ISDN is an acronym of Integrated Services Digital Network, which can be defined as a series of communication standards that allows the simultaneous digital transmission of data, voice, and other services over the public switched telephone network. The introduction of ISDN technology represented a move from analogue connectivity to digital, which offered significant improvements in quality. Although SIP (session initiation protocol) has been around for several years, it is only recently that advances in technology that have now made SIP an viable alternative to ISDN. The purpose of this article is to explore whether a business should replace ISDN with SIP. Read more
A SIP trunk is the use of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) to set up communications over the Internet between a customer location and an Internet telephony service provider (ITSP), which transfers the SIP calls to the PSTN. Unlike in traditional telephony, where bundles of physical wires were once delivered from the service provider to a business, a SIP trunk is a logical connection from one point to another over the Internet. Read more
Technology terms and definitions can be notoriously confusing, convoluted, and difficult to truly understand for the average person. This is definitely true for the term unified communications. Search the internet for the term unified communications, and you will discover that there are many different definitions that are radically different. Unified communications is a term that is difficult to define, but in practice in encompasses the principle of bringing different technologies together on one device or system. Read more
CDR or 'Call Detail Records' are historic call statistics that can be retrieved on a regular basis to assist in analysing the efficiency of a call centre and its campaigns. The information that can be obtained from CDRs has the potential to be a key factor in making call centre agents more adept at handling calls. Subsequently this can only improve the productivity of a call centre overall. Read more
SIP is an acronym for Session Initiation Protocol. SIP can be described as a signalling protocol that is used for controlling communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP). Examples of the types of communications sessions controlled by SIP include voice and video calls, instant messaging, and online games. The SIP protocol can be used for creating, terminating, and modifying sessions that can consist of several media streams. Read more
An IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Menu is an inbound call management feature that allows an organisation to automatically filter their inbound calls to the call centre agents that are best equipped to deal with a specific customer query. This is achieved by playing an announcement message to the caller, which provides them with a number of options, and also instructions on how to choose a specific option. For example: Read more
The operational costs of a modern day call centre are significant, which means that the serious impact of any interruption of the day to day running of a call centre cannot be overstated. There are no interruptions that are more significant to any call centre than telecommunications problems, or a telecommunications outage. In short, if your agents can't make calls, they can't make sales, which will cause your organisation to hemorrhage money for the duration of the problem. Due to the significant impact that telecommunications issues can have, it is always important to question how resilient your telecommunications network is. Below are just some of the things you need to consider. Read more
Call recording is a call management feature that allows both inbound and outbound telephone calls to be recorded, and stored on a server for retrieval at a later date. Call recording is of critical importance to all call centres as it represents the only real way of confirming what was said or agreed, and by whom during a telephone call. Furthermore, it is an essential for every contact centre to record calls as it is the only real way of monitoring and correcting the performance of call centre agents. In some business sectors, it is a legal or industry requirement that all calls are recorded. For the reasons outlined above, it is difficult to imagine a situation where a call centre wouldn't record their calls - the only real question is whether to use a premise or hosted solution. Read more
IP telephony (Internet Protocol telephony) uses the internet to deliver calls as packets of data on shared lines. Also know as VOIP it is the real-time transmission of voice signals over the internet or private data network. Read more
Outbound contact centres rely heavily on dialler technology to significantly increase their operational efficiency, and the most commonly used dialler in modern call centres is the Predictive Dialler. Read more
