Asterisk in the Call Center

An interview by Digium Inc. with Loway's Founder

We are pleased to welcome guest blogger Lorenzo Emilitri, the founder of Loway, a
Swiss company that powers thousands of call-centers worldwide. Lorenzos
background is in data modelling and he preiously worked for a well-known
international consulting !rm. Lorenzo started using "sterisk in #$$% - and neer
looked back&
'ow good is "sterisk as a contact center( )here are some white papers from
di*erent endors e+plaining the bene!ts of their speci!c solutions. )he real
,uestion of how good the "sterisk platform itself is - or the perceptions its users
hae when running call-centers out of it - is often left unanswered.
Loway has been deeloping the -ueue.etrics /all-/enter Suite for almost 0$ years now. We had a feeling
that our clients seemed to be ,uite happy - in particular the ones moing away from traditional telephony.
1ut, until recently, we haent been able to ,uantify this with reliable metrics. .y own e+perience, in
running a company that prides itself on its high leel of technical detail, is that often, time is inested in
soling one issue after the other. 2t is hard to step back, take a deep breath, and look at the landscape
around you.
Last year we decided it was time to look at the big picture. We are a company that beliees in
measurement as the basis of improement. We had to see some data. So, we asked our clients to !ll in a
satisfaction surey that contained ,uestions relating to both -ueue.etrics and the "sterisk platform, in
general.
We ended up haing about 03$ respondents. )hey are of course, a self-selected sample, so they might not
represent the general population. 4egardless, the trends we see in the data are unmistakable.
The frst trend is that about one-third of our respondents run call-centers with more than 0$$ seats. )his
means "sterisk is working well in demanding enironments with a consistently high leel of channel
occupation. )hese enironments were once the reign of brand-name, traditional telephony suppliers. We
found that "sterisk-based solutions compete at this scale.
The second trend is that most enironments use either custom "sterisk or the 5ree617 892. 2n regards
to the type of con!guration used for call-center scenarios, we see the arena more or less eenly split
between systems running a custom "sterisk dial-plan and systems running the 5ree617 892. :ther 892s
represent about 3; of installed systems. 892s are dominant for smaller systems, but are also signi!cantly
present on large systems as well.
The third trend is that "sterisk users are e+tremely happy with their 617.
:er <$; of the respondents graded their system with a satisfaction mark of < =or more> out of 0$.
)hough the data shows self-selection at work, the results are still impressie. When asked about what
they would do ne+t, none of our respondents were considering upgrading to an on-premise solution that
was not "sterisk-based. :nly a small minority indicated they were looking for ?cloud? solutions. )his is
likely because hosted solutions add a new set of risks that hae to be managed. "dditionally, our surey
took place in the midst of global headlines describing how widespread 2nternet sureillance appears to be,
and this may hae impacted the results.
)hese three trends show that call-center businesses who decided to inest in "sterisk are reaping the
bene!ts of its mature and @e+ible technology. )hat, coupled with the -ueue.etrics Suite, can build
highly-eAcient and complete call-centers that strongly improe the company business.
)he full report is aailable free of charge at httpBCC,ueuemetrics.comCcallcenter-surey.Dsp
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