Contact center technology solution for Asterisk

Asterisk is often referred to by many as the “Swiss Army-knife of Telephony”. It is a Soft-switch, a complete software based PBX switch with a full feature PBX and a VoIP stack supporting SIP, IAX and H323. It is also a hybrid switch with TDM support for ISDN PRI (T1/E1). The last few decades have been the age of software, propelled by the incredible power and flexibility of software driven systems. No wonder, Asterisk within a span of 10 years has overtaken all it peers and is the undisputed leader this field.

Contact center industry has immensely benefited from Asterisk. It has dramatically driven down the cost of setting up customer contact operations. I remember watching closely an advanced 100 seat contact center setup in 2000 which came around 10K per seat.  This enormous cost was driven by the technology stack of Dialogic boards, Microsoft servers, Dell hardware and Interactive Intelligence driven contact center software. It was supposed to deliver productivity increases to justify this high initial capital investment.  The weight of the Capital cost and the inability of the project to deliver revenues to sustain on-going costs killed the company.

Today you can setup a distributed and sophisticated 100 seat contact center more powerful than ever for  less than a one-twentieth of this cost. How did this happen? We can attribute it all to the power of the open source technology stack for contact centers. One key component in this stack is Asterisk, the hybrid IP telephony switch. Open source based technology platform provides an opportunity to assemble many of the important components of the technology stack required for setting up a next generation contact center at incredible cost savings.

With software driven systems (open or proprietary)  risk mitigation is important for mission critical systems. Software systems can exhibit bugs that can manifest in an unexpected fashion causing disruption to normal operations. It is important to select a contact center ACD that uses the power of software, detects mal-functioning sub-systems and provides redundancy and fail-over capabilities. A redundant system with fail-over mechanism is capable of ensuring that on-going and new calls into the contact center and ACD are preserved. Contact centers operating with a mission critical mandate require such a fail-safe mechanism for the calls to survive a single failure at any given time.

The availability of such an ACD and Dialer software for Asterisk makes this technology stack complete. With Q-Suite 5.5, Indosoft presents you with the capability of setting up a mission critical contact center technology stack on Asterisk. The contact center software has a sub-component built in to watch, detect and fail-over to redundant sub-components. Inbound call centers will benefit tremendously from this capability to continue operation without disruption when there are disruptions like hardware failure.

Folks at Indosoft remember deploying a distributed contact center platform for one of our customers at a co-lo in Chicago sometime in 2006. Their agents were working from South America and different locations within United States.  They had looked us up on the web while reviewing Asterisk related technologies. Asterisk had by then made quite an impression with its flexibility and feature-sets supporting both VoIP and TDM.  Back then, PRI was the preferred telecom termination and SIP with X-lite for agent telephone was a workable option, the big challenge being bandwidth.

Today, Cloud is a rage and hosted contact center service providers are everywhere. Setting up such a Cloud based contact center platform requires a robust ACD and Dialer software engine with all standard contact center features, out of the box. With over 5 years  of experience and product development in developing distributed contact center technology, Indosoft now offers  a feature-rich scalable platform for Cloud based call center services in Q-Suite 5.5. It is geared to meet and exceed the expectations of modern Cloud based contact center service providers. Its sophisticated CTI interface provides an opportunity for the Cloud contact center service providers to customize their interfaces to reflect the needs of their clientele.

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) has revolutionized the contact center industry by delivering the ability to manage, route and handle customer interactions systematically and efficiently. Contact center software with superior ACD deliver robust, stable and proven call-handling capabilities to many mission critical businesses. Key ACD features include call routing, automated customer interaction, queuing with prioritization and balancing, as well as skills based routing.

Next generation ACD features provide flexibility to the call taking and handling processes of customer interactions, whether they are meant for high call volumes requiring call handling efficiency or low call volume, critical interactions requiring agility and unique processes. Enhanced functionality, such as skills based routing and voice recognition, has made these next generation ACD systems a must have for contact centers seeking to maintain their competitive edge. Technology has advanced in the underlying telecommunications connectivity, providing for unity of protocols like TDM (PRI E1/T1) or VoIP. Such advances allow ACD to seamlessly integrate VoIP and TDM, as well as handle all the PBX functionality. The resulting architecture provides the opportunity to create distributed contact centers with a centralized ACD and enables geographically distributed agent clusters to be easily deployed in order to achieve greater overall efficiency.

These evolutions in ACD highlight the emerging trends to maximize flexibility, agility and functionality within the contact center.  There is detailed white paper identifying key considerations when selecting a Call Center ACD. It also examines how Indosoft Q-Suite ACD  is capable of providing the differentiation demanded from a next generation contact center technology platform.

Thanks to Digium, Asterisk has connectivity to Skype network. It was announced in the fall of 2009 and we tried it out with our office PBX and were very satisfied. We have decided to add support to Asterisk Skype connectivity within our call center software Q-Suite.

