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Contact centers using Asterisk versions 1.4 and 1.8

Over the last decade, Asterisk has impacted VoIP telephony and PBX with its power, flexibility and versatility. Asterisk 1.4 has now reached a level of stability and maturity that makes it a viable platform for medium and large contact centers migrating to IP telephony.  Availability of feature rich call center software for Asterisk presents an opportunity to bring about greater efficiency, better productivity and lower costs with an Asterisk based next generation IP contact center platform.

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Call Center Software for Cloud Infrastructure

There is growing company demand for services in the Cloud or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. It is driven by the lower start-up cost, on-demand growth and the availability of good quality infrastructure. More importantly, the shared service components lower the overall cost of technology management. Contact Centers are no exception and there is a growing demand for Cloud based contact center services driven by the availability of multi-tenant call center software.

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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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Building a Cloud Contact Center using Asterisk

Technological innovations are driving growth and productivity in the contact center industry and  one way to tap into the technology advancement is by building out a cost effective Cloud Contact Center with Asterisk as the PBX. Cloud setup in a reliable data center provides instant scalability and does away with the need for large capital investment and capacity planning. Availability of reliable infrastructure and bandwidth at reasonable cost and the option choosing VoIP and SIP for Telco connectivity are added reasons.

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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.

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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”

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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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Asterisk Solutions for Contact Centers

By far the most popular telephony software,  Asterisk is starting to show its presence in the high end contact centers. Its dominance in the small and medium call centers is already well known. There has been a number of Asterisk Solutions for call centers available dating back to 2004. Now larger contact center operations are charting a move to Asterisk based call center platform.  They are able to make a business case based on the economic value and the cost benefit analysis. Overall, Asterisk as a PBX telephony platform provides unsurpassed feature sets for both VoIP and TDM connectivity.

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Picking the right Call Center software

 

Call center software is the most critical component of any contact center. It influences the choice of the telephony switch and determines the overall cost of the call center technology platform. In the long run, the right selection will influence the profitability of the call center. It is important to select a technology solution which will provide competitive edge for the call center. Telephony switch is a big cost item in the overall cost of the contact center infrastructure unless it is something like Asterisk. Asterisk is a leader in IP telephony and provides a complete PBX, an essential element of within any office or contact center. A call center software using Asterisk as the telephony platform, provides an instantaneous cost advantage.

 

There are a number of things to look for in a call center software. Feature-sets like predictive dialing, advanced ACD with Skills based routing and Queue prioritization, real-time and statistical reporting as well as quality monitoring are a must. A distributed architecture allowing home and remote agents with VoIP capability is essential for long term. Once you transcend the basic feature-set, it is time to look under the hood determine the level of sophistication for each of the feature listed above. There are white papers which provide functional overview of the call center software ACD.

 

A high level evaluation of the call center software should include,

 

  1. Functionality available within the call center software
  2. Cost per seat
  3. Level of technical support

 

There is a lot of material available on the web about various call center software available in the market. It is a question of doing your home work and asking the right questions. You will not go wrong with the selection Asterisk as your telephony platform. Once you have picked Asterisk, evaluate the available call center solutions for Asterisk and determine the most suitable call center software for your business.