In business, size governs the approach to pretty much everything.
If enterprises are big, they likely need scale and complexity to either manufacture their products or deliver their services.
Smaller enterprises, by their very nature, thrive despite deploying simpler, less sophisticated systems.
Indeed, when it comes to communication, businesses that somehow overdo their tech stacks by unnecessarily going large can wind up doing themselves a dis-service.
Modern, slick, omni-channel communication capability is of course a must-have for ALL enterprises.
And, brilliantly, a small-yet-perfectly-formed contact center has the power to pack a punch just as transformative as a giant alternative.
For small enterprises – and their technology service providers – the opportunities to leverage the benefits are huge.
“There are a lot of businesses trying to force a square peg into a round hole – it can be like buying too much house for just one or two people,” says Mike Winslow, Product Marketing Manager at global cloud communications provider Plivo, whose smart and powerful contact center solution ‘Contacto’ delivers big for those who want to keep it small.
“They wrongly assume they need to buy a huge house on day one, thinking they are planning for the future. But a huge house can weigh you down if you aren't ready for it. The perfect house would actually be one that starts small and grows with you.“That way, those businesses can start with a high-quality voice solution, later on add messaging, and then further down the road integrate it all with other solutions such as a CRM platform. It’s about having something that can evolve from the ground up, at a pace which suits. Being able to scale from, say, five agents now to 100 agents in the future.”
It’s certainly the case that many of the bigger platform providers woo new customers with giant technological offerings that appear to come relatively cheaply.
However, forcing that kind of scale and complexity into businesses’ modest tech stacks can actually hinder their ability to respond effectively to the communication demands of their customers.
It can complicate a business that really only needs to communicate with its customers via voice or chat and which has no current need for, say, an AI chatbot that requires training to be relevant to your business.
Indeed, small businesses whose customers and employees would benefit hugely from a basic-but-brilliant contact center solution could be forgiven for actively shying away from that kind of investment – choking off any productivity and service improvement gains before they have even had chance to begin emerging.
So, at what point should those businesses take the plunge? And what returns on investment should they expect to enjoy?
