Hi all, I've been lurking here and reading the Wiki for a month or so now, getting information on the suitability of Asterisk for my installation.
I'm responsible for the technical stuff at a mostly-inbound call centre in Melbourne, Australia. Due to our rapid expansion, it's getting close to the time to put our old beloved Fujitsu 9600 PABX out to pasture. I'm evaluating different options, both hardware-based and Asterisk, to go forward. Right now, we've got a single ISDN line, with a 100-number block attached to it, and 30 incoming lines. There is also a small handful of PSTN lines that we need to maintain for historical purposes. Our phones are all Fujitsu AT-class models - about 30 of them. I'd like to hang on to them if I can, but it's looking less and less likely, unless I keep the Fujitsu PABX and run Asterisk in parallel somehow. We've also got a dozen or so plain analogue lines, used for fax machines, fax modems (Hylafax!), answering machines (real ones!) and other assorted weird stuff. Personally, I like Asterisk, and I'd like to be able to recommend it to the Directors as The Way To Go. I like the flexibility, the programmability, the database friendliness, and the openness of the code and architecture. Terminating calls through VoIP isn't that important to us right now, but it's a great enabling technology, and I'm looking forward to implementing it later on. Essentially though, right now we're looking to use Asterisk as a pretty much ordinary PABX: voicemail, call queues, call parking, music on hold, etc etc. Nothing particularly envelope-pushing. If I can avoid using IP or SIP phones right off the bat, so much the better. This is *the* most important thing to our business. Changing anything about how our phones work makes me very nervous (and the Directors even more so). So in order to convince myself, and the Directors too, I need some testimonials from people using Asterisk in a call centre environment. There must be some people out there doing it. How did you pull it off? What equipment are you using? What do I need to watch out for along the way? How's it working out for you now? I'd like to be able to go to the Directors with as much backup as possible. "Here are a bunch of similar setups, all working great and saving money". Thanks very much, in advance. ....jurgen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] is jurgen's gmail address. Check out http://jurgen.ca/ for more yummy goodness. _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
