Over at the Indosoft blog I made a post about Cloud storage in the contact center. Using the Cloud for storage when your call center is already in the Cloud is a no-brainer. However, we are seeing the adoption of Cloud-based storage for on-premise call centers as a way to get around some of the issues that arise when archive recordings. Some of the post may be of interest to readers of this blog, so I encourage you to give it a read.
ACD Queue Features useful when the Caller Abandons the Queue.
With today’s busy world callers are in a hurry and want have their call handled promptly. However when calling during high call volume periods they may not wait in queue until an agent is available. In a recent post I talked about core ACD Queue features but lets look a few abandoned queue calls features.
Call Back – as described in my previous post gives the caller an option to leave a callback number and have an agent call them once available. The benefit here is the caller is allowed to disconnect and not feel their time is being used up waiting in queue. One potential issue is when the agent calls them back their phone could be busy or they are unable to answer it. In these cases ensure the re-attempt rules are setup so the caller doesn’t get lost and is still called back in a timely manner, while not re-dialing to often. A message on their voicemail will help to avoid this. This is not a true abandon call as they used a process to leave the queue.
In the cases where the Call Back feature is not enabled or is but not used by the caller it may still be desirable to follow up if they abandon out of the queue. When configuring the system for abandon calls there are a few options:
The abandon calls stays in the queue and keep position. This means their call is handled in the order they called in, so it will follow the ACD parameters setup for that queue. This allows the agent to attempt a call back with the CID or other information the IVR collected information may collected prior to the queue.
The abandon calls moves to another queue. This means their call is moved to another queue which allows for different ACD parameters to distribute the call. This can allow abandons to be a lower priority but we want to get back to them in time, so the center is setup to prioritize the live call queue and the abandons get handled during lower periods. Alternatively a different set or subset of agents based on their skills will only handle the abandons.
In both of these situations you may want to enable deduplication of abandons. When enabled if a caller calls in and abandons then does this multiple times before their first call record is handled they will only have one position in the queue. For productivity it makes sense to have this enabled so agents are not wasting time dealing with repeated records or worse two agents calling the same caller back due to two abandons in the queue with their info.
Using Cloud Storage With Your Contact Center
A problem many call centers have to wrestle with is holding onto call recordings. Contracts will often specify the retention of recordings for a set period, and legal or regulatory issues may mandate recordings be kept for even longer, or forever. Even with declining costs of storage media, it can be a struggle to maintain an infrastructure that can expand to store recordings as volumes grow, while allowing for easy retrieval as demanded. Your call center software will likely make accomodations for whichever method you choose, but it is still up to the call center to provide the storage infrastructure. The explosion of Cloud storage provides an answer for many call centers facing this dilemma. Many providers offer easy access with API and web controls to upload, download and manage files. Continue reading “Using Cloud Storage With Your Contact Center”
Bringing Instances Up and Down to Improve Performance and Save Money
One of the advantages of deploying a feature rich call center software suite in the Cloud is that there are feature rich APIs and tools available for managing both software and cloud infrastructure. The APIs of more advanced Cloud providers are of interest where they allow a call center to bring pre-configured instances up and down on demand. This can result in a significant cost savings when a major factor in the cost of the service is CPU usage. Continue reading “Bringing Instances Up and Down to Improve Performance and Save Money”
From Call Center to Contact Center
The changing marketplace is quickly bringing about new technologies for communication including e-mail, Twitter, and SMS. Increasingly, consumers are moving to these new mediums and expecting businesses to do the same. Staying on top of these fast growing channels of communication can provide an edge to the contact center of the future.
Continue reading “From Call Center to Contact Center”
Agent Connections with an ACD System
ACD Systems at their core provide a method to connect a caller to an agent. Lets look at the options for the agent side of this connection. Traditionally the Off-Hook nailup was the way to accomplish this. This works great for a dedicated agent who is taking calls from ACD queues one after the other at a high volume call center. It’s more efficient in that case to stay Off-Hook and save on the time of hanging up and answering the next call when the system can just bridge you to a new caller once you are ready. In my last post I looked at our in-house case where our support department handles inbound requests in a unified communications configuration. This use case is not call after call, but they will handle a call then an email or ticket so staying Off-Hook is not desired and this where On-Hook nailups comes into play. On-Hook allow the agent to hangup their phone device and it will then ring when a new call comes into the queue. Which makes it better for cases where there are breaks between calls or other tasks to do.
This gives us the two primary approaches for nailups, which are On-Hook and Off-Hook. How does an agent get linked into the system to do these? Traditionally we would see a local extension device directly connected to the ACD System as the nailup target. So this extension would function as described above for either On-Hook or Off-Hook. However there are more flexible alternatives as not everyone is able to be local.
- VoIP extensions. These would appear like any other extensions but a user would have a VoIP device (Smart Phone, Hard Phone, Soft Phone) almost anywhere they want to work. This requires a decent internet connection and a secure way to connecting to the system. Once connected the VoIP extension should appear and function as any of the local extension devices.
