot afford to bear.

Sales or engineering oriented teams download an open-source solution and either sell it as a

service or in most cases illegally white-label it in their name. The companies selling this

freeware usually deploy onsite engineers who do very frequent site visits only to simply reboot

the server and restart the application rather than fixing the bugs.

Since the bugs are not fixed, errors are again introduced, affecting uptime and productivity.

This proves that companies peddling the freeware lack the knowhow on fixing these blocker

bugs. Which is obvious, given the fact that none of their engineers or developers (nobody from

India) are a part of the support or development forums (not a single line of source code has

been written).



Given below is a screenshot of Freeware owners that clearly warns consumers that freeware is being illegally

white labeled by such firms.

Vicidial(http://www.vicidial.org/vicidial.php)* is an open source AGPL licensed free contact center software

which has no licensing or sizing restrictions, no matter whether you run ViciDial with 5, 10 or 100 agents.

Vicidial has an online support forum where companies running the solution post queries on blocker bugs, these

queries are then resolved in an ad hoc manner by few moderators or mostly fellow VICIDIAL users who have

suffered similar problems. Not surprisingly, sometimes the queries go unanswered overall, in spite of being

categorized as a major issue that the user is facing.

The above screenshot shows the number of major bug issues filed by users in the VICIDIAL support forum as of

12/13/2012. It is appalling to note that all of them are in open status since the past year.

In Case ID 0000420: Around 1% of all calls are being dropped in the middle of a conversation with customer.

The user clearly states “The problem seems to be caused either buy a bug in Vicidial or an erroneous

configuration. The problem has a huge impact in the operation of the Call Center and it is a major source of

annoyance for the agents, but it is especially difficult to identify and solve, because it only presents in 0.5 - 1

% of the calls. I would be glad if anyone could give an insight on how to pinpoint the root cause of the issue to

proceed with a solution”.

Source - http://www.callcentersindia.com/showall-orig.php?value1=50012_REBRANDED

Source - http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALmantis/view_all_bug_page.php



This was the user's condition over a year ago, and the issue hasn't been closed till date. It is therefore safe to

assume that this customer would have migrated over to other technology or is not in business any more.

In a telemarketing environment where the number of customer connects are so low, if you end up losing a

percentage of those connects due to technology problems it is fatal to your cause.

Proving the lack of accountability when it comes to quality and support is another query shown below where

the user is suffering from a missing sale in his team performance report. Having clearly stated the fact in the

beginning of this paper that most business work on a Pay per Success model, how can the business get paid if

the details of a sale (success) is missing?

This issue has gone unresolved since 16-07-2012 with the user being in clear agony. What serves more as a

proof of poor technology than support in this case is the fact that the same issue keeps on coming back and

the user keeps on asking for a resolution after multiple self attempts at troubleshooting, with no help coming

from the forum.

The teams re-selling this solution are worse as they are not even members of this support forum and mostly,

won't even follow such bug issues, lacking the knowledge on how to do so. Instead they would restart the

setup or work on relationship building. No serious software programmer or business would work in such an

environment as any competent professional team would work in building a genuine technology rather than

white-labelling a free software that has no accountability in the first place and is a temporary fix at best.



3. AMEYO Contact Center Solution

Horizontal vs Vertical open source

Ameyo is the de-facto solution today for small telemarketing BPOs in India and Philippines, preferred

by more than 1000 customers, the solution is the brainchild of the Drishti team founded by IIT alumni

with a vision to build one of the the most respected technologies amongst the world and has won

multiple accolades:

Awards and Appreciation

NASSCOM Innovation Awards 2008 IP Contact Center Technology Award 2012

Contact Center World.com Award 2008 Best Contact Center Suite Award 2007

Deloitte Fast 500 company in APAC Red Herring Top 100 - 2008

NASSCOM - EMERGE 50 - 2009 IT & ITES Business of the Year Awards 2010

Red Herring Asia Top 100 2010 Winner Best CC Technology Award at MECC 2011

TMC Lab - Innovation Award - 2012 International tevie Bronze Award - 2012

The core IP based product is built on known Java programming paradigms by Drishti team. It utilizes

proven open source components like Asterix, Eclipse and JSON which due its open source roots reduces

total cost of ownership. It is priced in the mid range bracket from $500 dollars to $1000 dollars making

it an attractive option for businesses who do not wish to compromise on their technology.

Proven open source technologies are horizontal use based, open source software like that of Linux, Postgres,

MySQL, Asterisk are a few prime examples . By horizontal we mean anything that can be used by most

enterprises as part of their IT infrastructure. Such software are tested, supported and contributed by a large

audience and get stable in much less time frame than those of vertical counterparts such as library

management software or process specific call-center software. Where development is need specific, solutions

that are based on the vertical approach are limited to usage for each particular purpose.

Keeping this in our rearview at Drishti labs, we practice stringent benchmarking and certification of all

software including Ameyo as well as associated hardware. We believe in delivering our application to

the customer as handy as an appliance wherein the customers access the solution via user-interfaces.

