Features of Outbound Solution

As life goes there are more sales people visiting this blog. Lets see if this one can get some good brains on the blog. The objective of this blog is to discuss features required from a outbound solution.

I am hoping all Sales people can use this brainstorming discussion to take it back to product dev teams. The following is the format we will be using. I will start entering some of the basic features.

FEATURE:

DESCRIPTION:

IMPORTANCE:

ABOUT YOU (OPTIONAL)

FEATURE:    Predictive Dialling

DESCRIPTION: This is a automatic dialling functionality wherein dialer would pick up numbers automatically from a list and dial those numbers. Idea is to keep agents talking to customers for maximum amount of time. The dialer should consider various parameters like talk time, ringing time, avg setup time etc and then predict how many calls should be thrown at any moment.

IMPORTANCE: HIGH in INTERNATIONAL CENTERS, MEDIUM in DOMESTIC CENTERS

ABOUT YOU (OPTIONAL): Owner of the Blog.

How to Select your IT guys?

One of the frequent reasons for failure of technology for SME Call Centers are unskilled or semi-skilled IT people.

Your IT team plays a very imp role in operations of a call center and care must be taken if they will do the job. Lets try to break-up the skills into technical and soft skills. (Both are equally imp)

Technical Skills:

- Excellent understanding of networking, LAN, Network cards, configuration of TCP / IP (In windows and linux), Using troubleshooting techniques like trace route, ping

- Good understanding of Databases (ability to write SQL queries)

- Very good knowledge of MS Excel

- Basic knowledge of UNIX (Most solutions are on Unix)

- understanding of Call Center Scenario

Soft skills

- Excellent communication skills because poor fellow would be co-ordinating with your vendors and operations people.

- Stress/Pressure handling skills

Happy Debugging!

Does Touchstar also use Asterisk?

Found a post on the internet: http://archives.free.net.ph/message/20071022.105253.1da243fb.en.html

Now may be touchstar philippines is just looking to give standalone Asterisk PBX or may be they have already integrated Asterisk onto their Call Center Solution.

This is another shot in the arm for Asterisk in Call Center Industry (Not vicidial puhleez!)

Parsec on HMP now - Going the s/w Way!

Smart move .. with a new looking website.
From a “I am a Hardware Dialer” Parsec technoliges has gone the software way. They have announced compliance with the HMP library of Intel. There has to be more value add for it to pickup again. Not Just “Me too VoIP” but a step in the right direction I must say.

What are Cube, Telesynergy thinking? Any takes if these guys have got a SIP version of there solution?

Is anyone exploring there own soft-switch?

Coming Back to Life!

Recently came across this post on callcentersindia.com

http://www.callcentersindia.com/showall-orig.php?value1=36553.
Very interesting discussion and here are my 2 cents. I have worked with Asterisk in various scenarios.

Fact of the matter is its a excellent tool as a IP-pbx and a switch (mind the scale) but to use it as a appication platform is nto a wise decision. Most of the BIG and Serious providers use Asterisk only as a soft switch. vicidial does not. It still uses Queues provided by Asterisk which till date have problems.

Recently in a discussion with a learner American gentleman he also expressed his views about voice logging capabilities of asterisk. Its best NOt to use Asterisk for mixing of your voice log streams, as it clogs the CPU and causes voice breakage.

Solutions that use Asterisk but not its queues (as far as my knowledge goes are: AHEEVA (canada), ALTITUDE (Europe), ASPECT (Yes … Aspect has a asterisk compatible version and DRISHTI (India). One is free to add more to this list.

Criterion is that

- Solution should not use Asterisk queues

- Soltuion should be able to work with multiple Asterisk servers and same application server

- Should have managed Load balancing in load conditions (say 400 channels per server with full Voice logging)

Hosted Vs Premise based

A lot of people keep asking differences between Hosted and Premises based solution.

Basically a premise based solution is one where the technology is residing in your premises. There by you can own the technology but also have to maintain it. So you will need a IT Dept to manage the solution for you.

A Hosted technology is where the application is located remotly in some data center and is distributed through Internet. This is possible for International Centers only as in India VoIP at this level is still not allowed.

A few hosted providers that I came across are:

1. Five9    (Recently pulled operations from India)
2. Touchstar
3. DACX from Drishti
4. Aspect (A Reseller provides hosted service)
5. Vicidial based solutions

You have to sign up on a monthly leased basis and voIP may or may not be billed inclusive. Consider legal issues also. I am not sure if five9 has a voip license also in india.
In general if you are a small timer wanting to experiment in this buisness without getting into lot of tech issues go for hosted as IT is not a major hassle there but as always there is a cost involved to it.

ViciDial a Cost effective Option

After looking at some many solutions based on vicidial [DialEdge / Contaque / other also] I see that the small timers pure experiment based seekers can consider vicidial also. It works with a few problems but does work.  [Ofcourse not as a Commercial Solution would]

Who should yo go with.