- Call Out/External. This feature allows the admins or agent to provide a phone number to call the agent. This mode can work for both Off-Hook and On-Hook. With On-Hook one does need to consider the delay to ring an outside phone, as sometimes this will add a second or two before the agent will hear the ringing and answer the call.
- Call In. This feature would use a DID and IVR which the agent would call into and once they entered the authentication info a valid nailup would be established. This mode works for Off-Hook as the agent is the person to initiate the connection and needs to keep this connection up while they are working.
Influence of Asterisk on Cloud call center landscape
Cloud based managed service providers are rapidly growing. The most recent financial statements from inContact and Interactive Intelligence point to this trend. Most call center software vendors are making a concerted effort to move from selling hardware and software as a product to selling an on-demand service. This move is being thrust upon them by the rapid change in networking and infrastructure. But the biggest threat to their survival comes from technology companies that leverage Asterisk and other open source elements for the technology stack.
Continue reading “Influence of Asterisk on Cloud call center landscape”
Change your life by integrating Q-Suite and Redmine
We’ve mentioned before that we can integrate Q-Suite with Redmine. We use it quite extensively in our support department. That works really well in making sure issues don’t fall between the cracks. In fact, it works so well, I began to wonder how I could make use of it on the development side.
Once you exclude some of the management requirements, the workflow for developers is actually very similar to our support department. Issues come in from multiple sources, get triaged and then assigned to the individual to be processed. Continue reading “Change your life by integrating Q-Suite and Redmine”
Virtualization Issues to Watch For With Your Call Center Software
The modern call center has benefited greatly from improvements in virtualization technology, and the widespread acceptance of the cloud contact center as a wise choice has accelerated improvements in that field. Asterisk runs well on both actual and virtual commodity servers and has done for several years now. Continue reading “Virtualization Issues to Watch For With Your Call Center Software”
Is Cloud computing forcing consolidation within Unified Communication technology providers?
Shift in technology forces change. Cloud computing is the result of high speed internet, superior hardware and software, and fast paced evolution of computer technology. This allows shared computing resources interconnected through the power of internet. UC offerings bring IP telephony and ‘Presence’, combined with other real-time communication services. Let us examine its commercial impact on the unified communications (UC) industry.
The market was once dominated by large players like Lucent and Nortel with many smaller niche players. The products geared towards enterprises were purchased outright and support was handled as a service. Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) allowed space for the growth of the back office. The back office operations were boosted with the evolution of the call center ACD which runs as a layer on top of an underlying telephony infrastructure. The computer telephony integration (CTI), Personal Computers (PC) and the availability of computer telephony boards were the driving forces in the evolution of the call center software, that went far beyond the capabilities offered by an ACD. The internet revolution and the growth of VoIP presented opportunities for new players like Cisco. The astounding growth of Asterisk, the open source hybrid switch, revolutionized the industry and turned it upside down. Even though the need for both UC and contact center technology exploded during the last decade, the presence of Asterisk has exerted considerable downward pressure on the market leaders who offer UC and contact center technology.
Did all these changes impact the technology leaders of the day like Nortel, Lucent and Alcatel. We know that Nortel does exist and the modern day Alcatel is the combine entity of Lucent and Alcatel. Avaya is a leading UC provider that inherited some of Nortel’s technology. It is now owned by large equity groups who are known to look for opportunity to leverage growth and exit with investment gains. This has not transpired even though the media makes periodic pronouncements about Avaya, due to tepid growth and huge debt load. Shore-tel, another leading UC provider that offers enterprise IP telephony solutions, came out with an IPO in 2007. Its stock prices have been languishing much below the IPO offering. Recently, Mitel Networks has launched a hostile take-over bid at a value well below the initial IPO offering in 2007. The re-alignment and consolidation within UC technology providers may be a reflection of the downward pricing pressure caused by the growth and availability of UC and call center technology for open source platforms like Asterisk.
What is the role of open source technology like Asterisk in the growth of cloud based solutions? How much influence does cloud computing have on the on-going consolidation and re-alignment? Cloud solutions have introduced a newer paradigm where enterprises don’t make the upfront capital investment and retain the ability to switch providers. Imagine the size of today’s economy versus the year 2000. With globalization, the market has exploded and in spite of this, large players have disappeared. The impact of the continued growth of cloud computing driven by powerful open source driven solutions will continue to put immense pressure on larger established UC technology providers. It will feel like the race to the bottom for many of them.
Cloud contact center solutions based on Asterisk offer all the UC features within their call center software at considerably less cost. When offered as a service, the cloud services take away the risk of large capital expense from an enterprise, while offering flexibility. It remains to be seen how legacy players in the UC realm react to the downward financial pressures brought on by Cloud contact center solutions, especially the ones driven by Asterisk with other open source technology stack.