The idea is to attract minimalistic mindshare of the entrepreneur to IT while our solution is in

operation giving him the freedom to focus on other verticals of his business.



4. Ameyo vs Free/White-labeled

4.1 Robustness and Reliability

4.2 Intelligence

4.2.1 Predictive Dialer

4.2.2 AMD

The solution differentiates from its competition for its Robustness, Reliability, Intelligence, VOIP

Handling and World class Support & Services at affordable prices. Having serviced ample businesses we

have multiple case studies and references which delineate Ameyo's capabilities as a solution. Before

any agreement is reached Drishti does a strategic POC with each client for comparing the productivity

and overall business results. The success rate of replacing the sub-optimal technology for this solution

is 100% till date. Drishti's claim is to prove in black-and-white that no call center should opt for a sub-

optimal technology even if they are paid to use and test such technology. Few clear differentiators

between AMEYO and the white labeled solution are:

While most operators say that downtime is not a critical issue when involved in outbound

campaigns like telemarketing, so that they can go for white labeled solutions. The fact of the

matter is that this negatively impacts business momentum. Frequent downtime is responsible for

deteriorating agent quality as it impacts his focus and motivation, due to which errors are

introduced.

Ameyo is certified through stringent certification procedures and is built for enterprise grade

deployment with 99.9% uptime. To add in document here is an extra spacefurther, Ameyo

provisions redundancy and disaster recovery for mission critical processes. The certification

process does not only ensure uptime but also guarantees that your operations are error free and

of the best customer interaction quality.

The solution empowers organizations to increase the quantity, as well as the quality of a

telemarketing campaign through intelligent features like predictive dialing, AMD, Advanced Lead

Management, PACE, Call Back Management. These features make your operations intelligent so

as to increase outgoing call volumes, optimize interaction time, improve quality, and further

refine processes.

AMEYO's patent pending predictive dialer algorithm is state-of-the-art and is based on

machine learning. It learns more than 40 parameters based on which it takes a decision

on how many numbers to dial. The agent wait time is minimized with almost zero call-

drops (compliant to OfCom regulations) The intelligent algorithm alone enhances

connects and reduces call-drops by more than 15% in comparison to FREE/White labeled

or free based solutions.

The Answering Machine Detection feature of AMEYO ensures high answering machine

detection rates and complies to standards. The AMD detection for FREE /White labeled



HolisticApproach

ExtensibleReliable

Configurable Manageable

· Adaptable to different service use models (SaaS or Premise)· Least turn-around time (Quick time to market) with rapid feature development.

· IP based networks · Easy migration path to future· Multi-tenancy

· Department & role specific modules · Need-based routing

· Centralized management of users and processes · Single-site & Multi-site environments

· Increase in Business Availability · Maximum customer contact

· SLA Management

· CRM Configuration for user-friendly interface· Modifications in run-time

campaign and process parameters

Customizable Future-ready

solution is usually less than 70% while error rate of more than 5% (they dispose of human

interatction as AMD's). Ameyo delivers more than 80% while error rate is is less than 0.5%

(as well as provides a mechanism of reducing the error rate further to even 0.1%).

Ameyo provides detailed Lead Management in which each lead has priorities and

weights. It manages the higher priority lead list to be dialed first and once this is

exhausted it moves on to the second highest priority. As in case of equal priority lead

lists, it dials according to weighing that you assign on each list for example: weighing

means you allot x% of calls to be dialed from one particular lead list and similarly allot

y% from other list. The supervisors are enabled to manage the connects with help of lead

lists intelligently, at a very granular level.

Ameyo PACE (Pro-Active Connect Enhancer) is an algorithm that adds brains to the

predictive dialer. The operators can configure customer behavior to the dialing algorithm

using PACE. Based on call history and other available data, customers are automatically

segmented for further processing of contacts as per the needs of the business process.

PACE provides for better lead selection and for better productivity under similar pacing

modes.

Callback mechanism allows the users to schedule callbacks to call customers at their

preferred time. In case the customer requests to talk to the same agent in his next

interaction, you can enable the same agent callback. You can also specify the number of

retries or set a callback reminder.

Ameyo allows you to direct a callback to another agent or a workgroup of the same

campaign after the specified expiry time. Ameyo has an easy-to-use interface for

configuring and managing callbacks. Users can retrieve callbacks as per specified

parameters such as the campaign, the time duration when the callback was uploaded or

the time duration for which the callbacks are scheduled.

4.2.3 Lead Management

4.2.4 AMEYO PACE

4.2.5 Call Back Management



4.2.6 CTI (Screen Pop) Speed

4.2.7 Supervision and Reporting

4.2.8 Voice Quality and Voip Handling

The component services framework (patent pending) guarantees the real-time handling

of critical events in a general purpose Enterprise Application processing environment.

Ameyo guarantees events for customer call to CTI (Agent Browser) within 300 ms. It is a

claim that even renowned solutions in the industry are also not able to make. It enables

better customer greetings and prevents agent stress and fatigue.

