Quality Wines are the Opposites of Callers in Queue

Quality wines. That term can mean a different thing to different people. Some folks may consider a sub-$100 bottle of wine as not being a quality bottle. Some people may consider quality to be simply something they can drink easily without wanting to wretch at the flavour. One thing is almost an absolute though when it comes to wine: They get better with age. Callers who are waiting in your IVR queues, however, are the exact opposite.

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10 Ways to Control Time in the Call Center ACD

Shocking fact: Your callers don’t enjoy waiting to speak to an agent.

Sometimes it’s not the actual amount of time waiting, though. It’s the perception of time.

Everyone’s experienced the perception of time issue. You’re sitting in a meeting, and you look at the clock. After what seems like hours, you see it’s only been a few minutes. You get home from work. You finally have a chance to that thing you wanted to do. You start doing it, then after 10 minutes you look at the clock and an hour has passed. Continue reading 10 Ways to Control Time in the Call Center ACD

Why is no one answering? A few reasons why outbound dialing can be frustrating

We tend to get this type of question more that we should. To an inexperienced user, this symptom seems like a system issue, where more often than not, it’s a simple misunderstanding of the system’s capability. Let’s take a look at a few of the most common reasons why people aren’t answering your outbound contact center calls.

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Introducing our new API

Still Life of an Electrical Wall Outlet Overloaded with Wires and Cables

As you may have seen already, we’re about to release a major new version of our call centre software. One of the major changes we have made is that we have completely replaced the API for 2nd and 3rd party developers.

As Q-Suite is over 16 years old, technology has evolved along with it. Looking back on old call centre technologies can make us feel nostalgic, but we shouldn’t be feeling nostalgic when looking at our current API set. This is why we decided to replace our multiple API sets with a single one that can be accessed over different technologies.

Our 6.0 API can be accessed over a websocket, REST, or STOMP connection with the same command set. These will replace our .NET libraries, XML over HTTP, and proprietary binary protocol APIs.

As an example, let’s take a look at the API call that’s used to log in. We send the command with the username and password and a unique token for the request.

{
 "api": "authenticate",
 "version": "1",
 "token": "71c0ac12-9b3a-11e4-9898-74d435e8439b",
 "hostname": "127.0.0.1",
 "username": "test",
 "password": "test"
 }

The server then returns the response:

{
 "api": "authenticate",
 "version": 1,
 "timestamp": "2015-05-20T17:33:10.812Z",
 "microseconds": 90000,
 "token": "71c0ac12-9b3a-11e4-9898-74d435e8439b",
 "success": true,
 "data": {
     "userId": 11,
     "authKey": "19407819-be9b-4fec-9339-d97845019b33"
     }
 }

While we’ll still be supporting our old APIs on our 5.X platform for the time being, we believe the transition to the new one will worthwhile as it will open up many new features and provide a much more consistent way of interfacing with our software.

Hold it steady! Hold it steady! It’s good! How to use Hold in your Call Center

Another year and another Super Bowl has passed us by. With all the hoopla that comes from the two weeks between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl itself, talking about quarterbacks-this and defences-that, it’s not really surprising that the guys responsible for holding the footballs in place for their kickers get next to no attention. Even though this role is highly overlooked, it can be amazingly crucial to the outcome of a game. Good or even great holds that result in points for the team are par for the course. However, a botched hold can ultimately end a team’s season and perhaps even their chance to take home the Vince Lombardi trophy. We’ve seen these before with Tony Romo in real-life and with Ray Finkle in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective for a hilariously fictional take on the situation. The bottom line here is that holding is very important and let’s have a look at how this can be done in a proper manner.

Continue reading Hold it steady! Hold it steady! It’s good! How to use Hold in your Call Center

If You Can’t Give Up When Your Caller Does

Sometimes your callers really mess things up for you.

You’ve spent hours building and tweaking and testing your Interactive Voice Response (IVR). Music on hold. Audio prompts. Web services to tie the call together with a contact in your CRM.

The visual IVR builder gives you plenty of options for collecting data, sending data, and routing calls. The drag-and-drop interface lets you get your IVR built fast so you can test and perfect it.

The built-in features are fantastic for collecting data about calls and updating your CRM. Or even letting your agents know a call came in. But, sometimes you need to guarantee that the information goes into your CRM.

Then the caller hangs up before that can happen.

Why?!

Continue reading If You Can’t Give Up When Your Caller Does

The Command That Makes the Visual Dialplan Builder a 100% Solution

Having a tool that can do 100% of the most common cases and 90% of all cases is really great. However, there’s always going to be that 10% of cases that give you trouble.

When you’re using a product that sets clear limits on functionality to the most common cases, that’s fine. But, if you’re using a full-featured call centre suite, that last 10% definitely needs to be in. In the Indosoft Visual Dialplan Builder, it’s simple to construct a dialplan to meet most needs. Continue reading The Command That Makes the Visual Dialplan Builder a 100% Solution

How to Scale Asterisk Over Multiple Servers

Scaling your Asterisk PBX can be complicated. It’s hard to get more than one Asterisk server acting as a single PBX. A call comes in, and you want it to go where it’s supposed to go. But it takes a ridiculous amount of effort to get your installation to do what you want.

Take a look at the typical setup, where you have two Asterisk servers, with a trunk between them: Continue reading How to Scale Asterisk Over Multiple Servers

It’s Less Stress to Test

You say failure is not an option. So let’s get prepared. Whether you’re deploying your call center in the Cloud or installing your ACD system locally, it’s important to make sure the whole system matches your needs. Testing is crucial. You don’t want to find out that a single Asterisk server was insufficient after logging in 300 agents. We can provide advice and rough guidelines. The sheer number of options available for the platform itself, as well as the number of use cases that Q-Suite allows, mean that it can be impossible to be sure that a specific configuration will be problem free without trying it. Continue reading It’s Less Stress to Test

Renting Versus Owning: Solving the Dilemma

Have you ever heard renting is like throwing your money away? What about the large sum of money you have to pay to own? In the case of a house, making a down payment, buying mortgage insurance, surveys, inspections, legal fees and interest payments can also feel like your money is disappearing into a hole. The benefit of renting is the flexibility, the low upfront cost, and having someone else responsible for updates and upgrades. The benefit of owning is being able to do whatever you want with the property, and a stable environment if you plan on having the same needs for a length of time.

The same arguments go on with software and hardware. You may decide to buy a perpetual license to your call center ACD system, or you may decide to go with the monthly licensing option. But what’s the right option for you? Continue reading Renting Versus Owning: Solving the Dilemma