Abtech was asked to design a solution for a customer that wanted a call center with outbound dialing capabilities.
The design was a hybrid approach using a combination of hosted and premise solutions. The Contact Center and Recording functionality were premise based and the predictive dialing was in the cloud. We used a ShoreTel platform for the Contact Center and a CSI for Call Recording and Quality Management. ShoreTel is absolutely the best Contact Center platform out there for SMB.
The primary reason for going with Premise was investment protection and support. The investment was not necessarily financial but the investment in time. As you well may know a Contact Center evolves over time. This is significant asset that should be protected. Most people in the industry agree there will be consolidation and defragmentation of Call Center Hosted providers. At which point you will not have any ownership of your contact center and it could go away at anytime in the future. To rebuild would be a significant cost and risk to the business. Additionally with a Premise solution there are hundreds of potential service providers for the ShoreTel platform. If you are not happy with one there is another right behind them. Support happens to be the biggest complaint in the Hosted Communications industry.
