Company web-sites provide a unique opportunity to gather expression of interest or inquiries and channel it directly to the sales and marketing operations. This is an excellent source for warm prospects and should be accorded higher priority than the outbound campaign sales operations. In a multi-channel contact center with ACD and Dialer, Web callbacks are unique. Even though they will result in outbound calls, they can be prioritized and channeled through both list based based dialing as well as Skills based Routing to the most appropriated available agent for an immediate callback.
Essential Queue behavior for Multi-channel ACD
Queues are the back-bone of a modern ACD (Automatic Call Distribution). Within any sophisticated call center software, Queuing is an abstraction of the information that represents all the various parameters and attributes of Queues and Calls. Queue management is the ability to efficiently distribute calls to the most appropriate Agent in a Call Center or an organization. The separation of queuing and queue management from the actual calls is a natural progression in the evolution of ACD. Skills based routing, Queue Priority and many other Queue manipulation features are a by-product of this progression.
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Managed services and Call Center as a Service
Managed Services is a way to off-load the responsibility for software, infrastructure and connectivity to a provider. Organizations are embracing managed services as a means to avoid the burden of capital cost and cost of IT management. It is a way to boost productivity and profitability in an increasingly competitive market with commodity-type price pressures.
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Distributed Multi-site ACD and Contact Center Setup
The availability and growth of Internet and IP network access has changed the landscape of the contact center industry. Its positive impact is seen in the growing acceptance of SIP and VoIP as well as the expansion of Cloud based infrastructure. This in combination with the ease of access and falling bandwidth cost has created a significant opportunity to re-look at the way multi-site distributed call centers are setup and managed. Continue reading “Distributed Multi-site ACD and Contact Center Setup”
Unified Communications from Q-Suite
So often, technology changes usher new products and services that dramatically lower cost and drive out well entrenched, higher-priced competition. We are certainly seeing this trend within the contact center software and technology industry, impacting those whose business model thrives on expensive licensing for in-premise and managed cloud based call center services. The shift introduced by Asterisk in telephony is being carried into the unified communications with the availability of quality ACD software for Asterisk. Contact center industry is the direct beneficiary of this technology change and cost savings.
Skill-based and vertical-based routing for Web Generated Leads
Skills based Routing is the most effective way of identifying an appropriate representative within a contact center to handle every available prospect or call. This is achieved by carefully matching the consumer/prospect requirements with the knowledge base of the available representatives. This process leads to better understanding of the customer requirements, establish trust, improve sales and enhance customer satisfaction.
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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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