In the last decade, organizations have established large contact center operations with the total number of call center agent seats exceeding one thousand. Such large capacity contact center operation requires robust, feature-rich and flexible call center ACD. Many of these systems are TDM based and expensive. With the current push for migration to VoIP, technology officers are evaluating and exploring different options.
ACD – A PBX feature or a Call Center Application?
The demarcation has blurred in the last decade. Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) has a very broad definition now. Traditional phone switches (PBX) which provide phone extensions and connectivity to Telco, offer all the normal functionalities for call handling including Auto-attendant, Direct inward dialing, Find-me follow-me and voice-mail. Call center ACD handles Agents (as opposed to plain extensions), detailed IVR (interactive Voice Response) and Queues. The degree of sophistication within the PBX as well as call center ACD applications have evolved considerably. Automatic call distribution (ACD) is not limited simple call distribution, but an opportunity to created clever mechanisms to enrich interactions with the callers. Cost-effectiveness and increase in productivity are the key factors driving businesses to incorporate sophisticated ACD.
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Asterisk based Contact Centers
I happened by chance to read an interesting blog on Asterisk Contact Centers which talks about call center solutions available for Asterisk. It was disappointing that the author made no mention of Q-Suite, Indosoft call center software for Asterisk.
Feature-rich call center ACD to go with Asterisk
Asterisk has set a very high benchmark for VoIP PBX systems. Its powerful and flexible structure has enabled enterprises all over the world to migrate to IP while keeping conventional TDM interface wherever necessary. It is a common knowledge that Asterisk is used as a VoIP engine in many commercial products. It does not make economic sense to have an in-house development team to develop, manage and keep up with the prolific pace of open source VoIP PBX switches like Asterisk or FreeSWITCH. Therefore, many organizations are looking at Asterisk as a platform to migrate their legacy products to IP telephony. Digium offers Asterisk support through commercial licensing agreements. This provides organization with considerable flexibility without the cost of maintaining large development teams.
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Flexibility within a Call center ACD with Agent seating and ON-Hook/OFF-Hook telephony
Large enterprise contact centers require their ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) to be flexible. The primary objective of a call center ACD is to manage routing and handling all incoming calls resulting in appropriate calls being connected to the most suitable agent. Hot desking is the flexibility available for agent seating within a call center. On-hook and Off-hook describe the state of the agent telephone device. An On-hook agent phone has to ring to incoming call, like regular phones. An off-hook agent is already connected and would hear an audible beep before a new call is handed out.
Scalability of Asterisk for larger ACD deployments
Back in late 2002, when we looked at Asterisk as a possible alternative to CTI platforms based on boards from Dialogic and Pika, the very thought of working with open source telephony was exciting. The possibilities seemed endless and we had limited ability to analyse possible shortcomings moving forward. In mid 1990s the processor speeds in x86 systems made it impossible to conceive voice processing on anything without on-board DSP. The concept of using motherboard CPU for voice processing did cause apprehension but it was counter balanced by the cost savings. With the talk of SIP and IP telephony as the emerging protocol for voice communication, Asterisk offered a lot of promise. Today we see Asterisk deployments everywhere with limitless applications. With VoIP well entrenched, Asterisk and open source telephony has demonstrated the usefulness and versatility of this hybrid PBX with seamless handling of VoIP and TDM.
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ACD for Business Verticals migrating to Asterisk
Telecom is going through a paradigm shift with VoIP dictating the direction. This has profound impact on business verticals where voice communication is a critical sub-set of their overall system. For example, sales and service departments, dealerships and similar functional units use custom applications and ERP systems which co-exist with good telephony platform. There are also other custom applications built to manage unique processes that require CTI functionality to handle voice communications. As these domains move forward with next generation systems for their business verticals they will require a next generation telephony platform with VoIP capabilities. Continue reading “ACD for Business Verticals migrating to Asterisk”
CTI (Computer Telephony Interface) for Asterisk
Asterisk is a definite game changer in revolutionizing the world of computer telephony interface (CTI). When you are considering Asterisk as a hybrid PBX telephony switch for your contact center requirements, you may end up looking for an ACD that meets the requirements of your contact center. Often times you might already have a fully developed business application requiring CTI integration. Sophisticated ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) will allow the call center to handle incoming calls with greater efficiency and increased productivity. The general attributes of an ACD include,
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Call center migration to Asterisk
Migration to Asterisk is an attractive proposition and resisting it is futile. Let us look at this more critically. TDM is gradually giving way to IP and VoIP is here to stay. Everyone will eventually look for a platform to migrate to VoIP. Call centers are no exceptions. Managing the risk of such a migration is critical. It is also important to grasp short comings of VoIP and Asterisk as they grow and manage it properly. In return, the rewards of such a migration can be disproportionately large. Asterisk makes it easy to move into IP telephony without giving up TDM. The richness of its PBX will amaze anyone. Cost savings are enormous.
Asterisk leadership in IP telephony for Call Centers
In 2003, Asterisk was emerging as a powerful open source PBX with VoIP capability. The availability of Zapata telephony TDM boards were critical to its deployment. Back then, high density CTI boards with on-board DSP were the norm. Linux had earned grudgingly acceptance in the server world but CTI was still dominated by Windows based board manufacturers. The boards were good but the overall cost of managing a development team to keep up with the PBX feature-set was getting prohibitive. VoIP was being mentioned and there was anxiety. Imagine having to maintain a software team to manage and enhance a PBX feature-set using the board manufacturer’s API and survive a paradigm shift. Having benefited from Linux greatly, when we heard of Asterisk, we were very eager to try it and adapt it for call center use.
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