Indosoft
Remote fully blended contact center
Overview
Indosoft Inc. has been providing CTI based contact center solutions since 1999 and has significant experience developing CTI and Contact Center software solutions. In late 2002, Indosoft took a serious look at the open source Asterisk software platform and Digium hardware. This case study illustrates the nimbleness of Asterisk PBX, its flexible architecture designed around a core PBX engine, its connectivity to the PSTN and the VoIP, and its ability to layer applications. Altogether, this provides Indosoft a very powerful platform to come up with extremely cost-effective solutions that were unimaginable a few years ago.Remote Contact Center Setup
The client wanted a fully blended contact center at a remote rural location in one of the Eastern provinces of Canada. The primary site required a Predictive Dialer, a web based CRM and an Inbound service with DID based queues as well as IVR and Call Recording. The secondary site(s) would have remote agents dialing in to the primary site and work off the primary site server hardware.Constraint Discovered
An issue was discovered with the PRI lines from the local Telco & CLEC (Common Local Exchange Carrier-the only service available). The carrier has a network delay of 250 milliseconds in the call connect/success notification. When using a Predictive Dialer, this causes a few issues. Most importantly the agents do not hear the 1st hello of the person on the other end of the call, completely. This frequently results in calls being dropped. Indosoft was challenged to come up with a quick and cost effective solution.Indosoft decided to set up an Asterisk PBX at the client location with all the agents using Xten soft-phones and USB headsets. The voice traffic was transported by VoIP to Halifax using IAX. The Indosoft soft-dialer was co-located at Halifax N.S., Canada with a CLEC who had the capability to provide a PRI access without the network delay problem—and at a much more affordable setup cost and monthly tariff.
Indosoft was able to provide so many features to the client and turn the difficult situation into a great opportunity to showcase Asterisk. Indosoft's customer-premise real-time DNC blocker was also installed at the co-location site to provide FCC compliance. The recording and IVR were very easy to implement with Asterisk providing PBX functionality.
Indosoft has been providing Windows based CTI solutions since 1998, and still maintains and support many Windows based installations. However, the advent and maturing of the Asterisk PBX software platform and Digium hardware has considerably brought down the cost per seat for Indosoft contact center solutions and also reduced the time to bring a client to production. The significance of Asterisk PBX and its architecture for this project cannot be over-emphasized says Rajan Iyengar, President and CEO, Indosoft Inc.
