Pricing

[CallC3nt3r]

Which is better and why?

What it be better to price by the sec?
Or price by the seat?

[sarah_kay]

Price by seats. It would be easy for the client if you're going to give them pricing by seats per agent.

[professional-lists]

...makes it more fesable later to handle the management of a busy call center, no metering, no mismatched numbers, no need for an entire staff to track it and a software tool. Just one person who can count ;)

[p2rosebud]

It depends. Are you the one who will be invoiced? There are different risks invovled if you are billed or bill a client per second, per transaction, per billable hour. For example, if you are billing a client on a per minute rate, you assume the risk if center efficiency is down. You can't bill for time when your agents are up and walking around. If occupancy is down and service level is up, you assume the risk because with lower call volumes, you can't bill when your agents in available only when you are on a call. However, you wouldn't be concerned with AHT because well, you bill per second (unless you have a pay for performance contract). Now if you are paying per billable hour, if occupancy is down, your still paying whether those agents are taking calls or not.

[mitchell_k21]

i think by seat..IMHO

[livebean]

Now it depends who you are .. the client or the service provider.

But if we remove this from the picture and focus on a performance based culture then we have to be do pricing based on a variable factor like per transaction or per sec / per minute. But having said that you need to have a robust SLAs which ensure driving the desired behavior. A good PFP model usualy does the trick and in some cases you need more complex mechanisims.

But if you are a servuce provider I would recomend use a well designed pricing calculator and do a per min / per sec pricing for yourself - even if you are selling per seat or per agent.

Write to me at me for more details


Mahesh Punia
CEO
LiveBean Consulting

maheshpunia@livebean.net