Contact centers are one of the most demanding environments for communications servers. This is because of the greater demand for concurrent calls. In a typical PBX environment, only 10% of the users will be on an active call at any given time. In other words, a system with 100 phones attached to it only needs to handle 10 concurrent calls.
On the other hand, in a contact center environment, especially those which are dedicated outbound call centers, there is often the need to saturate the available resources. If there are 100 available phones, then the goal is to keep all 100 phones active as much as possible. Contact centers experience call loads many times greater than the average office PBX system. Thus, the true test of a voice communications system is tied to its performance in the contact center, as these environments push the limits.
Because of the greater demands placed on the system, proprietary contact center solutions are often expensive. Unsurprisingly, open source Asterisk has become a popular choice in this environment due to its ability to perform at a high level while reducing costs at the same time. Additionally, the flexibility of a custom-designed solution built on open source software makes Asterisk a good fit for contact center deployments. Asterisk can be used in a variety of contact center applications which often require specialized logic in order to perform in a manner that supports the unique business processes of each scenario.
Loway, which provides metrics and reporting software that works in conjunction with Asterisk and Asterisk-based systems, recently completed a customer satisfaction survey. The survey of their customer base showed that 80% of the respondents reported they were extremely satisfied with their Asterisk solution. The survey covered a wide range of businesses, from those with only 10 agents working in the contact center to those with over 100. The businesses surveyed use both custom-designed Asterisk solutions, along with GUI-based distributions that employ Asterisk as the core engine.
Another interesting data point relates to those looking to upgrade their contact center PBX. While 10% of respondents said they were considering cloud services for their next upgrade, none of the respondents reported planning to upgrade to a non-Asterisk premises-based solution.
This coincides with the high satisfaction numbers. Cloud services are gaining in their ability to deliver in high performance scenarios, but demanding contact center environments often still call for premises-based solutions. Respondents who were using Asterisk on-premises today, and desired to upgrade to a new premises solution, said they would choose Asterisk again.
One contingent that the survey did not account for was whether their cloud services would be Asterisk-based or not, and if this would have an impact on the purchasing decision. However, the choice to deploy Asterisk again signals high confidence in the product.
To see the results for yourself, you can download the Asterisk in the Contact Center survey in English, Spanish, French and Russian.
