When telephony and contact center software come from different vendors, there is often no clear central party responsible during an outage. Each vendor monitors their own part of the chain, allowing the cause of a problem to fall between systems. For service organizations with mission-critical customer contact, this is a serious risk: customers cannot reach you, employees are idle, and no one sounds the alarm immediately. In this article, we answer the most frequently asked questions about responsibility, SLAs, and how to manage this structurally better.
Who is to blame if none of the vendors acknowledge the problem?
If none of the vendors acknowledge the outage, you as the organization bear the burden of proof. In a multi-vendor environment, each party points to the other while your customer contact stands still. Without a designated director or central authority, there is a high probability that the problem will take unnecessarily long to resolve.
This pattern is also known as “finger pointing” and is one of the most frustrating consequences of a fragmented vendor landscape. The telephony provider says it’s the contact center software. The software vendor points to the network connection. The network party refers back to the telephony vendor. Meanwhile, your customer service is at a standstill.
The core of the problem is that no one has ownership over the entire chain. Each vendor is contractually responsible for their own component, but not for the interaction between them. It is precisely at these interfaces that outages occur which no one is formally required to solve.
What do SLAs typically say about outages involving multiple vendors?
Most SLAs in a multi-vendor contact center environment describe the availability and response times of one specific service. They say little to nothing about what should happen if an outage is the result of interaction between multiple systems. Chain responsibility is rarely contractually established.
What you typically do find in an SLA for contact center telephony:
- Availability guarantees (uptime) per service, for example 99.9%
- Maximum response times for incident reports
- Escalation procedures within the vendor’s own organization
- Penalty clauses for structural failure to meet agreed levels
What you rarely find:
- Agreements on joint incident analysis with other vendors
- A definition of “chain responsibility”
- Clear escalation agreements when two vendors disagree on the cause
This means that as an organization, you must be the connecting link between vendors yourself, unless you have arranged otherwise contractually. That costs time and capacity that you don’t have during an outage.
How do you determine which vendor caused the outage?
To determine which vendor is at fault during customer contact outages, you need insight into the full technical chain. This means logging and monitoring at every interface: between telephony and contact center software, between the software and your CRM, and at the network level. Without that data, it is impossible to objectively determine where things went wrong.
Practically speaking, this requires a number of measures:
- Central monitoring: Use an overarching monitoring tool that is not dependent on a single vendor and tracks the status of all components simultaneously.
- Detailed logging: Ensure each system maintains detailed logs containing timestamps, so you can reconstruct the sequence of events afterward.
- Joint test environment: Agree with vendors on a shared test environment where outages can be simulated to isolate the cause.
- Incident protocol: Establish in advance who is called first during an outage, who takes the lead, and within what timeframe all vendors must be at the table.
Without this foundation, outage management in a multi-vendor environment remains reactive and time-consuming.
When is a single integrated vendor better than multiple specialists?
An integrated vendor is better than multiple specialists as soon as the coordination between vendors costs more time, money, and risk than the benefits of specialization provide. For organizations with mission-critical customer contact, that point is often reached sooner than expected.
Multiple specialists can theoretically offer the best solution per component, but in practice, you pay a price: more contracts, more points of contact, more interfaces that can fail, and more time spent internally on vendor management. With every outage, the discussion about who is responsible starts all over again.
An integrated approach has clear advantages:
- Single point of contact for the entire chain, including during outages
- Clear final responsibility without finger pointing
- Fewer interfaces that can fail
- Faster problem resolution because knowledge of all components lies with one party
- Lower internal management burden
Choosing multiple specialists is defensible if your organization has the internal capacity to exercise oversight over the vendor landscape, and if technical complexity truly requires it. For most medium-sized service organizations, however, this is not the case.
How do you contractually establish responsibility with multiple vendors?
To properly establish responsibility with multiple vendors contractually, you need two things: clear individual SLAs per vendor and an overarching chain agreement or management arrangement that determines who takes the lead during an outage. Without that second element, the first remains insufficient.
Concrete contractual agreements you can include:
- Chain responsibility: Explicitly name which party is primarily responsible for diagnosis and coordination during an outage, regardless of where the cause lies.
- Joint escalation procedure: Stipulate that all involved vendors must be available within an agreed timeframe during a serious disruption.
- Root cause analysis: Obligate vendors to provide a joint report on the cause and the measures taken after an outage.
- Interface definitions: Describe in the contracts which systems communicate with each other and who is responsible for each interface.
- Chain-level penalty clauses: Consider penalty clauses that apply not just to the availability of a single service, but to the availability of customer contact as a whole.
This requires legal and technical preparation, but it prevents discussions at the moment you can least afford them.
What is the role of a managing partner during customer contact outages?