For a call centre owner, this is beneficial because it allows you to do a few new things:

• Inbound call centres can now accept calls over the Skype network, they can even have a “click to call” button on their web site.  The Skype calls will go into the same queue as the PSTN calls. SkypeIn virtual numbers will also work in the same way.
• Agents working remotely (from home) can nail in over Skype. One advantage of this is that Skype does a much better job of going through firewalls than your average SIP client.  This will cut down on IT support as a technician won’t have to fight with configuring a $29.99 router’s port forwarding settings.
• SkypeOut can be used for outbound calls for competitive long distance rates.
• Skype uses the G.729 codec (included with Skype for Asterisk) which saves bandwidth on the outbound trunks

There is a constant demand from our contact center software customers for greater granularity in the details of the call center reports. Reports are based on data collected and retained by the system and there are numerous reporting possibilities on Agent, Queue and ACD performance. Here are some of the generic contact center reports based on Indosoft call center software, Q-Suite.

• Agent Time Profile: During every session, the time spent by an agent on all agent states including custom DND states can be compiled and presented as a time profile. Agent time profile in an indicator of time utilization by an agent.
• Agent Performance: Call disposition provide an indication of the  conversion rate for an agent. Both inbound and outbound have different wrap-ups and are compiled by the hour for the all call dispositions.
• ACD Performance: Provides data on abandons, wait-time, SLA and related real and historical information for all calls. It is an indicator of how well the queues and calls are being handled by the call center collectively as well as individually by the agents.
• Queue Performance: This is more granular provides metrics on calls grouped by queues. Service level represents a measurable value for the speed at which calls are handled by the call center. Abandoned calls and the average wait time before abandon are important measures of  queue performance.
• Agent-Queue data: Agent information is combined with Queue data to provide insight  on how well the calls are handled. There are useful informations within the Agent Queue data that can reveal how many times a call was put on-hold or transferred.

To obtain a Call Detail Record (CDR) of a call from cradle to grave is challenging for VoIP and hybrid telephony. Asterisk is a leading platform for IP telephony and seamlessly handles VoIP or TDM. This is a great strength within Asterisk but at times it is difficult to extract accurate CDR information due to the variety of channels that are created in the process of handling a calls within a call center ACD.

Within Q-Suite we have made significant enhancements by tagging and following calls with universal identifiers. A detailed CDR table keeps track of the call progress. This allows  ’Cradle to Grave Reporting’ for contact centers.  Q-Suite  ’Trunk-Tracker’ module monitors information on the state of the channels and records the call detail. Agent screens record agent activity for each call. From within the Dialplan builder, billing related call details can be triggered as the call travels through the IVR. With all the data collected, extremely granular reporting is achievable.

The agent screens are designed to track all the agent initiated activities and store the information. Q-Suite has a well defined ACD for call centers with  a detailed API interface enabling vertical business applications to embed CTI within their interface. Q-Suite ACD is desgined to allow easy migration to IP telephony using Asterisk. It is important for custom applications using Q-Suite ACD for Asterisk, to store all agent states in the database to generate detailed reporting.

Asterisk is modular and has so many incredible built-in applications. Modern day call centers require a lot of functionality and, Asterisk provides a contact center platform that is truly versatile, at tremendous cost savings.  Live listening in Asterisk is an exciting feature for call center managers. Live listening is not new but Asterisk makes it much more accessible with its chan_spy. G729 is a popular codec (you can purchase G729 license from Digium) which reduces bandwidth consumption to around 45 Kbps per channel. When bandwidth costs are at a premium G729 can provide a 50% savings. Agent phones using G729 can minimize transcoding and reduce system load on Asterisk. Eyebeam, the licensed full featured version of X-lite, is a popular soft-phone with inbuilt G729 codec.

Indosoft  call center software Q-Suite runs on Asterisk and we come across a variety of infrastructure variations in our contact center technology deployments. In one such installations which uses G729 for all its outgoing calls, the call center supervisor complained about calls getting disrupted every time they use snoop to perform live listening. We set up a test rig and tried to snoop into a SIP channel with Eyebeam G729 without realizing that the silence suppression was turned on. Many of the applications within Asterisk do not send packets unless they are receiving packets and Asterisk does not support silence suppression. Of course, this is bound to cause issues if the Eyebeam setting allowed silent suppression. Agent will stop hearing the other end when they are silent and listening. But the most interesting aspect is the way this issue gets reported by call center staff as  ’calls getting dropped or cut-off’. It is important to make sure that the setting for silence suppression is left checked as shown in the screen-shot below. A similar issue with the default setting of call inactivity results in X-Lite dropping the the connection .

Silence suppression setting for Eyebeam

Efficient network setup can enhance the quality of your VoIP experience.  Even if you are averse to VoIP terminations for routing long distance traffic, within your call center, you can take advantage of VoIP. Here is a simple but efficient topology for Asterisk based call center setup.

Here all the agents, supervisor and admin phones are within the LAN and have assured bandwidth. Good quality IP phones from Polycom, SNOM, Linksys and other vendors can serve as the admin phones. Agents can use softphones like X-Lite or Eyebeam. An enterprise grade call center software like Indosoft Q-Suite will provide all the necessary features to setup and manage an advanced contact center. I recommend DELL 2950 category of servers which has served as very well in the past. The Dell web managed switches are inexpensive and work well within the contact centers. We implemented our first VoIP based contact center using Asterisk in 2003 with the long distance traffic terminated on PRI using Digium TDM board.

