Folks at Indosoft remember deploying a distributed contact center platform for one of our customers at a co-lo in Chicago sometime in 2006. Their agents were working from South America and different locations within United States. They had looked us up on the web while reviewing Asterisk related technologies. Asterisk had by then made quite an impression with its flexibility and feature-sets supporting both VoIP and TDM. Back then, PRI was the preferred telecom termination and SIP with X-lite for agent telephone was a workable option, the big challenge being bandwidth. Continue reading “Cloud is in ‘vogue’ now but Cloud contact center services have been around for a long time”
ACD behavior with Skills based Routing and Queues
ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) is a software designed specifically to deliver efficient Queue management within most customer contact centers. When migrating to Asterisk, people are seeking to unleash the full potential of this dominant IP and Hybrid telephony and take advantage of its many intrinsic benefits. Q-Suite is a scalable ACD software designed to work with Asterisk, delivering and exceeding industry standard features and functionality for the customer contact domain.
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Dialer for Asterisk
There is a lot of excitement regarding Asterisk, the leading hybrid telephony switch. But what makes Asterisk so uniquely beneficial as a contact center technology platform? For starters, the underlying telephony switch is usually a large portion of the initial cost when buying a packaged proprietary contact center solution. Asterisk, on the other hand, delivers a proven, open source, next-generation switch that has been tested and implemented by millions of users. Therefore, a call center technology platform that utilizes Asterisk is capable of delivering an immediate cost savings.
Use of Outbound Dialer in Collections
Delinquent customers impact profitability and therefore increase the cost of doing business. Collections are a process of debt recovery with challenging conditions where efficiency of contact matters. Most collections and recoveries mechanism depend on efficient dialers to automate the process of customer contact. Dialer is the most important component of a debt recovery and collections contact center. The Dialer refers to the overall dialing system and should offer advanced dialing features capable of running multiple concurrent outbound campaigns in both Predictive and non-Predictive dialing modes. Collections and Debt recovery requires account code dialing where every account has multiple phone contacts. Another key component to successful outreach programs is the ability to blend with inbound calling.
Reporting Real-time and Historical Contact Center performance for Workforce Management
Larger contact center operations require statistics and reports from the floor to determine productivity, staffing and performance. Modern Contact Center ACD and Dialers are software driven and should be capable of feeding real-time and historical data and reports to the Dashboards as well as Workforce Management (WFM) Solutions. Workforce Management software applications use real-time and historical contact center report data to optimize performance and increase productivity of the call center operations. This provides control over labor cost, increase the level and consistency of customer service, optimize employee utilization and maximize revenue generation. Management can make informed decisions by looking at key performance indicators generated from different real-time reporting sources within the contact center software.
WFM integration for Asterisk based Contact Centers
Now we see wide spread deployment of Asterisk for setting up large contact centers. With ACD and Dialer Software available to scale to large contact center operations, it becomes important to manage the workforce efficiently. Workforce Management requires real-time and historical feed of reports and statistics from the call center floor to determine productivity, staffing and performance. Continue reading “WFM integration for Asterisk based Contact Centers”
Work Force Management (WFM) integration module within Contact Center Software
Q-Suite has a Workforce Management integration module to allow larger contact center operations to obtain real-time and historical feed of reports and statistics from the call center floor to determine productivity, staffing and performance. This module also provides for integration to third party software like call recording which depend on Agent and ACD states to monitor contact center activity. Q-Suite is a next generation Contact Center ACD and Dialer software that can feed real-time and historical data and reports to such things as Supervisor Dashboards as well as Workforce Management (WFM) Solutions, eliminating countless hours of data entry.
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Integrating CRM and ERP Applications To Phone Services
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software record, unify and manage the business processes. It is usually industry specific and highly evolved. In most cases, there is a close relationship between phone services and CRM. The need to integrate phone services with a CRM or an ERP application is growing and presents an unique opportunity for CRM/ERP vendors to enhance product offering and increase productivity for its end-users. Phone service integration with sophisticated ACD and Dialer features will enhance the usability of the CRM and ERP software. Continue reading “Integrating CRM and ERP Applications To Phone Services”
Supplement Asterisk with an ACD to build next generation Contact Centers
Asterisk to telephony is what Linux is for operating systems. It is by far the best available IP telephone system and provides an easy base to setup up powerful cost effective contact centers. The power of Asterisk makes is easy to supplement it with a good contact center software ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) and build an advanced contact center technology platform. Contact center softwares have an ACD to handle inbound calls and a Dialer capable of predictive, preview and progressive dialing. A good contact center software should provide customizable Agent Screens with screen pops, a script building tool, an IVR building tool, Real-time and Historical reporting, Skills based routing for inbound, Supervisor Dashboard, a self pacing predictive dialer, QA and an API to manage further enhancements.
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Enhanced Queue Management in Asterisk with Complementary ACD
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) traditionally describes the capability of an add-on module to a normal phone system to optimally manage and route incoming calls. These telephone systems receive a large volume of calls every day. The demands placed on the level of sophistication required in an ACD for queue management and call routing has continually increased over the last decade. With increase in online marketing and global trading, remote office workforce are playing a greater role in the marketing, sales, customer service and support of goods and services sold. ACD and contact centers are a vital part of this infrastructure.
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