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Softphones for Contact Centers in 2017

Many phones to choose from

It’s been more than 2 years since I wrote the Softphones for Contact Center ACD post, and looking back, not a lot has changed as far as the relevance of how softphones can be used and can help cut your startup costs, assuming you are using a free version. A little bit has changed on the softphone landscape in my experience, so let’s talk a bit about the three softphones I mentioned in the original post. Continue reading “Softphones for Contact Centers in 2017”

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Happy Halloween! Scary Contact Center ACD Situations!

Halloween is pretty awesome, in my opinion. While I don’t necessarily get in character with the amount of dedication that many people do, it’s still a fun little ‘holiday.’ I definitely like hitting the web to see what people come up with for costume ideas. Plus, discounted Halloween candy post-October 31st is nice treat. Let’s switch focus to the contact center ACD and some of the scary moments that can occur if you happen to be the administrator of a contact center. Continue reading “Happy Halloween! Scary Contact Center ACD Situations!”

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Bigger Isn’t Always Better: Keeping ancient data around is a bad idea for your Contact Center

I don’t necessarily feel like writing a shiny opening paragraph for this post. I could try to relate this topic to No Man’s Sky, Pokemon GO, or the Rio Olympics, but I won’t. Let’s dive in to a few reasons why keeping old data is a bad idea. Continue reading “Bigger Isn’t Always Better: Keeping ancient data around is a bad idea for your Contact Center”

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Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Pushes the PS4 to the Limit: FastAGI Can Push Your Asterisk Contact Center There As Well

On May 10th, Naughty Dog released the 4th and likely final installment of the Uncharted series, with Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The Uncharted series is definitely one of my favourite sets of games, so I was looking forward to the 10th for a long time. Reviews are glowing. Digital Foundry called it a “technical powerhouse” and “the best-looking console game we’ve ever tested.” That’s some high praise regarding how this title pushes the limits of the PS4’s capabilities. What can you do to push the limits of your Asterisk-based contact center without needing to upgrade your hardware? Let’s take a look at FastAGI. Continue reading “Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Pushes the PS4 to the Limit: FastAGI Can Push Your Asterisk Contact Center There As Well”

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Large and In Charge: Tips for Call Center Capacity Planning

You have a successful contact center in operation and things are going well. The site isn’t having any issues with call quality, database latency, or agent portal usage. It’s a wonderful thing. You have a new client coming on board and all of a sudden, you need four times the capacity and throughput that your site currently handles and handles well. While the new business is certainly welcomed, how can you expand, efficiently and effectively, to meet these new requirements for your contact center? Continue reading “Large and In Charge: Tips for Call Center Capacity Planning”

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Hold For the Holidays: How to Not Annoy Your Holding Customers

The 2015 holiday shopping season is well under way. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, and now we’re into the home stretch before the holiday break. I’m keeping a loose eye on Twitter and it appears that a lot of people are tweeting out to companies about being on hold for an atrociously long period of time and they are, of course, not happy about it. Nobody wants to be stuck on hold any longer than they need to be, so I can sympathize with these people. Contact centers should be prepared to handle the influx of calls that are no doubt going to happen during this time period and should be able to adjust accordingly. Continue reading “Hold For the Holidays: How to Not Annoy Your Holding Customers”

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Preparing for the Fallout: Ways to Avoid a Contact Center Disaster

Bethesda’s latest installment in the Fallout franchise, Fallout 4, releases in four days. I know a lot of people who are incredibly excited for this game. I’m actually not one of the them, as of now, but that could certainly change. With that in mind, let’s talk about a few of the options you have for avoiding a contact center disaster. Continue reading “Preparing for the Fallout: Ways to Avoid a Contact Center Disaster”

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Big Plays From Big Jays: Contact Center ACD All-Stars

It’s been a very long time, 1993 to be specific, since folks north of the border have been this excited for MLB playoffs. The Toronto Blue Jays are once again playing ball in October, and after a fairly disastrous start culminating in 2 losses at home, they have roared back to win the ALDS 3 games to 2. Game 5 will certainly go down in playoff baseball lore as one of the weirdest and wackiest games, with a 53-minute 7th inning that would make the greatest storytellers blush with jealousy. Stars shine the brightest in the spotlight, and Jose Bautista was the North Star last night, after his mammoth 3-run blast that put the Jays ahead for good. Let’s talk about letting your contact center ACD all-stars shine. Continue reading “Big Plays From Big Jays: Contact Center ACD All-Stars”

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Destiny: The Taken King Patch’s Painfully Long Download Time and Trying to Avoid Bottlenecks in Your Contact Center ACD

So there was a massive 18GB patch released this Tuesday by Bungie to prepare everyone’s Destiny instance for the arrival of The Taken King on September 15th. I started my download at approximately 6pm local time. It had not completed by midnight so I set my PS4 in rest mode and went to bed. I got up in the morning to check the file’s progress, at about 7am, and I was still about 3GB shy of having the file fully downloaded. It was pretty common knowledge across the forums that there were a lot of people on all platforms that were having the same issue. With all the users trying to pull down files that large, bottlenecks were bound to happen. Here are a few tips to try to avoid bottlenecks in your contact center ACD. Continue reading “Destiny: The Taken King Patch’s Painfully Long Download Time and Trying to Avoid Bottlenecks in Your Contact Center ACD”

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Why Are There So Many Options? A Few Tips for Creating Effective IVRs for Your Contact Center ACD

Have you ever gone to a restaurant, taken a seat, picked up the menu, and realized that the menu was a gargantuan mess of options? It’s an overwhelming feeling and makes it incredibly hard to decide on what you actually want to order. I’ve run into some awfully complicated IVRs in my contact center ACD experience, and not only are they a headache to troubleshoot, but when it comes to testing and navigating through the IVR, it’s quite annoying to have to spend all the time it takes to trial every option. If you can keep your IVR clear and concise, your customers and your support team will be thankful. Here are a few tips. Continue reading “Why Are There So Many Options? A Few Tips for Creating Effective IVRs for Your Contact Center ACD”