Contact Center Software for Asterisk Telephony
Information for Asterisk based contact centers
Continue reading “Impact of Cloud Contact Center Services on Inbound Call Routing”
Continue reading “Speech Analytics not a substitute for broken business process”
Gartner makes available for public distribution, a write-up called “Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure”. Aside from the market analysis and evaluation of some of the contact center solution providers, the narrative dated June 18, 2013, also provided insight into how the market perceives the technology. Under “Market Overview” it articulates that more and more solutions are now shipped as contact center software which can be run on properly configured commercial off-the-shelf servers.
Now this may be a recent phenomenon for proprietary solutions that are closed but it has always been the case with open source software driven technology platform particularly the Asterisk based contact center solutions. Linux O/S, Asterisk Telephony, MySQL Database, Apache Web Server, and all the dominant Web Browsers are open source and they form the backbone technology stack of the contact center solution. They are to a great degree, hardware vendor independent. There are many Cloud platform vendors like Rackspace and Amazon who offer the computing power and the backbone technology as a service, for deploying a cloud based contact center solution.
Cloud contact center service providers will require a contact center software that leverages a comparable technology stack and offer the essential functionality required for a contact center operation. Multi-tenant capability with a multi-channel ACD is a must for every Cloud based service provider. Skills based Routing, Dialer, and robust API for CRM integration are some of the other key elements required.
Distributed computing has been around for years. The unprecedented growth of network infrastructure and the evolution of Internet Protocol (IP) based technology methods has made it possible to move distributed computing capabilities to new heights. Cloud platforms assemble the technology backbone and the contact center software to make it accessible through the IP networks. The shift to a service on demand model is one of the significant advantages offered by Cloud based contact center solutions.
Continue reading “Integration to Cloud Contact Center Services using API”
Cloud contact center solutions are becoming mainstream and are rapidly gaining market-share. Telecom, Internet and infrastructure service providers are diversifying into contact center services to expand their portfolio by utilizing multi-tenant contact center software. Cloud based deployments offer contact center software and associated infrastructure as a service, catering to on-demand growth. Using Cloud contact center services, with minimum capital expense, it is possible to start a contact center operation as long as there is adequate network bandwidth and connectivity. Continue reading “Evaluating Cloud Contact Center Solutions”
Cloud offering of call center software and infrastructure as a service, catering to on-demand growth, has greatly simplified the task of setting up a call center operation. Personal computer (PC) and adequate bandwidth are the minimum requirements to get started. Cloud service providers deploying Asterisk based contact centers around the world, take advantage of the language support and localization capabilities within Asterisk. Continue reading “Language support and Localization for Asterisk based Multi-tenant Cloud Contact Centers”
Automatic Call Distributors (ACD) control and manage the work-flow of a contact center. A multi-channel contact center ACD offers skills based routing and queue prioritization for phone calls, emails, and web channels. The real-time queue metrics are a good indicator of the contact center activities. Even with work-force management (WFM) software predictions, it is not always possible to staff adequately for handling sudden spurts in call volumes. Organizations should have procedures in place to handle such events. One such option is having supervisory staff and supplementary employees participate in call handling if required.
Key queue metrics like the total number of calls waiting in a given queue, the wait time, the abandon rate, and the overall service level provide a measure of real-time call center activities. A good contact center software will allow call center managers to set conditions based on the queue metrics to trigger audio alerts. Different audible alerts can be set, each specific to a particular queue metrics parameter.
Q-Suite for Asterisk is a powerful contact center ACD offering such feature as a part of its call center software. It is a multi-tenant software for setting up Cloud based fault tolerant High Availability (HA) contact center solutions. Its audible notifications can be triggered by setting conditions on queue parameters that are monitored as a part of the real-time contact center reporting. These notifications allow the contact center floor operations to initiate procedures that are put in place for handling sudden spurt in call volumes.
Continue reading “Email and Trouble-ticket integration for intelligent ACD routing”
Providing technical support for Information Technology (IT) or Software products world-wide is challenging enough; supporting call center software that controls and drives contact center operations is even more demanding. These operations are perceived as mission critical and demand immediate problem resolutions, often skewing the normal work-flow plans. Unlike normal software and IT systems, voice telephony based contact center solutions are more visible and attract significantly more attention from the stake-holders when things are perceived to be not functioning in the expected manner. In today’s business culture of wanting everything as a commodity, it is a difficult task to convince the upper management for the required investments up-front, like setting up fully redundant systems, doing proper trial runs and planning the production runs thoroughly. This is also largely in part due to the commercial success of excellent open source telephony platforms like Asterisk, forcing the contact center domain to become more commodity driven. Continue reading “Indosoft improves its Help Desk Customer Support with Q-Suite’s Multi-Channel ACD”