[Asterisk-Users] Call Center and Predictive dialing

Tue Jan 17 12:50:58 MST 2006

Hello,

It was good to talk to you yesterday :)

GnuDialer hasn't been focusing as much on the admin features and user
interface. While they do have them, they are not as full-featured as
VICIDIAL is. They have spent more time integrating and optimizing with
the core Asterisk code. GnuDialer is compiled into Asterisk whereas
VICIDIAL runs on top of Asterisk. GnuDialer does support several
AMD(Answering-Machine-Detection) methods with their 3.0 release if you
set them up on the system.

I am in agreement with you about AMD, we don't use it because we were
loosing calls on our old predictive dialer because it took 1-3 seconds
longer to connect a customer to an agent, removing AMD takes away this
delay and you do not loose those customers. Also, it takes a great
deal of CPU time to process AMD across a lot of lines, and raising
machine load on purpose is something I try to avoid. I am planning on
testing a couple of AMD methods that could be easily added on to
VICIDIAL for a future release, possibly using app_amd and
AnsweringMachineDetect.

As for Scheduled Callbacks, that's on the roadmap for the next release
and is the next thing I will be working on after the 1.1.9 release
comes out(hopefully the end of this week). Callbacks are not that
simple to engineer and will require a lot of code changes,
interactivity and admin functionality to make happen correctly for all
functions of VICIDIAL to work with it. I am working on a process flow
for it right now and should be able to at least release the process
flow on the project blog in the next few weeks.

Hope that helps,

MATT---

On 1/17/06, C F <shmaltz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you all for the responses.
> Matt, when you say they (gnuDialer) have been focusing on other areas,
> what do you mean by that?
> The reason I'm asking, 2 features that I'm looking for that vicidail
> doesn't support:
> 1. Scheduled call back
> 2. The ability to detect an answering machine. Although I disagree
> with the customer on this one (I personally think that humans are
> better and quicker answering machine detectors than *any* machine).
> The customer wants to be able to inject a sound file to the call if
> it's an answering machine, and put that as the disposition. The reason
> being that for political campaigns such a disposition has the most
> value. I know the easy workaround is to create an exten that will do
> that, and blindxfer the call to that exten.
>
> Thank you again. BTW, I was the one that called you yesterday about vicidial.
>
> On 1/17/06, Matt Florell <astmattf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I can give you some contacts off-list, and of course you can use my
> > company as a reference as well. I don't have any contacts in France,
> > but I do in Spain and Greece if that is OK.
> >
> > We have a basic French translation of the web clients with no finished
> > images, but we do have fully translated English, Spanish and Greek
> > versions of the client and admin code. It wouldn't take much work to
> > do a basic French admin translation and add the images to the French
> > client code if that is something you will need for this project.
> >
> > MATT---
> >
> >
> > On 1/17/06, Olivier Krief <olivier.krief at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Matt,
> > >
> > > Today, I'm working on a proposal for 150 seats PBX replacement.
> > > Competitors are using Aastra Matra, Alcatel or Cisco IPBX.
> > >
> > > Do you think I could name some of those call centers (those 100 using
> > > vicidial) to prove Asterisk is a safe choice ?
> > > If positive, is there a way I could get in touch with them to testify their
> > > system is running OK ?
> > >
> > > My prospective customer is a french local authority so a call center in
> > > Europe would be perfect.
> > >
> > > Regards
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Matt Florell" <astmattf at gmail.com>
> > > To: "Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion"
> > > <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
> > > Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2006 4:30 AM
> > > Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Call Center and Predictive dialing
> > >
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > We have been using vicidial for over 2 years now for our inbound and
> > > outbound call centers. We have four locations with over 200 seats
> > > across them. Recently we released a development version of VICIDIAL
> > > that allows for load balancing across multiple servers. This has
> > > greatly helped our effeciency and allows for a greater degree of
> > > scalability.
> > >
> > > As far as my last count there are close to 100 call centers, from 1
> > > seat to 350 seats, that currently use VICIDIAL in production. It
> > > certainly is not perfect, but it is becoming more fully featured every
> > > month and being open source greatly helps with the fast development of
> > > the codebase.
> > >
> > > EASE OF USE- well, I think it's easy to use you just have to get used
> > > to how it works just like any piece of software, not necessarily
> > > simple to setup, but we do have a lot of documentation for setting it
> > > up. All interfaces are web-based and work on any semi-modern OS that
> > > supports a recent web browser.
> > > STABILITY- Vicidial will run on Asterisk versions from CVS 2003-11-21
> > > to 1.0 tree to 1.2 tree to the new development branch. It is basically
> > > as stable as your Asterisk installation is.
> > > FEATURE SET- Not up to the level of $2 million commercial call center
> > > system, but the code and database are open so you can get it to do
> > > almost anything you want it to and we are adding features all the
> > > time.
> > > OPEN SOURCE- That one's easy, it's GPL
> > >
> > > There is another GPL-Asterisk-based dialer project out there too which
> > > has also been making great strides in the last year: GnuDialer. They
> > > have a different approach to the backend of the dialer and tend to
> > > focus on some different elements that VICIDIAL has not spent as much
> > > time on.
> > >
> > > Hope that helps,
> > >
> > > MATT---
> > >
> > >
> > > On 1/16/06, C F <shmaltz at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > I know this question has been asked a lot before, but please I would
> > > > like to know from personal experience.
> > > >
> > > > I'm looking to use Asterisk in a call center environment, where most
> > > > of the calls will be outbound calls. They will have at start 100
> > > > agents.
> > > > I have looked at vicidial and looks promising, however I would like to
> > > > hear from users what they use and how they like it compared to other
> > > > products they have tried.
> > > >
> > > > Of interest are:
> > > > * Ease of use
> > > > * Stability
> > > > * Feature set
> > > > * Open Source
> > > >
> > > > Thank You
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