Get the Right Price: Understand the Bottom Line

While my colleagues look at different aspects of an ASR evaluation, my job is to always look at the bottom line. The first step in understanding the bottom line of any purchase is determining our purpose and the objective of the spend. What does success (or failure) look like? What criteria will be used to evaluate the solution, and how long should the evaluation take?

Once you have internal alignment on purpose and objective, the second step is evaluating vendors/partners, their products, and different pricing strategies. This also requires having a frank and honest conversation with your vendors/partners on how you are evaluating success and failure.

Next, look for clear, simple pricing strategies. The right partner provides predictability, flexibility, and reason in their pricing options. The fine print should be simple to read and understand, with intention to further support the overall pricing strategy. Be leery of complicated pricing strategies, triggers, penalties, traps, or caps. Steer clear of any vendor that will back-charge you if you don’t reach the contracted minimum of minutes.

Ultimately, does the pricing strategy enable you to profitably analyze ALL your real-time and recorded voice data and transform it into an enterprise asset? Partner with an ASR vendor that has an experienced team that understands your business and can help you plan for growth. If the team is familiar with your industry, its members will know what questions to ask to determine which solution is right for you. What’s more, this vendor can demonstrate how its solution scales and evaluate the cost associated with meeting your current and future needs.

“[S]ell, not your weakness to customer’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; demand that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when we live by trade — with reason, not force, as their final arbiter — it is the best product that wins[.]”
— Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand