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Delivering more performance at lower cost with Asterisk based ContactCenters

Contact Centers are the backbone of modern web driven commerce. They handle more and more complex transactions from multiple channels and are expected to deliver higher performance at lower cost. Modern contact centers are being stretched with technology demands that require them to handle multiple channels like Voice, E-Mail, Chat and Social Media seamlessly. The economic pressures to lower cost of operation and increase productivity is ever increasing. This presents a game changing opportunity to introduce an Asterisk based contact center platform, take advantage of its incredibly flexible next generation architecture and increase performance and lower overall cost.

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Moving Contact Center infrastructure into Cloud

It is not an easy decision but we can feel the trend. The growth of IP (Internet Protocol) Network and the availability of Bandwidth at lower costs are pushing organizations to consider data centers for their infrastructure. There are compelling reasons to setting up a Contact Center in the Cloud.

Cloud in our context is a well recognized data center with excellent connectivity and decent infrastructure. Some of the immediate advantages of  Cloud for a contact center operation are, Continue reading “Moving Contact Center infrastructure into Cloud”

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Building mission critical contact centers with Asterisk

Asterisk is often referred to by many as the “Swiss Army-knife of Telephony”. It is a Soft-switch, a complete software based PBX switch with a full feature PBX and a VoIP stack supporting SIP, IAX and H323. It is also a hybrid switch with TDM support for ISDN PRI (T1/E1). The last few decades have been the age of software, propelled by the incredible power and flexibility of software driven systems. No wonder, Asterisk within a span of 10 years has overtaken all it peers and is the undisputed leader this field. Continue reading “Building mission critical contact centers with Asterisk”

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Setting up next generation contact centers with Asterisk

Before we get into aspects of setting up a contact center, it is important to clarify what I mean by “next generation”? I am referring to the infrastructure and technology associated with a contact center. What is so important about it? Technology evolution is a by-product of the demands placed by users to enhance productivity, offer flexibility and reduce the overall cost of acquisition and operation of contact centers. Continue reading “Setting up next generation contact centers with Asterisk”

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Cloud is in ‘vogue’ now but Cloud contact center services have been around for a long time

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”

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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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Selecting an ACD for your contact center

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) has revolutionized the contact center industry by delivering the ability to manage, route and handle customer interactions systematically and efficiently. Contact center software with superior ACD deliver robust, stable and proven call-handling capabilities to many mission critical businesses. Key ACD features include call routing, automated customer interaction, queuing with prioritization and balancing, as well as skills based routing. Continue reading “Selecting an ACD for your contact center”

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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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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”

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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.

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