What are the essential features of a modern contact center?

Atlantech's contact center service makes a useful example, because the list on its page maps onto that core. The page names voice and web chat licenses, skills-based routing, an IVR, queue callback, real-time wallboards, supervisor control, historical reporting and CRM integrations. Follow one call through the system and each item turns out to have a job.

The caller first reaches the IVR, the recorded menu that asks what they need. Pressing 2 for billing sorts the call before any agent is involved. That choice places the call in a skill group, which is the name Xima uses for a queue of contacts that need the same kind of agent. Atlantech's service runs on Xima. Skills-based routing then offers the call to an agent who belongs to that group. Xima's skill settings rank the groups from 0 to 10 for an agent who belongs to several.

If nobody is free, the call waits, and the queue needs rules for a long wait. Xima gives each skill a queue timeout, an overflow destination and a cap on the number of waiting calls. Queue callback lets the caller hang up and keep a place in line. Without those settings, a caller in a long wait has two choices: keep holding until an agent answers, or hang up.

While this is happening, a wallboard shows supervisors who is waiting and which agents are busy. Atlantech's page says supervisors can update an agent's status and force a call to a specific agent. After the call, historical reporting keeps what the page calls a cradle-to-grave record of it. The page also lists CRM integrations, which can connect a call to the customer's account record once they are set up.

Each of those features did a job on this one call. When one is missing, the customer feels it as a call sent to an agent who can't help or a long hold with no alternative. We go further into the sorting step in what routing is in a contact center and into the distribution step in what an ACD is.

Genesys defines an omnichannel cloud contact center as one that "routes interactions with shared context so customers can move between channels without repeating information." That depends on the channels being routed through the same platform. The platform then knows what each agent is handling on those channels, and an agent who answers the phone can be shown the chat that came before it.

Genesys prices digital channels apart from voice on its entry plan. On the Genesys pricing page, Cloud CX 1 costs $75 per user per month, billed annually, and it is a voice plan with digital channels as an add-on. Web messaging, email and SMS are included from Cloud CX 2 at $115 on the same terms. Atlantech's page names voice and web chat, and Xima's agent client documentation also covers email handling.

The queue mechanics are in what a unified queue is, and the customer's side of it is in omnichannel versus multichannel customer service.

Workforce management is forecasting and scheduling. Genesys defines it as "the process of forecasting, scheduling and managing labor resources to meet service and operational goals." Workforce engagement management is the wider bundle. In the Genesys definition, it "includes workforce forecasting, scheduling, coaching, quality management and analytics." So workforce management is one part of workforce engagement management, and the two labels overlap without meaning the same thing.

Quality management scores how agents handled their contacts, and conversation analytics transcribes recorded calls and tags them by topic and sentiment. Both look at a contact after it ends. Agent assist differs in timing, because it puts suggestions in front of the agent while the conversation is still going.

Genesys puts the layers in its published plans, and Xima puts them in its license requirements. Xima's guide says AutoQA evaluations require Elite licensing, and a call has to be recorded and transcribed before it can be graded. Atlantech prices by quote, so the Xima license tier in a quote decides whether those tools are in it.

Suppose a center has 40 agents on Cloud CX 2 at $115 per user per month, billed annually. Moving to Cloud CX 3 at $155 for workforce management costs $40 more per user per month, which comes to $19,200 a year. Genesys also sells workforce management as an add-on to Cloud CX 2, at a price it doesn't publish. Weigh the $19,200 against the hours your supervisors spend building schedules now and the calls that waited because a shift was short.

The other layers take the same test. Set quality scoring against the calls nobody has time to review, and set analytics against the time someone has each week to read what it finds.

The feature list is a separate decision from hosted or on-premises delivery, which we compare in how CCaaS differs from an on-premises contact center. For the list itself, start with your contacts and your headcount, because a vendor's feature grid is organized around its plans. Write down the reasons customers contact you, the channels they use, the number of agents and the hours you cover. The core has to handle every item on that list from the first day. Add a layer to the first contract when you can name the problem it will solve this year.