ASK THE EXPERTS: Hosted Broadcast Technology

Ask the Experts is an interactive section that allows readers to ask direct questions to the experts at Kaulkin Ginsberg, the leading strategic advisors to the ARM industry, as well as other seasoned industry executives.

Thank you to one of our readers for our latest question:

Question: I’m considering hosted broadcast technology to increase consumer contacts. As difficult as telecom bills can be to decipher, how can I be sure I’m getting the best price on the service?

Answer: (from Louis Summe, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, LiveVox) Hosted technology can be a great tool to increase consumer contacts, but many agencies focus only on the per-minute rate when assessing the price of a solution. In fact, this is only part of the equation. There are a handful of questions agencies should ask potential vendors to get to the bottom of true telephony costs.

Dual line billing: The first involves dual line billing. Hosted-providers use one line to connect to consumers and a second to connect the call to agents. Collection organizations need to ask if they are getting billed for both legs of the call. They should not be, as this can dramatically increase their total bill.

Billing increments: Agencies must also understand in what billing increments they will be charged. Billing increments of several seconds, as long as 20 or 30 seconds, will quickly increase total solution costs even for short calls.

Minimum billing increments: Knowing your minimum billing increment is also critical to understanding what you’ll be charged for per connected call. You don’t want to commit to a charge of 15, 20 or 30 seconds for calls that yield only answering machines or quick hang-ups.

Answering machine detection: Given that 40-50% of your calls will result in answering machines, knowing how long a hosted-provider takes to detect an answering machine, and how that is billed to you, is also critical. Given the advancements in hosted technology, answering machine detection should never take longer than a handful of seconds.

Agencies also need to ask whether they are being charged for “No Answers,” busy signals or tri-tones, because no agency should be. They also need to understand if they are paying for account-level processing fees. Finally, no company should be forced to sign long-term contracts for hosted services, especially during these tough economic times. With an on-demand service, buyers should always be able to end the relationship if a vendor fails to deliver ROI.

Some of these techniques are difficult to identify depending on how the vendor reports and invoices.  Always look for vendors who provide reporting that allows you to verify all of the aspects of billing, not just the headline per-minute rate.  Otherwise, you will not have a true picture of what it really costs.  

Hosted technology can be a great way to increase consumer contacts, but there can definitely be more than the quoted per-minute rate to the price an agency ends up paying, unless agencies exercise due diligence.

Louis Summe, after a career of developing and managing communication technology, co-founded and is the current CEO of LiveVox, a leading provider of hosted dialing services to the credit and collections industry.

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