How Much Does a Transformed Contact Centre Cost?

Contact centres typically comprise the technology cost and the staffing cost.  The two interact with one other, so really good technology can reduce the number of contact centre agents required.  Traditionally the technology was a large capital purchase and the an annual support cost.  But all that has changed! 

The Technology Cost 

Let’s start with the cost of the technology itself.  This is the system that will route the telephone calls, emails, text messages and web chat sessions.   

A first decision is what features you require, for example, reporting, call recording, AI, workforce management (scheduling staff, organising holidays etc), quality assurance, API integrations with other systems etc. 

The most common model is “per agent per month”, for example a basic contact centre license may around £35 per agent per month.  There are, of course, low cost products which get this down to about £20 per month, and the more advanced products for around £70 per month.  Additional features have an additional cost per agent per month.  Most of the suppliers also offer various packages and discounts for additional functionality. 

AWS Connect, of the leading products in the market, prices differently – based on usage and not functionality.  Their core product includes all of the functionality from reporting to AI, but then charged on the basis of usage, e.g. the cost per minute on a telephone call. 

The most cost-effective approach depends a lot on the usage profile.  For a static team, working long hours every day of the week, the fixed monthly cost is often more cost effective.  But for a more variable team, with different people working different hours, the usage approach can cost in.  

The Project Cost 

The cost of the project itself is often very low, and may even be subsidised by the supplier.  The sooner you are using their technology, the sooner they are obtaining revenue.  So its in the suppliers interest to make migrations from old to help as fast and low cost as possible. 

The People Cost 

Of course, every situation is different and requirements vary across different types of service.  In general, with the advances in technology, contact centres are changing to needing few people, who are more specialised and hence more highly paid.  But this is simply a market trend and individual cases vary considerably. 

On a like for like basis, modern contact technology will deliver an efficiency gain of around 10% on a like for like basis, i.e. you can deliver the same results with 10% few staff hours.  Of course, different organisations choose to utilise this benefit in different ways, one recent StableLogic client reduced wait times from around 20 minutes to 30 seconds, by keeping the same number of staff, but utilising the efficiency gain. 

Your Business Case 

StableLogic’s consultants have a well developed business case model to analyse both current and future service delivery costs.