Contact Center: How MSPs Can Bag a Big Slice of the Booming SMB Market

Small, medium, or large – EVERY business needs to provide a stellar customer communication experience. 

It’s today’s table stakes: slick, frictionless, omnichannel interaction however and whenever. 

Indeed, for SMBs, that mission is even more critical as today’s consumers have become indifferent to size or sophistication – they expect the same experience from their local real estate agency as they do from a giant retailer. 

It all means that a huge market sector opportunity exists for Managed Service Providers and Value-Added Resellers to equip those businesses with simple and affordable contact center solutions. 

Acquire the ability to embed them natively within an existing communication system (same sign-on, same user interface, no extra training), and that opportunity suddenly takes on epic proportions. 

Partner with the right vendor and it’s easy for all parties to reap instant rewards. 

“There is huge demand from SMBs that now understand how important it is to provide a modern, feature-rich communication experience – however many MSPs are missing out because their big, complex and expensive contact center offerings do not easily scale down to, say, 10 or 12 seats,” says Steve Tutt, Commercial Director at leading application innovator Kakapo Systems, whose Cisco Broadsoft-powered Unity Contact Centre plug-in is the answer. 

“It’s not just about scaling-down the price point, it’s also about the levels of complexity too. SMBs want affordability and they want simplicity. Unity sits natively on top of Broadsoft; the credentials to run it are the same as the Broadsoft user account, and it’s not a separate platform. An MSP that can offer all those things is well-placed to address a market that is already huge, and which is only going to get bigger.” 

Crucially, Unity takes two minutes to deploy and does not require specialist resource – another big plus for small businesses that may not have an IT department. Also, some of its functionality is designed specifically for an SMB environment. For example, its on-screen webchat function is automatically hidden if there are no agents available to respond, thus sparing customers from a frustrating wait that is likely to drive them towards a competitor. 

To date, adding contact center functionality to their communication infrastructure has not occurred to many SMBs because they didn’t think they needed it. They thought it was for the big guys; with high volumes of customer interaction, 50, 60 or even more agents, and a large budget to support it all. Now they are understanding that it adds value by enhancing customer loyalty. 

“All of that said, it can be a non-starter for an SMB if adding a contact center solution means completely re-engineering or changing their wider communication system,” says Tutt. “In the case of Broadsoft users – which many SMBs are – adding Unity takes a couple of minutes and everything else stays in place. Suddenly for those SMBs it’s easily do-able. That’s our unique proposition for MSPs. We can help them capitalise on the market opportunity because we make it easy for them to deliver.” 

• To learn more about how Kakapo Systems can help your and your customers’ businesses maximise the value of its Unity Contact Center solution, click here.