call centre telephone system

[paulio]

Hi,

We require a telephone system for a 20 agent call centre. Initially most of the calls will be outgoing but later on we might bring in live calls.

There seems to be so many in the market, NEC, Cisco, LG, Avaya, Mitel...

Any suggestions on companies to use and telephone systems would be appreciated.

What should we be looking to spend to get a good system?

Cheers.

[paultnl]

We can give you everything you need with no capital outlay. Drop me a line and I will arrange a demonstration.

[GillespieBS]

I always talk to CCT http://www.cctonline.co.uk/ they are perfect for your requirements and have a few products that they specialise in (Avaya/Cisco partners). give them a call and like the previous poster says, you can do deals without a capital outlay by including a finance deal.

[cjd]

Pretty much any small business switch will do - outbound calling doesn't need much by way of intelligent call handling.

In fact you don't actually need a switch at all, just what are termed SIP trunks (please avoid ISDN circuits) and some telephones or softphones on PCs. It depends pretty much on what you need to achieve,

[paulio]

Thanks for the responses. There's already ISDN30 available. We'd need the usual call centre facilities such as ACD, host desking, call coaching, live stats/reports, music on-hold, wrap-up, call recording, etc.

Are the broadband/leased line base solutions any good for a call center, such as hosted pbx, voip?

Who would you guys recommend NEC, Mitel or Avaya?

[Weber]

Thanks for the responses. There's already ISDN30 available. We'd need the usual call centre facilities such as ACD, host desking, call coaching, live stats/reports, music on-hold, wrap-up, call recording, etc.

Are the broadband/leased line base solutions any good for a call center, such as hosted pbx, voip?

Who would you guys recommend NEC, Mitel or Avaya?

It sound like you want an all singing all dancing solution, one thing you should consider is future growth.

In terms of solutions, NEC, Mitel, Avaya, Cisco will do what you want, my personal fav is Avaya but with a mxiture of best of breed bolt on's for things like diallers and call recording.

This is going to be an expensive solution, call recording is not cheap, even the disks for saving the calls will cost a fair bit, plus how much resilience are you going to build into the solution.

I am a freelance project manager and have implemented many contact centre solutions for public and private sector clients and I'm currently implementing an Avaya solution for a 50 seat busy inbound contact centre.

Threre are a few options in terms of pricing, buy out right (large capital investment), leasing the equipment, or fully hosted solution.

Don't scrimp on quality of the implementation or solution as you will pay long term.

Feel free to fire any questions my way, happy to help.

[paultnl]

I forgot to mention, our solution is fully inclusive IVR,ACD, Call recording and real time monitoring. Minimum commitment is only 30 days so you can get your operation up and running before making any long term commitments. All you need is a phone line and a browser.
Give me a call and we can demonstrate the system to you.

Paul

[NWBUS]

If you are still looking for a new call centre phone system, we are a UK wide supplier of Mitel Phone Systems. Company - Denwa Communications

Our solutions speak for themselves, no sales talk, just solid and reliable call centre phone systems for small and medium sized businesses.

[Kozmos]

For VOIP you have the option of using Asterisk the free open source PBX aswell, you can make it do anything, but of course it will need configuring.

[NWBUS]

Buy a Mitel phone system, its commercially supported and warrantied and millions of pounds per year are invested in research and development. As the Fairy advert says "a few more pence makes a lot more sense..!"

[jamesb99_1999]

You want to go with a VOIP system for that size. I would suggest an Open Source system too like Asterisk (so you are not stuck to proprietary hardware which opens up the range and should reduce costs), we are a premier implementer of these and other phone systems in the UK and would be pleased to help with an idea of costs and timescales and kit if you give me a mail/phone I will give you the details. Voice recording/switchboard/reporting etc. comes as a software standard.
James
OCM Networks

[Mike Glorfindel]

It sound like you want an all singing all dancing solution, one thing you should consider is future growth.

In terms of solutions, NEC, Mitel, Avaya, Cisco will do what you want, my personal fav is Avaya but with a mxiture of best of breed bolt on's for things like diallers and call recording.

This is going to be an expensive solution, call recording is not cheap, even the disks for saving the calls will cost a fair bit, plus how much resilience are you going to build into the solution.

I am a freelance project manager and have implemented many contact centre solutions for public and private sector clients and I'm currently implementing an Avaya solution for a 50 seat busy inbound contact centre.

Threre are a few options in terms of pricing, buy out right (large capital investment), leasing the equipment, or fully hosted solution.

Don't scrimp on quality of the implementation or solution as you will pay long term.

Feel free to fire any questions my way, happy to help.

I have worked in a support role with an Avaya system over a WAN, encompassing Chicago, London, Geneva, Frankfurt, Sydney & Houston.

The system is all singing & all dancing & from an administration point of view it was easy to add new extensions & quite simple to troubleshoot.

Very scalable too so you will be able to add more extensions & you can choose from a number of monitoring & recording solutions.

[cjd]

The system is all singing & all dancing.....

You missed out .....hideously expensive ;-)

[Voicedatawales]

What type of calls will you be making? (landline, mobile or international)
I would certainly look in the short term at a hosted Voip solution as it will give you time to understand how your business will opperate.

We can offer a very competative package for you.:)

Thanks
Martyn

[sarah.m.dixon1]

A friend of mine manages a call centre and they just recently purchased a polycom soundstation 2 (http://topcomms.co.uk/conference-unit/polycom-soundstation2.htm) for conference calls from Topcomms.co.uk and because they found the product so good, they contacted the company about further call centre products such as Y-training cords, headsets with better sound, phones with interesting hold music etc.

She was really impressed about the service and the quality of the products. And even better, I got the free chocolate bar that she got with her purchase which sorted out my coffee break.:)

Best of luck with your search!

[nezzer66]

For a decent quote contact Paul at TNS Europe.

[leemason]

For VOIP you have the option of using Asterisk the free open source PBX aswell, you can make it do anything, but of course it will need configuring.

I have experience using Asterisk as well as other commercial telephone systems and contact centre software. Asterisk has capabilities that can wipe the floor with any of the others and much of it is free and Open Source. Also compared with configuring a lot of other systems it's actually surprisingly easy to setup with one of the management interfaces available (Trixbox is a good implementation which include web based management).

Many other systems start to get very expensive very quickly when you start to look at licensing costs for various "addons". Very often you have to license the number of RADs (Recorded Announcement Devices) needed to play messages, agent software is licensed per seat, supervisor software and configuration software is very often licensed per seat, etc.

With Asterisk/Trixbox no additional costs are involved for RADs, agents, agent software, etc. However some enhancements may be chargeable. I would suggest QueueMetrics which provides live monitoring and reporting of contact centre activity. This costs a few hundred pounds. A lot less than other systems. Asterisk also come with some license free on hold music (otherwise you need a PRS license).

PM me if you are interested. I could setup a demo system for you.

Also I would recommend getting professional announcements recorded. They give a much better impression to customers and staff alike. Have a look at www.advitel.com who provide an excellent and cost effective service.

[jossecarr]

Try the virtual PBX system of RingCentral. Call Controller opens your computer screen and identifies the incoming call through your Caller Display. You can then manage the call, depending on what you want to do. Route it to another phone, reject it, send the call to your voicemail, or send a text-to-speech reply.