Have you been down this road before?
Scrolling through vendor websites, sitting through polished demos, and hearing phrases like AI-powered, 100% uptime, omnichannel excellence, and instant insights.
Every cloud call center platform promises the moon.
But once the contract is signed, the reality often feels very underwhelming.
You are faced with slow onboarding, clunky interfaces, half-baked integrations, and support that feels more like a ticket graveyard.
Choosing a cloud call center solution isn’t just a software decision; it’s a make-or-break moment for how your business interacts with customers.
And honestly, most platforms can check the basic boxes, but the real difference lies in the nuances like integrations, support responsiveness, compliance readiness, and future-proofing your operations.
At the end of the day, you are looking for a partner for your customer experience function.
I have put together 10 questions that you must ask your vendors before deciding to sign up with them. These questions would help you separate the slick sellers from the solid partners.
#1 How scalable is your platform when your call volumes spike unpredictably?
I am not talking about holiday season spikes or new marketing campaigns here. I want to know if your infrastructure can handle 2x to 10x growth without performance degradation and without me having to upgrade to a pricier tier overnight.
For example, I was thinking of subscribing to an AI solution that was charging me $30 for 40 credits. If I wanted to increase the number of credits, then I had to move to their next tier of $75 for 200 credits. There is nothing in between. Besides, I don’t have the option to buy credits as and when I need them.
This is something you should guard yourself against.
#2 Can I go live in days, not months? Even with legacy systems in place?
If you say ‘plug and play,’ prove it. Implementation timelines are the most notorious when it comes to rolling out a call center platform. How long will it really take me to onboard agents and port numbers and integrate them with my CRM?
During the pandemic, we helped multiple banks move to our cloud platform within 24 to 48 hours. That’s been our success, where we got them to continue with their business of helping customers within any delay.
#3 What happens if your platform goes down?
Ask for the real incidence response process. Do you have a documented SLA? Is there an emergency hotline with a human being, or am I left waiting for a ticket resolution?
Let me give you some statistics.
We have been a pure-play cloud platform provider for more than two decades. With our experience in providing cloud platforms, we promise 99% uptime, which is less than 4 days of downtime in a year.
Besides, we are available 24×7 on email, phone, and WhatsApp. Our SLAs are in hours and not days. This is one of the reasons why we haven’t had a churn in the past eight years of our operations in India.
#4 How flexible is your IVR for non-tech teams?
I shouldn’t need a developer every time I want to tweak my call flow. Ask them to show how a supervisor or team lead can do it with minimal training. Does it have a drag-and-drop option for you to choose from?
Our platform allows you to easily tweak the call flow on your IVR system without any involvement from the tech team.
#5 Can I integrate with the tools I already use? Or am I stuck with your ecosystem?
Check if the platform connects easily with Salesforce, Zoho, Zendesk, and other tools that your team relies on. Do they support API integrations?
Our platform has pre-built integrations with Salesforce, Zoho, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Leadsquared, and ServiceNow, among others. Besides, we support API integrations to integrate with the best-of-breed IT applications.
#6 Do you offer AI that actually improves agent performance?
Are you helping my agents with live transcription, suggested replies, or after-call summarization? Or is AI just a fancy jargon in your offering?
The intelligence in our platform helps you with figuring out the compliance, misselling, and training needs of your agents. It flags anything and everything that is off.
#7 How do you ensure data security? Are you compliant with local and global regulations?
Ask your vendor to walk you through their compliance credentials, encryption practices, and how they handle audits.
Our platform is compliant with DoT, and TRAI regulations, GDPR, TCPA, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, Reg-F, FDCPA, SOC, & ISAE 3402 Type II specifications,. Besides, our encryption and audit practices are in line with the various standards and regulations.
#8 What does your pricing really include or exclude?
Often, businesses get blindsided by the pricing practices of vendors. Does it include the voice minutes? Does it include the dialer costs? Do you charge an agent fee or a channel fee? What are the variables in your costing?
We offer per-minute pricing, which includes the dialers, voice, and a lot of other functionalities. In a few cases, we include just the dialers and voice minutes in per-minute pricing; and include the rest of the functionality, like voice bots, workforce management, analytics, etc., at additional pricing. However, we keep it transparent, and you will always get the total cost of ownership before we onboard you.
#9 Can I see real-time dashboards with which I can act instantly?
Check with your vendors if they offer real-time visibility into queues, agent status, hold times, and SLA breaches?
Our BI functionality allows you to have access to real-time dashboards. Besides, you can slice and dice your reports to meet your needs.
#10 How do you support remote agents, especially with variable Internet quality?
People work with tacky bandwidth sometimes, and mostly, it is broadband at home. How does that affect my ability to use your platform?
We have had this issue during the pandemic. We have helped our customers use something called the connected method to sail through low bandwidth issues. With this workaround, the customers did not have to face any problems with the call quality.
Besides these, check if your vendor can give references of three to four customers with whom you can have a conversation.
The best vendors won’t have just answers. They’ll have examples, references, and a willingness to listen.
If you get vague responses, dodged questions, or demo-only truths, that’s a red flag you should stay away from.
It is a partnership you are looking at getting into. So, ask the right questions and make the right choices.
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