Well simple look for expertise on the solution (Asterisk) and you will be at the safest bet. There are people who support Asterisk in India and they probably would be the best bet. the two I know as Entrux and Drishti.  (Listed on Digium Website)

Also a caveat against people who might be rebranding Vicidial is that GPL does not allow and you might get into trouble. And then .. why on earth do they need to rebrand it. Provide it as a software with service attached to it.

You can get a vicidial configured on a server for 2000 - 4000 USD  and pay extra for any fancy customizations you might require.

Also to know the expertise do a google about tat provider as these people will also be posting on the Asterisk forums. e.g. search for “GIPL Gandhi” on google and you will see what stage they are in or what kinda problems their team is facing.

Bottom line: It is ok to go for a Vicidial based solution .. all you need is go with a provider who has sufficient expertise in Asterisk.

References:

Asterisk where it all started    :www.asterisk.com

Digium Partners in Asia           :http://www.digium.com/en/ecosystem/distributors/locate/Asia

Vicidial GPL based solution    :http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/vicidial.html

Outbound technology … what is it anyways?

There are two categories of needs in outsourcing. Outbound and Inbound. For current discussion we shall focus on outbound only as I believe it is more relevant for SME Call Centers.

Outbound is when you reach out to the customer. (B2C when general ppl and b2B when businesses)

In Ancient times people used to call using manual dialling. Which means you take an internet connection and a media g/w. Attach your normal phones and tell your agents to dial.

This idea had few flaws:

- you never knew if your agent is talking to a client, or his new found g/f in the US

- you had no way to track how is your process performing as doing the whole thing manually was a waste of time

- 50% of numbers dialled were answering machines and hence time wastage again.

Which brings us to a Q? What is actual mesaruable parameter for a outbound technology.

Answer is … How many minutes in an hour is your agent doing productive work.

The other is how effectivly cam you measure agent performance and optimize it.

Thanks to computers and CTI … came a concept of a progressive dialer.

here a computer used to engage an agent and then dial out a number from a DB. Along with a connection came a CRM popu where agent gets to see who is he talking to. Efficient and clean. but this still had flaws. the Answering machine problem was not solved and the agents were waiting for calls to be connected.

Then came the mother of all solutions. Predictive dialer.

The idea is two critical functions:

a) Answering machine detection: which means the computer can detect whether the other side is a human being or an answering machine.

b) Prediction: Based on what has been happening in past … dialer predicts when agent is gonna be free.

So what a PD does is … it throws calls to customer side first and then routes the calls to the available agent. If no agent is available it hangs up the call (Abandon rate) which needs to be controlled by the dialer.

phew.

will write more … this is the basic which you need to know as a bare minimum.

List of Dialers

Yawn Continued !!!

There are probably 20 or so solutions available in the Indian market.

Some Good Some Bad Some Ugly …

I have had experience of knowing the following players in the market. Seen there done that

1. Aspect Hardware based and now shifting to S/W based. TDM version was reliable. No reviewes about Asterisk one.
2. Net Yantra Was active in Del mostly 24 seats dormant now. Avis used to sell it. Now Avis has used (can use better word) Vicidial oops I mean contaque
3. Parsec Traditional TDM based .. should consider S/W as they require (still) dialogic
4. DACX CCS or Drishti Another Software based … seen a 200 seater also. No Radical reviews.
5. ViciDial in form of DialEdge, Contact / Contaque [Incidentally DialEdge comes from GIPL] I see Mr Gandhi is putting a lot of effort on getting Asterisk to work. Do a google on “Vijay gandhi Asterisk”
6. Hyva - mann they call it productive dialer … beware !!!
7. Telesynergy Yet another dialogic based solution. Why … I am sure they are exploring SIP
8. TekInfo Sells with Corel … again a TDM solution.
9. Cube Another dialogic based solution.
10. C-Zentrix - This is a software based solution and recently came into the market. I have not heard much about them if they are Asterisk based / vicidial based or independent. More comments to follow,

Let the names flow. Reviews shall follow.

The VoIP provider List

It is amazing how many VoIP providers can you locate once you start searching for technology.

Lets create a list first of the ones I know. This is not comprehensive and reliable (or Legal).

I will soon post a link from TRAI website of players who actually are legal. There was recently a noise about a few of them not having licsense. A list of players with license can be located

http://www.dot.gov.in/ispt/INTERNET%20TELEPHONY%20LICENCES(FINAL)%20EXISING%20%2031.10.06.doc

More about Internet provider (with telephony license) canbe read at http://www.dot.gov.in/ispt/isptindex.htm

A Few players that I know which are active in the Indian domain are:

1. VSNL Relaiable but costly
2. SIFY Not Reliable these days, but have a good infra (atleast thats what they say)
3. Primus Works … is all I can say
4. Estel Small Timer dunno much but heard of a few centers using it
5. YOU Telecom A New company but their plans are big. Have their own network
6. World Phone This is the same company which created lot of noise in retail.

I encourage people to add the list and give your views on the same.

Yawn!