Contact Center technologies can provide a wide array of capabilities and services for an organization, however often the features are underutilized. Given the cost of agent licensing on modern systems, it’s important to look at what you are trying to do.

Frequently I come across organizations that have small pools of ‘agents’ using queues. I have a mantra that I use often that goes “One agent does not make a queue, just a glorified hold”. When looking at upgrading technologies, these users are typically included in the contact center agent counts. Considering the licensing costs for agent licenses, this can be a lot of wasted money.

An option that organizations need to look at is the hunt group (also called a work-group or ring group) capabilities that exist in the modern phone systems. These hunt groups provide the ability to queue calls, have users add or remove themselves from the group similar to a queue login/logout, and provide summary reports for activity for the hunt groups including detailed activity reports for agents. In the majority of cases, these capabilities provide all of the features that a department with one or two answering positions would need.

Only when there is more advanced features required such as custom prompting or call treatment for queues, call back capabilities, detailed reporting on service levels or real-time supervisory tools are required should a contact center be considered for a small department.