Contact Center Software for Asterisk Telephony
Information for Asterisk based contact centers
Someone was having trouble monitoring agents. Supervisors couldn’t listen to their agents. It was a simple issue to fix, and the tech logged in to make sure that listening to live calls worked. Let’s call this tech Bill.
The first agent Bill attached to was not in a live call. She engaged in chit-chat with someone nearby. A beep played, indicating a connected call. The agent went silent.
What???
Continue reading “Monitoring Agents: Are Your Agents Performing? Are They Even Trying To?”
As we release version 1.0 of Q-Suite NG, it makes sense to explain why we felt that a next-generation product was necessary. After all, Q-Suite 5 has flourished. Hundreds of sites have used Q-Suite in many situations. Resellers and system integrators have been happy to white label it, develop products on it, and host it for their own clients.
So why mess with a good thing? Continue reading “Developing Q-Suite NG”
Queues are the backbone of an inbound call center ACD. They are typically the primary destinations for your callers and customers, so you need to be sure that they are properly structured and implemented. Let’s have a look at a trio of dialplan components that can help you manage how and if callers get into your queues and what to do with them once that happens.
Continue reading “Useful Queue Control Features in the Dialplan Builder”
Quality wines. That term can mean a different thing to different people. Some folks may consider a sub-$100 bottle of wine as not being a quality bottle. Some people may consider quality to be simply something they can drink easily without wanting to wretch at the flavour. One thing is almost an absolute though when it comes to wine: They get better with age. Callers who are waiting in your IVR queues, however, are the exact opposite.
Continue reading “Quality Wines are the Opposites of Callers in Queue”
We tend to get this type of question more that we should. To an inexperienced user, this symptom seems like a system issue, where more often than not, it’s a simple misunderstanding of the system’s capability. Let’s take a look at a few of the most common reasons why people aren’t answering your outbound contact center calls.
Continue reading “Why is no one answering? A few reasons why outbound dialing can be frustrating”
As you may have seen already, we’re about to release a major new version of our call centre software. One of the major changes we have made is that we have completely replaced the API for 2nd and 3rd party developers.
As Q-Suite is over 16 years old, technology has evolved along with it. Looking back on old call centre technologies can make us feel nostalgic, but we shouldn’t be feeling nostalgic when looking at our current API set. This is why we decided to replace our multiple API sets with a single one that can be accessed over different technologies.
Our 6.0 API can be accessed over a websocket, REST, or STOMP connection with the same command set. These will replace our .NET libraries, XML over HTTP, and proprietary binary protocol APIs.
As an example, let’s take a look at the API call that’s used to log in. We send the command with the username and password and a unique token for the request.
{
"api": "authenticate",
"version": "1",
"token": "71c0ac12-9b3a-11e4-9898-74d435e8439b",
"hostname": "127.0.0.1",
"username": "test",
"password": "test"
}
The server then returns the response:
{
"api": "authenticate",
"version": 1,
"timestamp": "2015-05-20T17:33:10.812Z",
"microseconds": 90000,
"token": "71c0ac12-9b3a-11e4-9898-74d435e8439b",
"success": true,
"data": {
"userId": 11,
"authKey": "19407819-be9b-4fec-9339-d97845019b33"
}
}
While we’ll still be supporting our old APIs on our 5.X platform for the time being, we believe the transition to the new one will worthwhile as it will open up many new features and provide a much more consistent way of interfacing with our software.
Another year and another Super Bowl has passed us by. With all the hoopla that comes from the two weeks between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl itself, talking about quarterbacks-this and defences-that, it’s not really surprising that the guys responsible for holding the footballs in place for their kickers get next to no attention. Even though this role is highly overlooked, it can be amazingly crucial to the outcome of a game. Good or even great holds that result in points for the team are par for the course. However, a botched hold can ultimately end a team’s season and perhaps even their chance to take home the Vince Lombardi trophy. We’ve seen these before with Tony Romo in real-life and with Ray Finkle in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective for a hilariously fictional take on the situation. The bottom line here is that holding is very important and let’s have a look at how this can be done in a proper manner.
Continue reading “Hold it steady! Hold it steady! It’s good! How to use Hold in your Call Center”
Having a tool that can do 100% of the most common cases and 90% of all cases is really great. However, there’s always going to be that 10% of cases that give you trouble.
When you’re using a product that sets clear limits on functionality to the most common cases, that’s fine. But, if you’re using a full-featured call centre suite, that last 10% definitely needs to be in. In the Indosoft Visual Dialplan Builder, it’s simple to construct a dialplan to meet most needs. Continue reading “The Command That Makes the Visual Dialplan Builder a 100% Solution”
You say failure is not an option. So let’s get prepared. Whether you’re deploying your call center in the Cloud or installing your ACD system locally, it’s important to make sure the whole system matches your needs. Testing is crucial. You don’t want to find out that a single Asterisk server was insufficient after logging in 300 agents. We can provide advice and rough guidelines. The sheer number of options available for the platform itself, as well as the number of use cases that Q-Suite allows, mean that it can be impossible to be sure that a specific configuration will be problem free without trying it. Continue reading “It’s Less Stress to Test”
Have you ever heard renting is like throwing your money away? What about the large sum of money you have to pay to own? In the case of a house, making a down payment, buying mortgage insurance, surveys, inspections, legal fees and interest payments can also feel like your money is disappearing into a hole. The benefit of renting is the flexibility, the low upfront cost, and having someone else responsible for updates and upgrades. The benefit of owning is being able to do whatever you want with the property, and a stable environment if you plan on having the same needs for a length of time.
The same arguments go on with software and hardware. You may decide to buy a perpetual license to your call center ACD system, or you may decide to go with the monthly licensing option. But what’s the right option for you? Continue reading “Renting Versus Owning: Solving the Dilemma”