Asterisk opens up a lot of options while setting up contact centers. Last ten years have heralded a revolution in the contact center technology platform. During this period VoIP technology has dramatically altered the landscape of of telecommunications.  Asterisk being an hybrid PBX with inbuilt support for VoIP and TDM, is the force behind the change in the contact center technology platform. Let us consider some of the options that are available for Asterisk based call centers.

You can have all your call center agents on VoIP  using IP phone or soft-phone within your internal LAN.  This is a relatively safe option where you can ensure required bandwidth using inexpensive web managed switches. There should be no measurable delay within your LAN to ensure very good quality voice. Any sane LAN design should achieve this.

You can also get a VoIP provider for terminating your calls to and from the outside world. Here the bandwidth and delay are critical. An uncompressed voice will require 100 Kbps and using G729 CODEC you can get away with 50 Kbps per voice conversation approximately. Generally SIP termination is a great option if you are maintaining your infrastructure in a co-location. The back-end bandwidth and latency to your SIP termination provider will not be a big issue. This is a great option for setting up at-home agents.

Another option is the Skype for Asterisk where you can take advantage of the Skype connectivity and its calling rates to make calls. Skype interconnectivity to Asterisk allows Asterisk users to make use of Skype’s superior codec and voice quality for VoIP.

When VoIP is not good and not an option for your site, the tradional TDM (PRI E1 or T1) is available through add-on telephony boards from Digium or Sangoma. What is more is if PRI is not available, you can use SS7 (ISUP) to connect to the next level.

You can decide to record selectively or all calls in Asterisk. One hour of voice recording at 64Kbps will consume 29 MB of memory. This should give you a rough idea on the storage requirement for uncompressed voice. You can also listen to live conversations.

You can also setup a fully functional PBX for the administrative section of your contact center. At Indosoft, we offer the feature rich contact center software Q-Suite which takes the mystery out of setting up enterprise grade call centers. Q-Suite offers all the features required for a contact center, right out of the box.

I am generally tasked with the Web DEMO of Indosoft call center software Q-Suite for Asterisk. A Web DEMO is usually very interactive where the viewer has full control of my laptop and we can do almost everything (not run the predictive dialer, of course). All the Inbound IVR, Queue, Agent nail-up and an incredible amount of contact center functionality, all are with a few clicks of the button. At the end of the demo we will invariably enter the topic of cost of setting up a call center platform.

The costs of setting up contact centers depend on the infrastructure and the technology platform. The configuration of  your contact center will impact the capacity and overall cost. There are the costs for telephony and LAMP servers as well as the recording storage server (should you look at long term storage). The cost of any licenses like G729 Codec and Skype to Asterisk. It is important to remember that the most important and valuable components like Asterisk PBX, MySQL database, Apache Web Server, Ubuntu Linux all come without any price thanks to the incredible world of Open Source Software. The cost of the call center software, setup, installation and support have to be added to the cost of hardware and infrastructure. For a 100 seat installation (excluding the cost of agent machines), the cost per seat can run around 400 to 500 USD per seat. Compare this to what I can recall from the year 2000 when was in excess of 5000 USD per seat. To be honest, those contact centers were no where near as sophisticated as the present day call centers. Truly, I am amazed at the cost reduction.

Indosoft deploys contact center solutions all over the world. We prefer that our clients purchase server hardware from vendors like DELL, directly. With so many things changing, it is always a challenge to get everything in order. Call center solutions have too many moving parts. We use Ubuntu, Asterisk and our call center software Q-Suite. We have a nifty installer which keeps track of all our SVN, database and OS deployment packages. It is still a challenge due to the sheer complexity of the world of call centers.

In one of our recent deployments, we were forced to upgrade to Ubuntu 9.0x because DELL had moved on from the world of DELL 2950 servers to a newer generation hardware. Everything looked great and we completed the install in 2 days and had them working well during our testing period which lasted a day.  Next day morning when the contact center shift started and the first agent of the call center tried to login, Apache seg faulted. We restarted Apache and nervously watch the call center operation and everything worked well for the rest of the day. The day after morning, again as the first call center agent tried to login, Apache seg faulted.  A quick restart and the day goes by without any hitch. There is very little tolerance for disruption in contact centers as it disturbs their rhythm. In this case, there was little disruption to the smooth operation of the contact center but eye brows were being raised. Of course some of our bright computer scientists were able to identify the issue. Apache kept is DBI connections alive overnight but MySQL closed it. When Apache tried to connect it failed and something did not handle the error properly. The solution was in place but the watch of the contact center continued for a week .

As you all know, clients start questioning about the quality of the call center software, its maturity, our capability to deploy call center solutions etc. It appears like everyone is so on the edge. It is incredible. Everything seems to be on demand and ‘Just in time’.