Have you bought a Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) solution expecting it to be plug-and-play, and start paying for itself immediately, only for it to fail shortly after implementing it? If so, you’re in good company, as many SMB leaders buy the system, switch it on, and believe that it’ll transform their customer experience (CX) overnight.
But that’s rarely the case. The reality is that too many projects stumble because businesses underestimate the complexity of the platform, overlook integrations, or don’t prepare their teams. Wasted budget aside, this results in frustrated staff and disappointed customers who are likely to take their business elsewhere.
Over the years, I’ve seen this pattern play out time and again — and I’ve also seen how it can be avoided. As a Five9 Gold Partner, Babble has helped many businesses scope, launch, and continuously optimise CCaaS.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the five biggest reasons CCaaS projects fail — and more importantly, how to avoid them with Five9.
Many CCaaS projects suffer delays, cost overruns and fail because of poor planning. This is credited to the fact that businesses tend to underestimate the complexity of the task that lies ahead. They seldom take a step back and get a clear understanding of their current workflows or what makes their environment work. Instead, they assume they can just “buy a contact centre” and it’ll revolutionise things from day one. But that’s not how CCaaS works: it’s never just plug-and-play. Before even zeroing in on a certain solution, you need to think about customer journeys, integrations, and add-ons.
Check out this blog to find out what you can't afford to leave out of your CCaaS budget.
No one wants to spend money on a solution that ends up costing them in more ways than one down the line – especially if it’s avoidable. Smaller businesses in particular don’t have the luxury of long timelines or big budgets either. So, if you get it wrong from the start, it’ll be difficult to change courses later. This is why scoping effectively on day one is critical: it builds confidence across your whole business, from stakeholders to frontline users.
Without proper planning, downtime increases, agents scramble to retroactively learn the system while still trying to get work done, and adoption goes pear-shaped before the platform is even officially launched. And customers almost have a sixth sense about these things: they notice the friction immediately, and before you know it, your investment becomes a liability.
How Five9 helps: Because no two businesses are alike, Five9 tailors onboarding by getting to know your goals and operations before helping you define your project scope properly. This way, they set realistic expectations around features, integrations, and timelines from the beginning.
I’d say the second most common reason why many rollouts fail is because the people who actually use the platform — agents, supervisors, team leaders — aren’t involved early enough. Decisions are made at the IT or leadership level with “blue sky” thinking – ‘Oh, we’ll just plug-and-play this CCaaS solution and watch the money roll in’ – but they aren’t the ones who will actually be using it. This results in a shiny new platform that doesn’t serve its purpose: solving frontline challenges.
If your people don’t see the value – or worse, can’t wrap their heads around how to use it – they won’t adopt it. And adoption is everything: without it, you don’t get accurate data, you don’t know if customer engagement is improving, and you can’t measure ROI. What you’ll get instead are frustrated agents, poor CX and a system that starts to feel like a waste of money.
Getting agent buy-in isn’t just about showcasing the value of a CCaaS platform and how it’ll make their jobs easier, but preparing them for the learning curve adoption comes with. Training is where many businesses cut corners. They rely too heavily on vendor-led documents: “Here’s how you log in, here’s how you take a call.” But that doesn’t cover a fraction of what agents need to know, nor does it prepare them for real-world scenarios. Therefore, proper training goes beyond basic operations: it’s role-specific and tailored to how your business works.
Smaller teams can’t afford long downtimes while agents learn on the job, and supervisors spend most of their time putting out fires or retraining agents because onboarding wasn’t done properly or budgeted for. Put simply, if training is neglected, customer satisfaction drops. You’ll see longer queue times, higher error rates, and more complaints.
From a partner’s perspective, most of the “platform problems” we see stem from poor onboarding. In fact, many contact centre agents feel they don’t have the right tools to solve customer issues, and claim they can’t access customer data easily.
How Five9 helps: Training and onboarding through Five9 University is how you fix this issue. With their hands-on training and Babble’s partner-led support, your team won’t just learn about the system — but how to use it in your unique workflows.
It’s easy to forget that while CCaaS has the power to transform your CX, it’s not a standalone tool – and therefore, shouldn’t get deployed as one. If it isn’t integrated with your CRM, ticketing system, or other workflows, getting it to work will be a real pain. Agents will find themselves toggling between screens, duplicating work, and spending time hunting for customer data instead of focusing on personalising the experience.
This burns agents out, damages customer service, and, not to mention, increases cyber security risks when data is scattered across systems. Integration isn’t just a “nice to have”, but is essential to having a productive workforce.
It isn’t ideal, but larger companies can afford to frustrate a handful of customers – they’re a drop in the ocean. But SMBs? Not so much. Every lost customer or bad experience is a real blow to the company’s reputation, which makes efficiency and context non-negotiables for customer satisfaction.
How Five9 helps: Five9 offers out-of-the-box integrations with platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Microsoft Teams — keeping data unified and accessible in one place.
Similar to the ‘plug-and-play’ mentality, many SMBs see CCaaS as a one-time investment. They buy a solution – usually without the crucial advanced features like AI or real-time analytics – tick a box, and assume that the job’s done. But again, CCaaS isn’t a one-off fix: it’s a platform that should evolve with your business, your agents, and your customers.
Technology, customer expectations, and even agent expectations are constantly changing. Agents know what tools are out there, and customers today expect a seamless, digital-first experience. So not meeting either of their needs isn’t an option. Failing to look ahead and embrace emerging trends will stagnate your contact centre, which will quickly start to feel outdated to your customers and staff.
How Five9 helps: With Babble and Five9, we take a proactive approach. We don’t just implement and walk away. We continuously optimise, and give customers access to new technology like AI tools and digital channels.
Too many projects don’t go as planned because businesses don’t take the time to do just that: plan. Instead, they rush in without scope, leave out their people, or treat it as a one-time fix – putting them in a worse position than they were in before implementing the solution in the first place.
In my experience in the industry, I’ve seen both sides of CCaaS projects: the ones that fail, and the ones that thrive. My role at Babble, working closely with Five9, is to make sure your business falls into the second category.
If you’re ready to avoid the common pitfalls and build a contact centre that drives efficiency, customer satisfaction, and growth, let’s talk. Together, we’ll take the first step towards a rollout that delivers lasting results.