Ameyo's advanced supervision interface presents user, campaign/ process and system

level data in an easily interpretable and user-friendly graphical display. Independent

interface concepts for processes

and campaigns are shown on a more

categorized display of resource

performance. Entire telemarketing

shift data is made available in

graphs that helps identify trends

and patterns. Thus supervisors,

managers and analysts can

constantly analyze performance

efficiency, map planned strategy to

actual performance, and improve

on respective processes.

Ameyo empowers design and generates business-oriented comprehensive reports to track

necessary information for agent productivity, process efficiency, organizational

performance and metrics tracking. Reports can be generated using real-time, latest data

locally, or via a web-interface for remote access. Moreover, the Report Designer allows

users to generate specific reports based on what they would want to gauge in any chosen

performance parameter.

Call Center VOIP is usually a product of multiple redirections and often is troubled by

many not-so-good implementation of switches and proxies. Ensuring QOS over errant

networks and such an infrastructure is a challenge in itself. Call center IT has to struggle

with blame-games between network provider, service provider and technology providers.

AMEYO's expert SIP handling capability takes care of many usual issues and even allows a

good quality of Voice interaction in usual issues, that are not taken care by FREE/White

labeled solutions. Further, support team is equipped with right tools to identify and

troubleshoot any issues. As a practice our support team provides logs and traces

highlighting the exact issue, which expedites the process of resolving the issue at hand.



4.3 ROI

1) Agent’s cost and Administrative overhead (including office, and infrastructure)

which is of the order of 70%,

2) Business development cost which is around 15%,

3) IT cost which makes up the remaining 15 %.

5. Success Stories

As per our study, the cost of running a BPO is mainly divided into:

The cost of IT infrastructure includes cost of Server machines, IP connectivity, Telecom services,

PC and LAN infrastructure, Software licenses and many-more. Amongst this the cost of Ameyo

(software) would be around 4%.In case a telemarketer opts for a FREE solution, the total savings

are 4% wherein an immediate productivity drop of around 20% is witnessed due to lack of

intelligence of the installed software solution. Moreover, the telemarketer is also deprived of

the benefits of robust and quality operations of Ameyo which could have been attained at a

minimal investment of 4% of the total cost.

We have live case-studies substantiating our claims, we can also furnish the facts and figures on

request for any detailed query.


Before choosing Ameyo we

were running our operations

with a technology provided at

almost 1/10 of the cost. We

knew from the start that

Ameyo was a better solution.

However we were a startup

and had financial restrictions.

We were inclined towards

reducing costs. Our sales and

business development was

excellent, but our time was

spent on solving problems

and escalation management.

In due time wie lost valuable

customers which prompted us

to switch to Ameyo and now

our business has grown

exponentially.

Mr. Vijay Raj, (CEO)


Providing a telemarketing process,

we need to call out to customers and

provide them with the correct product

offerings on hand. We used a solution

that was very cheap with a basic

dialing functionality that claimed to do

the job. Throughout our operations we

experienced a lot of problems, there

were application failures and several

troubleshooting had to take place.

After getting frustrated with the

amount of technical faults we decided

to try the Ameyo Solution. It greatly

improved our customer connects and

allowed our agents to sell our products

to a broad range of customers. Now

our agents are making more sales

than ever before and we are looking to

expand in the near future.

Mr. Vinoth, (COO)

Acme

When we first used our previous solution, the

idea in our head was a cost effective solution that

could maximize our profit margins. The solution

was the cheapest in the market and in the

beginning it helped us with our telemarketing

process. However, as we went forward we

experienced a lot of glitches and lost customers

due to the unstable technology. We realized that

we were incurring more expenses in the lost

customers, trying to get them back on board and

resolving the small issues that popped up daily.

We heard about the Ameyo Solution and decided

to switch to the technology after getting convinced

of its long-term benefits. We had a seamless

operations and didn’t lose any customers, over

the long run it turned out to be more cost-efficient

than our previous solution and our good profit-

margin spread allowed us to expand and double

our capacity in a short span of time.

Jerry Mathew, (CEO)

Hello Group or Hello Information ServicesZealous Call Center Services Pvt Ltd


About Drishti

Customers

Drishti-Soft is an innovator of Contact Center Software and Enterprise Communications

Applications. Working in the domain of customer interactions management solutions, Drishti has

consistently delivered futuristic applications to un-complicate communications. Call center

solutions from Drishti is powering millions of inbound, outbound and blended interactions across

the globe.

Drishti's next-generation communications applications have powered numerous mission critical

processes having stringent SLAs. Solutions powered by Drishti's patent-pending Ameyo Platform

have increased process efficiencies for customer processes across different industry verticals

and multiple geographies. Our esteemed customers include:

Awards and Appreciation

Drishti Philippines, Inc.

Philippines

+632-923-8136 +63-905-331-5418

+632-7521416

www.drishti-soft.ph

Drishti-Soft Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Main Office - INDIA

+91-124-4771000

+91-124-4039120

www.drishti-soft.com

India | Sri Lanka | Bangladesh | Malaysia | Indonesia | | Middle East | USAPhilippines | Vietnam | Africa