A managing partner takes on central coordination during customer contact outages. Instead of you as an organization communicating back and forth between vendors, the managing partner has an overview of the entire technical chain and addresses all involved parties on your behalf. This significantly shortens outage time and reduces internal pressure.
The role goes beyond just putting out fires. A good managing partner:
- Proactively monitors the availability of all components in the chain
- Identifies potential problems before they become an outage
- Has direct escalation lines with all involved vendors
- Documents incidents and drives structural improvement
- Reports transparently on performance and bottlenecks
For organizations working with omnichannel business telephony and contact center software from different vendors, a managing partner is not a luxury but a necessity. Especially when customer contact is mission-critical and downtime is immediately noticeable to customers and employees.
How Pegamento helps with outages and vendor responsibility in customer contact
We understand how frustrating it is when telephony and contact center software come from different vendors and no one takes responsibility during an outage. That is exactly why we help organizations arrange this differently and structurally—not with a temporary fix, but with a cohesive approach based on proven modules.
What we can do for you:
- Single point of contact for your entire customer contact environment: telephony, contact center software, integrations, and management, all under one roof without silos or complex vendor coordination
- Proactive monitoring and management of the entire chain, so outages are detected before they impact your customer contact
- Clear chain-level SLAs, so you know who takes the lead during an outage and within what timeframe the problem will be resolved
- Phased modernization from a clear architecture, where we consolidate existing systems step-by-step without unnecessary risks
- Advice, implementation, and ongoing optimization in one process, so we don’t just advise but also take responsibility for the result
We work with organizations in government, education, utilities, and housing associations, among others, that deal with fragmented customer contact and insufficient grip on availability and quality. Our solutions are not costly custom work, but a smart combination of proven modules that align with your processes and systems. We are ISO 27001, ISO 9001, and ISO 26000 certified, meaning information security, quality, and social responsibility are structurally embedded in everything we do.
Want to know how your organization can regain oversight of customer contact? Contact us for a non-binding conversation, or see how our contact center technology can strengthen your customer contact environment.
Frequently Asked Questions
How quickly should I take action if my vendors keep pointing at each other during an outage?
Immediately initiate an internal escalation protocol where one person within your organization takes the lead and calls all vendors to a joint meeting simultaneously, preferably within the hour. Meanwhile, document every communication with a timestamp, so you can prove afterward which party said what and when. If vendors are contractually obligated to be available within a certain time during a serious disruption, you can hold them to that immediately.
What is a realistic uptime percentage I can expect at the chain level for my customer contact environment?
An uptime of 99.9% per individual service sounds impressive, but in a chain of four components that are each 99.9% available, the combined availability drops to approximately 99.6%, which amounts to over three hours of downtime per year. At the chain level, it is realistic to aim for at least 99.5% to 99.9%, but that requires explicit SLA agreements for the chain as a whole and not just per individual service. Discuss this specifically with your vendors and record it measurably in your contracts.
What internal roles or functions do I need to exercise oversight over a multi-vendor environment?
To effectively manage multiple vendors, you need at least a technical point of contact who understands the architecture of the chain, and a contractually or operationally responsible person who can hold vendors accountable to agreements made. In practice, this means you need a service manager or IT director who is both technically and contractually proficient. For many medium-sized organizations, this is a challenge, making an external managing partner an attractive alternative.
How do I start mapping the interfaces in my current customer contact environment?
Start with an architectural overview in which you visually map all systems and their interconnections: from telephony and contact center software to CRM, workforce management, and any chat platforms. Then, ask each vendor who is technically responsible for each interface and whether logging is available at that touchpoint. This overview forms the basis for both your monitoring strategy and your contractual agreements on chain responsibility.
What are common mistakes when drafting SLAs for contact center telephony?
The most common mistake is copying standard SLA templates that only describe individual services, without regard for the interaction between systems. Other common mistakes include the lack of a definition for ‘outage’ at the chain level, failing to include a joint root cause analysis obligation, and omitting escalation agreements for situations where vendors disagree on the cause. Always have SLAs reviewed by someone with technical knowledge of the chain, not just by a lawyer.
Can I hire a managing partner without having to cancel my existing vendor contracts?
Yes, in most cases, it is possible to hire a managing partner alongside existing vendor contracts, especially in an initial phase. The managing partner then takes on coordination and monitoring, while existing contracts continue. During contract renewals, you can then step-by-step sharpen the SLA agreements and formally establish chain responsibility. A phased approach reduces risk and gives you time to assess where vendor consolidation actually adds value.
How do I measure if my customer contact environment has actually become more reliable after improvement?
Use concrete KPIs such as Mean Time To Repair (MTTR), the number of incidents per quarter, time to first response upon a report, and customer satisfaction during and after disruptions. Systematically compare these figures with the situation before the improvements, based on incident logs and SLA reports. A good managing partner or integrated vendor provides periodic transparent reports that allow you to objectively track this development and adjust where necessary.
