PlatinumTel

Overview

PlatinumTel is a prepaid wireless provider offering nationwide cellular phone service and international calling. The company's users and clients include thousands of customers and authorized resellers demanding daily transactions via automated IVR and web systems. Internal operations consist of Customer Service, Sales, IT, Phone Service, Accounting, and Administrative Office departments who depend on phone communication each and every day.

Challenge

Opening for business in August 2002, PlatinumTel originally had an Avaya phone system in place providing 12 POTS lines to customer service representatives. However, the company grew quickly and needed an inexpensive, efficient and expandable phone system.

Solution

PlatinumTel replaced the Avaya system with a server running Asterisk with approximately 60+ Cisco 7960 IP phones using SIP and is still adding phones on a regular basis. Features used internally include voicemail, conference calling, call transferring, call parking, music-on-hold, call queuing, detailed call record storage via MySQL, and even call recording. PlatinumTel's systems ran on separate servers because of the load volume, but the need for customer service representatives to easily transfer callers to these systems was also a necessity. With Asterisk's IAX protocol, the company could easily allow these systems to communicate. This gave customer service representatives the ability to transfer callers to the appropriate system with a simple extension. Customer service representatives could now eliminate calls that could be handled by an IVR system by simply transferring the call to that system. This resulted in greater efficiency in PlatinumTel's CSR department.

Results

Authorized Reseller IVR PlatinumTel's authorized resellers need to perform transactions such as activating phones, phone exchanges, and loading minutes on to card accounts over the phone. With Asterisk AGI PlatinumTel was able to easily develop an IVR system that could seamlessly interact with their enterprise system. Customer IVR PlatinumTel maintains thousands upon thousands of customers daily. Their needs include loading minutes onto calling card accounts and checking balances. Asterisk's AGI easily made this possible. Additional Results Using Asterisk has lessened the load for PlatinumTel's IT Department. Additionally, the software-based PBX/IVR system has made it easy for PlatinumTel's staff to implement an effective telephony solution without having to use exclusive hardware configurations. Digium's Asterisk solution also allows for simple and rapid expandability.