back to article Avaya hangs up on users with fewer than 200 SaaSy contact center seats

Avaya has advised customers and resellers of a planned “evolution” of its products that starts with a requirement to license at least 200 seats worth of its SaaS-y contact center wares by June 30, 2025. A message to partners explains that the change is needed “To meet enterprise needs to innovate and orchestrate seamless …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Flame

    "orchestrate seamless customer journeys”

    There's nothing more seamless than being told that you have to pay more for the same service . . .

    Avaya is obviously getting too big for its own boots.

    It is high time that companies stop dictating to their customers - but that won't ever happen.

    1. Bebu sa Ware
      Coat

      Re: "orchestrate seamless customer journeys”

      "There's nothing more seamless than being told that you have to pay more for the same service . . ."

      So you reckon the poor customer is being "stitched up" then? Sewn into a body bag to be later jettisoned.

      Seamless I guess in the sense that if the proposals aren't adjoining or attached then there is no seam just a gulf or gap.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: "orchestrate seamless customer journeys”

      It's actually a cost-cutting exercise due to falling demand as more and more companies move to WebRTC. Avaya went into bankruptcy years ago and has been "restructuring" since then.

      Much as we've all got used to the various WebRTC systems for replacing phones, companies would be advised to consider their dependency on suppliers, particularly Microsoft.

      1. UnknownUnknown

        Re: "orchestrate seamless customer journeys”

        … …. and laser focussed on the Customer Experience … they all really really LOVE RTC.

  2. may_i Silver badge

    Ummm

    I know you were fighting against an overload of corporate PR speak while you were writing this article Simon, but shouldn't:

    > The latter change perhaps hints that maybe contacting customers on X isn’t something customer service teams have become less keen to do.

    read:

    > The latter change perhaps hints that maybe contacting customers on X is something customer service teams have become less keen to do.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Ummm

      I interpreted it to be a little sarcastic:calling customers on X is something customer service teams have not been keen to do and the changes haven’t changed this position, if anything they are even less keen…

      1. may_i Silver badge

        Re: Ummm

        Maybe. After suffering several mental stack overflows trying to parse all the mandatory and optional negations in the sentence, I resorted to reason and decided that if I worked on a customer service team, the last thing I'd want to contact customers through would be what's left of Twitter.

  3. Khaptain Silver badge

    200 Seats

    I don't understand this, 200 seats is a truly large call center, I can't imagine that there are that many that exist. So why are they intentionally reducing their user base ?

    We use Avaya but thank God we do not use the cloudy version as we are nowhere near 200 seats..

    Avaya have an excellent Call Center system but if that's the way things are going to go we will have serious problems. There are very few good solutions available, Avaya and Genesys basically own the market.

    1. Danny 14

      Re: 200 Seats

      Mitel here. Not the most innovative but it works and has a decent license model.

      1. steviebuk Silver badge

        Re: 200 Seats

        But fing complicated and when you work at a company that won't give you training for it, it was an arse to support.

    2. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: 200 Seats

      I wonder if this is a very poorly thoughtout application of the 80:20 rule (80% of profits from 20% of customers) given they have over 20,000 customers [ https://www.thomsondata.com/customer-base/avaya-customers-list.php ]

      I know back in the 1990s, we applied the rule as: you incur 80% of your costs on 20% of your customers. Hence why many stopped their free services.

    3. IGotOut Silver badge

      Re: 200 Seats

      "I don't understand this, 200 seats is a truly large call center"

      Not even close.

      The one I did the Avaya IT for had 2000 contact centre +1500 regular staff, and that's classed as a medium size on the world stage

      There are ones with several thousand staff, as an example, do you think when you phone your insurance broker the staff work for them?

      1. AJ MacLeod

        Re: 200 Seats

        I know they do, I can go and see them at their desks if I so desire...

  4. AMBxx Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Time for Broadcom?

    Sounds like an excellent candidate for a takeover by Broadcom. Minimum 200, treble the price, give 7 days notice.

    1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Time for Broadcom?

      Cross check Broadcom C-Suites against Avaya C-Suites. There may be common link to a particular MBA

  5. ICL1900-G3 Silver badge

    Seamless customer journey?

    Jesus wept!

    1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge
      Alert

      Re: Seamless customer journey?

      Jesus, seamless customer journey

      There's a Monty Python sketch in there

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Seamless customer journey?

        Actually, 'Reginald Perrin' ... :)

        Also see ... https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/02/18/lloyds_tech_engineering_reorg/#c_5020876

        :)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Look at what happened to Aspect, I mean Alvaria

    Some odd decisions made while PD was at the helm there and now he's at the helm at Avaya. Feel for the staff there, they will have all kinds of hell to deal with.

  7. MrGrumpy
    Flame

    Avaya is toast

    Avaya offerings have been crap and expensive for years. They will go the way of Nortel.

    1. Khaptain Silver badge

      Re: Avaya is toast

      I hope not, Avaya bought out Nortel in 2009?

    2. chivo243 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Avaya is toast

      Never really knew much about Avaya, but just an hour ago, I was chatting with one of the senior guys on my team and he mentioned Avaya, he didn't say anything good about Avaya, nada, zip, zilch. What a coinkydink...

  8. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

    Is this 200 seats across all reseller customers, or per customer?

    This could be as simple as a reseller consolidation, and removing direct customers with small amounts of end users - both of which are understandable. The wording is very unclear though.

    It's perfectly understandable if resellers need to have a minimum of 200 seats across all their customers, the cost of dealing with lots of tiny companies is much higher than a smaller number with more end users

  9. steviebuk Silver badge

    User database

    It may have changed since I last used Avaya several years ago now, but their user database is as insecure as leaving your door wide open. They don't encrypt the database so the user passwords are stored in plan text. Sign in as admin, change the password field in whatever browser you're in to text and you reveal that persons password. Why is this an issue? Because as I'd talk to users, some would confess of using the same password as their Windows login. Anyone that gets into the database would have fun with that.

  10. JJF

    depreciate a voice recording feature

    Should probably be deprecate unless they will be charging less for it(which I doubt).

  11. nijam Silver badge

    > ... seamless customer ...

    Sounds like a punchbag to me.

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