As with all types of software in the past decade or so, there are two types of solutions available for use: proprietary, closed programs and platforms and open – source, typically free software. In the contact center environment it could be no different; and we are lucky enough to have a real jewel available: Asterisk.
Asterisk started as a PBX, but over time a large amount of complementary modules have been developed to enhance its functionality: other than a fully featured PBX, it can easily act as an IVR (with speech recognition supported through third party engines); it integrates with CTI; it can work in inbound and outbound environments; it supports most commonly used protocols both in TDM and VoIP environments; it offers automatic redundancy capabilities in case the primary servers fail and a lot more. Detailed information about its full set of capabilities can be found on its homepage. This set of features is not very far from the ones offered by standard commercial solutions.
The software suite is probably the ideal solution for many small call centers. It is extremely cheap to implement compared to various proprietary solutions, the only cost being the payroll of the engineers setting it up and the occasional consultancy/support in case something goes wrong. Asterisk is very flexible and can be configured to run in very diverse environments.
The main drawback of using Asterisk is its inherent complexity. It requires far superior and diverse technical skills compared to more expensive commercial proprietary products to work with it at the same capacity. The complexity could make a PBX ecosystem built around Asterisk less reliable in case something is overlooked. While this is not a problem of the platform itself, in a real life scenario most experts would not consider Asterisk as a proper solution for very large scale and complicated contact center ecosystems.
It is, however, by far the most cost – effective choice for small deployments.
