Posted on

ACD requirements for improving efficiency through Contact Center Queue Setup

Effective use of Queues and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) within a back office phone system or call center ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) will have positive impact on the overall efficiency and productivity. A versatile ACD capable of supporting flexible queue arrangement and call handling is essential to meet the queuing demands and requirements of modern inbound contact center operation.

Continue reading “ACD requirements for improving efficiency through Contact Center Queue Setup”

Posted on

Opportunity for CRM and ERP Solutions to Integrate CTI

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) have become essential to the day to day operation of most organizations. CRM software plays a vital role in marketing, sales and customer retention process while ERP software is critical to management and monitoring of the entire work flow of an organisation. Both ERP and CRM software connect the operations to each and every activity within as well as to the outside client.

Continue reading “Opportunity for CRM and ERP Solutions to Integrate CTI”

Posted on

Asterisk Solutions for Contact Centers

By far the most popular telephony software,  Asterisk is starting to show its presence in the high end contact centers. Its dominance in the small and medium call centers is already well known. There has been a number of Asterisk Solutions for call centers available dating back to 2004. Now larger contact center operations are charting a move to Asterisk based call center platform.  They are able to make a business case based on the economic value and the cost benefit analysis. Overall, Asterisk as a PBX telephony platform provides unsurpassed feature sets for both VoIP and TDM connectivity.

Continue reading “Asterisk Solutions for Contact Centers”

Posted on

Blended Agents in Contact Centers

Call centers are looking for efficiencies and call blending provides an opportunity to optimally use the available pool of workforce. Blended agents handle both inbound and outbound calls by being simultaneously logged into inbound queues based on agent skills as well as being part of outbound dialing. Call center ACD software will use skills based routing to handle inbound calls while Predictive dialing is the preferred method to reach out to customers, in a cost effective manner. Call blending requires an efficient mechanism to hand over calls to agents from both inbound and outbound services to maintain service level and achieve effective list penetration.

Continue reading “Blended Agents in Contact Centers”

Posted on

Picking the right Call Center software

 

Call center software is the most critical component of any contact center. It influences the choice of the telephony switch and determines the overall cost of the call center technology platform. In the long run, the right selection will influence the profitability of the call center. It is important to select a technology solution which will provide competitive edge for the call center. Telephony switch is a big cost item in the overall cost of the contact center infrastructure unless it is something like Asterisk. Asterisk is a leader in IP telephony and provides a complete PBX, an essential element of within any office or contact center. A call center software using Asterisk as the telephony platform, provides an instantaneous cost advantage.

 

There are a number of things to look for in a call center software. Feature-sets like predictive dialing, advanced ACD with Skills based routing and Queue prioritization, real-time and statistical reporting as well as quality monitoring are a must. A distributed architecture allowing home and remote agents with VoIP capability is essential for long term. Once you transcend the basic feature-set, it is time to look under the hood determine the level of sophistication for each of the feature listed above. There are white papers which provide functional overview of the call center software ACD.

 

A high level evaluation of the call center software should include,

 

  1. Functionality available within the call center software
  2. Cost per seat
  3. Level of technical support

 

There is a lot of material available on the web about various call center software available in the market. It is a question of doing your home work and asking the right questions. You will not go wrong with the selection Asterisk as your telephony platform. Once you have picked Asterisk, evaluate the available call center solutions for Asterisk and determine the most suitable call center software for your business.

Posted on

Top Call Center Software

We often see comparative write-ups about call center software in blogs and Web-sites. It is not practical to expect a true comparison of the various contact center solutions available in the market. An objective analysis requires clear performance indicators with benchmarks. As you can imagine, it is unlikely that someone will have the opportunity to do a comprehensive study of the different call center technology solutions available, let alone experience it in actual production. It possible to define a common set of functionality and performance objectives and determine how well the various call center software solutions stack up against it.

Continue reading “Top Call Center Software”

Posted on

Queue Priority Service Level and Skill Level for ACD

Queue priority is dictated by the business case. Calls into a higher priority queue should be handled ahead of calls from other queues. Once within the Queue, calls are handled based on the wait time. Even though it sounds simple enough, it can get complicated because a good ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) has skills for Queues and skills with skill levels for Agents.

Continue reading “Queue Priority Service Level and Skill Level for ACD”

Posted on

CTI Integration and Asterisk Telephony

There is a lot of excitement in the telecommunications world regarding Asterisk, the leading hybrid telephony switching platform, and many businesses and application builders are viewing Asterisk as a potential game changer. It is well known how Asterisk on standard server hardware, can deliver full PBX functionality, do Voice over IP (VoIP), and interoperate with standards-based telephony equipment. What makes Asterisk uniquely beneficial as a telephony switch, or more importantly, why Asterisk  is considered by mature business applications required contact center ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) to service their clients.

Continue reading “CTI Integration and Asterisk Telephony”

Posted on

Asterisk CTI integration with Q-Suite API

Introduction of VoIP has created a paradigm shift in telecommunications where reliance upon one mature and reliable protocol (TDM) is being replaced with VoIP, which enables the unification of voice and data over a single network. Asterisk as a hybrid telephone switch allows seamless interoperability of TDM and VoIP impacting everything from the choice of telephony switch to the way CTI integration and call control are implemented. As a result, different business domain applications have an extremely cost-effective migration path to an IP telephony platform.

Continue reading “Asterisk CTI integration with Q-Suite API”

Posted on

Differentiate your contact center technology platform using better outbound Dialer

Developing two-way interactions with your prospects is a great way to develop customer relationships, build loyalty, drive business efficiencies, and significantly increase revenues and return on investment (ROI). A feature-rich call center software will allow the implementation of innovative outreach programs within your contact center operation to reach out to customers in a timely fashion converting leads into sales; enabling the call center to take immediate advantage of a willing buyer. These innovative leaders are utilizing new, forward-thinking features to achieve greater standards in outbound marketing. Implementing these new technology components for your contact center technology platform has never been easier.
Continue reading “Differentiate your contact center technology platform using better outbound Dialer”