A call center software can be a somewhat substantial financial investment, and it’s a decision you’ll want to live with for a while — after all, one of the reasons for investing in a software is to help your companyscale your support operations. So, before you jump feet-first into a selection, it’s important to back up and understand your organization’s goals and needs, then conduct a methodical and objective review of your options.

Figure out what you want to achieve with your software. The most crucial step is determining your goals within your company. What does adopting call center software mean to your organization and what business objectives do you expect it to help you achieve?

It may seem straightforward, but all too often stakeholders have different ideas of what they want a software to do — leading to an unproductive product search. So, before you begin, gather up all those involve in the outcome of your plans and slowly lay out all the problems you’re trying to solve.

Next, try to come up with an evaluation checklist. Now that you know what you want to accomplish, it’s time to create your wish list. How will this help you get where you want to go? It’s important to get input from people at every level who are involved with customer support to choose and rank the features and functionality you need your software to provide. This attention to detail will help you choose the right tool with all the functionality you need rather than a tool with extra unnecessary bells and whistles. A discussion or even a meeting with the senior level, management level and front lines will help you fill out the initial wish list.

What we’ll need to do next is to schedule demos of products that appear to meet your criteria. By using the checklist that we have created, we will identify the vendors offering products that meet your high-priority requirements. One way to test their product is to go to their website, sign-up and request for a demo version of their software. You can also invite them over to your company and do a demo run along with your employees. The latter is suggested as the feedback can be raised realtime and adjustments can be done realtime as well.

The last step is to evaluate and rate products and vendors. As you go through demos and try out each product through your free trial, try to evaluate the product on a variety of factors. It helps to have a mechanism to quantify and score vendors on these factors, so that at the end of the process you’ll have the data that help you make a clear choice. It’s important to think about more than just the features of the tool. Factors such as affordability, usability and architecture are equally important. Also consider the vendor itself: the company’s viability, commitment to the space and its reach — the ability to provide global coverage and post-sales support.

Choosing the right tool to manage customer interactions is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in today’s competitive global business environment, giving your company a distinct competitive advantage. By following a needs-driven, logical decision-making process, your selection team can identify and prioritize real needs, comprehensively and objectively evaluate products and choose the call center software that will serve your company – and your customers – as you grow.

Often the value of the in-house call center is put on the back burner or ignored outright. It’s because deciding the technological needs – particularly the software needs – is so very confusing. Even after looking over a gazillion data sheets, white papers, product packets or after having the tenth meeting determining the company’s needs, there is still an uncertainty in what is needed in terms of software selection. The task can be tedious, daunting and overwhelming.

To many businesses, in-house call centers are a key toward achieving and maintaining success, and call center software is at the forefront in that respect. Thus, software selection is as crucial as any other selection a company must make. One may think it is as simple as employees answering phones, but that is most certainly not the case. To truly appreciate what in-house call centers provide their company, consider these points:

• Creating indirect profit
• Market research and feedback
• Increase business information security
• Increased understanding and knowledge of product offers
• Increased recovery capabilities due to disasters of any type
• Maintain and cultivate customer retention, loyalty, and satisfaction
• Increased public relations due to the local economy support

Before the particular details of the best possible in-house call center software product for your company can be selected, the broad strokes of what your company needs must be questioned. Take the time to think and answer the following questions in order to help narrow the selection possibilities and make the process much easier. Check if your company handles more inbound or outbound calls & tap with your call volumes . Next, check if your current product integrate with your current phone system. Last, check how easy your system can be learned. Now that the broad stokes have been addressed, let’s look at key tools and features that are important to selecting your in-house call center software.

We’ll take a look at the customer satisfaction attributes. It may not seem like such an important factor in selecting software, but tools and functions that address customer satisfaction are critical to evaluate. Without customers, businesses fail to be successful, and software selection needs to include customer satisfaction attributes.

We will also need to look at its supervisory controls. A very important aspect that is often ignored when selecting software is whether it allows for supervisory controls. Supervisory controls are important for company growth and professionalism. Additionally, supervisory controls aid in training both employees and managers. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, supervisory controls aid companies in pinpointing their downfalls. It allows for the discovering of areas of concern such as customer service, remedial training, and growth opportunities.

Our last stop will be the call technology options. Of course, there will be the need to address technological issues and needs concerning call performance capabilities. Top notch call center software have the features like Automatic call distribution (ACD), call recording, computer technology integration, interactive voice response (IVR), lead management & predictive dialing. Not all of these features will be fit for your business – be sure to select the ones that are useful and beneficial for you.

Before talking to vendors about call cener softwares, it’s important to identify the objectives you want to achieve with the new system. This includes quantifiable objectives, such as new revenue potential, cost savings, increased number of calls handled per representative, etc. This will enable you to have a more productive conversation with vendors so you can make the best decision for your needs and budget.

The first thing to check is your usage pattern. Consider the types of calls your business makes on the average business day, as well as slow and busy days. Do you have mostly inbound calls, outbound, or mixed? Also, try to consider what times will you need the system, when will the biggest usage periods be, and what volume of calls you expect.

Also think about how many agents will use your system today and in the future, and where they will be located. You’ll want a system that can scale both in number of users as well as geographically as your business grows, without incurring unplanned costs.

Second, check your budget. The question is, how much are you willing to spend for the return of investment you expect to get? Call center software can be expensive. It can range in price from $1,000 to get started, for smaller call centers with about five reps, to $20,000 for bigger organizations with 100 or more representatives. When considering your budget for the project, take into account scalability. How will the new system scale with your business and what will the associated costs be?

Third, check what will be needed to install the system. In addition to set-up and installation times and costs, you’ll also need to take into account ongoing maintenance. For example, all vendors perform software upgrades. Be sure to ask your sales representative how upgrades are handled, how often they make them, and also – how often and for how long their systems are down as they perform maintenance. You want to ensure that your business does not come to a grinding halt when your vendor is performing maintenance on their system.

Lastly, try to check what kind of customer support do you need. You’ll want to get specifics from your vendor on their level of customer support if you run into issues or need additional training. For example, is their support available 24/7, and are they available by phone, live chat, or just email? What are average response times and hold times to talk to an agent during peak hours? Will you have one account manager to talk to or will you be calling into a call center? How does the vendor handle system failures and emergencies?

With all those checked, you are now confident to procure your own call center software. But be always wary that there are no perfect system for your business, you just need to pick all the vital features that your business needs.