Five9 Hosts SMBs' Call Centers

Five9 has introduced two on-demand call center solutions designed for small businesses. Five9 Call Center Suite--Small Business Edition and Five9 Inbound Call Center--Small Business Edition are out-of-the-box solutions that provide inbound and/or outbound call center functionality designed specifically for small teams. The Inbound Call Center has a yearly subscription fee of $5,000, while the Call Center Suite runs for $6,000. The packages include four concurrent seat licenses, 12 phone lines, supervisor and administrator applications, as well as additional customer support and training features at no extra cost. The Five9 Inbound Call Center--Small Business Edition provides companies with a hosted solution that supports inbound sales or support teams, including call routing and IVR, and is ideal for businesses looking to improve in-call promotions and cross- and upsell opportunities, according to the company. The Five9 Call Center--Small Business Edition was designed for businesses that support outbound and inbound campaigns including telemarketing, telesales, and collections. Five9 CEO Brian Silverman says that while the majority of small businesses don't consider themselves big enough to have a call center, they still require the same core support and automation capabilities for sales, collections, and service that larger companies would require. "We're offering them the most affordable way to access these business-critical capabilities," he says. "The comprehensive features in Five9's on-demand call center offering can boost the bottom line of a business by increasing customer contact, supporting employees who work remotely, and offering long distance rates of 50 percent to 85 percent lower than traditional rates, to name a few." Because customers will be essentially contracting out their contact center architecture, Silverman says they can quickly scale up--or scale down--the centers as needed and configure distributed centers on a dime, as technology can be quickly linked in myriad ways as consumer demands change. The monthly pay-as-you-go service also means call center capacity and geographic location are flexible. One month, several employees might work from home, while another month the same company might establish a series of small contact centers in various locations. This arrangement also saves customers capital costs otherwise rolled into the buildings that house centers with updated technology, says Robert Rosenberg, president of telecommunications analysis firm Insight Research. "They're squeezing capital costs out and virtualizing the call center." Related articles: Home Bodies VoIP Has Too Much Variation for SMBs