Recently, I had concluded a project of implementing a very intelligent and highly customised call center. Customosiation of the call center application mostly centered around CTI component. During that period, I came to think, believe that, choosing Asterisk PBX over legacy PABX systems is the smart choice for anyone who wants his call center to be intelligent, highly customizable with integration of many business processes as well as features.
Asterisk PBX for Call Center
I would try to list few “killer features” which Asterisk PBX offers and which are hard to implement with a legacy PABX:-
1. Killer CTI Integration
Well, Asterisk itself is a CTI application with PBX functionality! So, what does a call center do majorly ? Handles incoming calls, greets the caller, produce information on request, and transfers the call to a human agent when the caller asks for it!
Asterisk does that all and one may call, Asterisk PBX has them in built in their system, IVR, Voice Logger, Voce Mail, VoIP connectivity etc.! With Asterisk PBX, your worry of any CTI application is over.
2. Easy integration with other existing IT resources and provide all kinds of information to customer agent or calling customer
Asterisk PBX is based on a PC. So, any kind of information, irrespective of their, either dynamically computed or retrieved as per user input, can be produced quickly and presented to the caller! Also, it becomes very easy to transfer caller provided information, request to a human agent who in turn can assist the caller in much quicker and better way! No more caller frustration for having to provide same informaton once to IVR and than to human agent again!
It will not only increase customer experience, but also increase efficiency of the human agent!
3. Easy accommodation and integration with any third party application
Are you worried that your call center solution will not integrate with any third party application ? Well, if you use legacy PBX, most probably, you need to worry, but with Asterisk PABX, your worry is gone! Asterisk PABX has many inbuilt support fr many third party application like SMS ( Short Messaging Service), XML data etc.
Even if it does not have any built-in support for third party enhancements, one can easily develop the integration facility since Asterisk PBX offers the best onsite customization! Asterisk itself is based on software, if you have forgotten!
4. Cost of ownership
Dependency on proprietary PBX as well as CTI applicatin developer is eased, thankfully! Do you imagine a situation where you may have to ask for a specific feature in the legacy PBX which may not have that the particular model ? Well, let me tell you the response you will get, “replace the existing PBX with new advanced model”, Software patch, Software upgrade, Put a new Card in the PBX machine. No matter what, you end up paying another handsome amount to PBX vendor!
With Asterisk PBX, well download the newer version of Asterisk, install it and get going! Ask in Asterisk community and someone might offer a free solution to your feature request!
5. Web interface
How do you provide any web interface to your call center application if you are using a legacy PBX machines ? One may realise, there will not be any direct integration with web and the PBX systems! Even implementing a “click to dial” or “Click to Call back” button on website will take huge lot of work for integration! With Asterisk PBX, most probably, you will need to add few lines of code, and chances are, you will get them free of cost or it is already built in!
Asterisk is community driven PBX with many free features and being added daily!
So, if you are looking for setting up a call center, think about Asterisk PABX!
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Thanks for expounding on the features of Asterisk. I’m sure it will be of great help to call center managers who are looking to change their PBX.