The primary considerations in setting up managed hosted and cloud based contact centers are Technology, Cost and Deployment. The rapid advancements in the use of VoIP coupled with the growth of Asterisk makes the choice of technology more critical. Most systems available in the market are closed Black Box systems with limited flexibility. Deployment as well as growth and flexibility are very costly and painfully limited. Therefore your design and architecture not only impacts the immediate needs but has an effect on your growth, effort involved in future expansion and the on-going cost of running the service.
The landscape of contact center services available through cloud and managed service providers is changing due to the availability of open multi-tenant call center software like Q-Suite. While planning the Contact Center Functional requirements, it is important to look the following:
- Multi-tenant setup
- ACD with Skills based Routing
- Queue Prioritization
- Scheduling based on time of the day, week, month etc.
- Predictive, Preview and Progressive Dialing
- Web services API for interface to external systems
- Script Building tool with ability to integrate to CRM
- Call-Flow (Dialplan) Builder
- Call Recording and QA tools
- Web based Agent and Admin interface
- Real time Reporting and Supervisor Monitoring
- Call Detailed Records association to Agents/Queues/Campaigns
- Remote and At-home Agent login
- High Availability with redundant fail-over capability
With Q-Suite, all of these features are out of the box and it being on top of the technology stack of Linux, Asterisk, MySQL and Apache (LAMP), brings a cost advantage that is unparalleled. It is time to seriously evaluate this Asterisk based scalable contact center platform.