Solutions

Cloud contact centre (CCaaS) advisory

A cloud contact centre replaces on-premise call centre hardware with a platform delivered as a subscription. It handles voice, email, chat and messaging in one queue, with reporting, workforce tools and increasingly AI assistance built in. We help Australian organisations work out which platform fits, and what it will really cost to run.

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The platform

What a cloud contact centre platform actually includes

Every CCaaS vendor sells the same four capabilities under different names. Working out which of them your operation genuinely depends on is what separates a shortlist that fits from one that only demonstrates well.

Routing and call flows

Routing decides which agent receives which contact, and on what basis: skill, language, priority, customer value, or the person they spoke to last time. Platforms separate on how much of that a supervisor can change without raising a ticket. Some allow a flow to be edited in an afternoon. Others need a professional services request and a four week wait, which becomes a running cost for the length of the contract.

Workforce management

Forecasting, rostering, adherence and intraday management. The larger platforms build this in, the smaller ones integrate a third party product and price it separately. Above roughly forty agents, the quality of the workforce tooling moves your cost per contact further than the seat licence does.

Quality management and reporting

Call recording, screen recording, evaluation forms, and automated scoring across every interaction rather than a sample of six per agent per month. Ask to see reports built on your own data rather than on the demonstration tenancy. Reporting is the capability praised most often during a sales cycle and opened least often a year later.

Digital channels and AI assistance

Email, web chat, SMS, WhatsApp and social handled in the same queue as voice, alongside self service deflection, live agent assist and automated call summaries. Australian availability trails the American release schedule on most platforms, so confirm what is generally available on a local tenancy rather than what sits on a roadmap slide.

The decision

Bundled with your phone system, or a specialist platform

Most Australian contact centre decisions come down to this one fork, and it often gets taken by accident when a phone system vendor drops a contact centre module into the quote.

Bundled with the phone system

One vendor, one bill, one support number, and a module that handles voice well and everything else adequately. It fits operations under roughly fifty agents with straightforward routing, where a single supplier is worth more than the extra capability. You have less room at renewal, because moving the contact centre later means moving the phone system with it.

Suits simple routing, smaller teams, one supplier by preference

A specialist contact centre platform

Deeper routing, stronger workforce management, more mature AI, and a product roadmap set by contact centre buyers. It costs more per seat and adds a second vendor relationship and a second integration to maintain. That cost comes back in operations where handle time, adherence and quality are measured and managed every day.

Suits fifty agents and above, measured operations, complex routing

The process

How a contact centre selection runs with us

Five stages, from the call flows you run today through to the first fortnight in production. You sign directly with the platform you choose, and the advisory service costs you nothing.

Requirements taken from the call flows you actually run

We start with how contacts reach you now: the queues, the transfer paths, the integrations, the report someone opens every Monday morning. The output is a requirement document describing the operation as it runs today, including the parts nobody has written down since the last migration.

A shortlist drawn from the whole market

We hold relationships across more than thirty vendors, so the shortlist begins with what fits the requirement. Three or four platforms usually survive the first pass. You are told what each of them is weak at before you sit through a demonstration.

Demonstrations scripted from your own scenarios

We write the demonstration script from your call flows and sit in every session. Vendors lead with their strengths, which is reasonable enough. The value of an independent seat in the room is the follow up question about the capability that was skipped.

Commercial negotiation across the whole contract

Seat licence, telephony charges, professional services, integration work, term length, uplift at renewal and the exit terms. List price is an opening position on every platform in this market. We negotiate against comparable Australian pricing rather than against the vendor discount schedule.

Implementation held to what was sold

We stay involved through build, number porting, parallel running and go live, and we hold the vendor to the scope in the proposal. The failure that hurts most in a CCaaS migration is a routing gap found in the first week of production, and it is nearly always visible weeks earlier.

Due diligence

What we check that a demonstration will not show

A demonstration is a rehearsed hour on a clean tenancy. These are the things that decide whether the platform still looks like a good decision in year two.

Voice quality across your existing network

A contact centre platform inherits whatever your network already does to voice. We test that path before the platform gets blamed for it.

Depth of the CRM integration

Screen pop is the easy part. We check write back, custom objects, and what happens to the integration the next time the CRM is upgraded.

Reporting on your own data

Demonstration tenancies are built so the dashboards look clean. We ask for a report assembled from a sample of your own contacts instead.

Uplift at renewal

Year one pricing wins deals. We look at what the contract permits in years two and three, and cap it before signature rather than after.

Exit terms and data portability

Where recordings, transcripts and configuration live, in what format they leave, and what the vendor charges to hand them back.

Professional services scope

What the build price includes, what triggers a variation, and who pays when a call flow needs changing in week three.

AI features available in Australia

Whether the AI shown in the demonstration is generally available on an Australian tenancy, where the data is processed, and what it costs once the trial ends.

Support that answers in your hours

Which severity levels get an Australian business hours response, which follow the sun, and what the contract actually commits the vendor to.

Common questions

Asked on most contact centre selections

The six questions that come up in nearly every first conversation, answered without a sales qualification first.

What is a cloud contact centre?

A cloud contact centre, usually called CCaaS, is contact centre software delivered as a subscription over the internet rather than installed in your own data centre. It routes voice and digital contacts to agents, records interactions, reports on performance, and connects to your CRM. You pay per agent per month instead of buying hardware.

How much does a cloud contact centre cost in Australia?

Pricing is normally per agent per month, with tiers based on which channels and which workforce or AI features you need. Telephony charges, professional services and integration work sit on top. The list price is rarely the price paid, which is why an independent comparison usually pays for itself several times over.

How long does a CCaaS migration take?

A straightforward migration for a single site of under fifty agents typically runs six to twelve weeks. Complex routing, several integrations, workforce management or multiple sites push that out. The variable that moves the date most often is not the platform, it is how quickly your own call flows and data can be documented.

What should we evaluate before choosing a platform?

Look at routing flexibility, the quality of the reporting you will actually use, how the platform integrates with your CRM, what happens to voice quality on your existing network, the workforce management tooling, and the exit terms. Vendors demonstrate their strengths, so the value of an advisor is in probing the parts that were not demonstrated.

Can we keep our existing phone numbers?

Yes. Numbers port between carriers and platforms under the standard Australian porting process, which usually takes two to four weeks for a simple range and longer for a complex or multi carrier estate. Porting is scheduled rather than instant, so it sits on the critical path of every migration plan.

Do we have to replace the phone system at the same time?

No. A specialist contact centre platform runs alongside an existing phone system, and many organisations change one without touching the other. Doing both together shortens the total disruption and concentrates the risk into a single cutover, which suits some operations and not others.

We are vendor funded and completely free to your business. Always focused on the right outcome.

Make smarter technology decisions with independent advice

We map your requirements, shortlist the platforms that fit, sit with you through demonstrations and commercial negotiation, and stay involved through implementation. You sign directly with the vendor you choose, and our service costs you nothing.