Contact Center Software for Asterisk Telephony
Information for Asterisk based contact centers
First off, we can say that both of these data structures are quite often referred to as IVRs. Let’s have a look at some of the main differences between the two in the Q-Suite. Continue reading “PBX Auto-Attendants vs. CTI Dialplans”
In one of the earliest posts on this blog, James introduced everyone to our brand new kettle, which he thought might inspire nightmares in some.
More than six years later, the kettle is still chugging along. It seems less nightmarish now. Given the number of tea drinkers in the office, it may be one of the hardest working members of the team.
As you can see, it does have the looming spectre of the Keurig ever present over its shoulder. Knowing that its job is in jeopardy should it ever falter, we expect to see further prodigious output from this kettle for years to come.
Agent behaviour isn’t always perfectly aligned with the needs of the call center. An example of this is agent logout from the call center software. This is something that comes up from time to time. How do we make sure that agents who are logged in are actually available and working, and that agents who have gone for the day are logged out? Continue reading “Is Anybody There? Logging Agents Out of Your Call Center Software”
It’s been almost five years since the post was made in reference to capacity planning for large call centers using Asterisk. As we know, five years is almost an eternity in the world of technology. With that in mind, almost all of the information in that post is still relevant today in some way, shape, or form. Continue reading “Blog Post Revisited: Capacity planning for large call centers using Asterisk”
When you have a previous relationship with your client, it’s important that this be reflected in the customer experience. Often, the data concerning the client is available in a separate system from your call center ACD software. Continue reading “Where’s My Data? Accessing External Data Sources in your Call Center Software”
We are going to talk a bit about voicemail in this post. Whether you like or dislike voicemail as a whole, I think we can agree that it is a fairly important medium for communication. Personally, I am not a huge fan of leaving and/or checking voicemail, but I may very well be in the minority. Let us go over some of the ways to configure and use voicemail in the Q-Suite. Continue reading “Voicemail in the Call Center ACD”
When the center is actively handling calls, minimizing any disruptions is key. You don’t want to have your agents stop, log out, log back in, then attempt to continue as they were. Doing that is an efficiency killer. To avoid this, multiple copies of a single service can be set to run on different servers. However, data has to be kept current in order to avoid losing information when switching services from backup to master. Synchronization of information is absolutely required when we are attempting to set up redundancy for high availability in the call center.
Continue reading “Save the State: Data Synchronization Between Master and Backup Services”
Outbound dialing is still an integral part of the contact center acd landscape. Leads can be generated in a multitude of ways, such as purchasing a list or a website inquiry, and depending on the weighted priority, they may be called in different fashions. It’s abundantly clear, that when outbound dialing, your agents will not connect to every number they dial. When this case happens, the agents disposition the call in a relevant manner, and carry on with the next call. We need to make sure that these non-connected get called back in a timely fashion. This is where we use recycle times. Continue reading “Recycle Times in the Call Center ACD”
You can make your agents better. At least you can help them perform better, and you probably don’t care about the difference. The ability to adjust your incoming call flow improves operations from the client side and can make the system as a whole work better. Optimizing operations on the other end, the agent interface, can have the same effect once the call has been answered. The interface, especially the client interaction script, has to be well organized and present the correct information in an easy to read format in order to give your agent a chance to handle the call effectively. Continue reading “Improve Your Agents: Customizing Your Call Center Software Part 2”
If you are running inbound campaigns in your Asterisk based contact center ACD, it is quite possible that you may have tiers of callers or subscribers that you wish to handle differently based on the packages that these callers have purchased. In most instances, you would want to attempt to prioritize higher paying customers, so that they will continue being higher paying customers. Using the Q-Suite’s Priority Calling features can help you accomplish this. Continue reading “Handling Priority Calling in the Call Center ACD”