My views are: You can't just have a call outbound facility if you want to offer a Service Desk. It has to be both ways even if the inbound call goes to voicemail advising the user that a technician will call them back.
Next, whatever is done has to be seen by the person needing support as being professional. Does the Remote Access on the desktop menus do what it says enabling the support person to access the users PC directly assuming of course it's connected to the Internet? What type of support will be offered? Technical, training, advisory / sales? What happens if all the support staff aren't available for a period of time through sickness / holiday / normal work? Where will the support people go if they don't know the answer I would suggest that you think about your own dealings with Call Centres - everyone has had an interesting experience with off shore centres - the technician may know their stuff but trying to communicate it in a language that is understood - look at Caroline and her Wi-fi for instance. In addition wouldn't you have to offer an IRC / IM support service too? The idea for a VoIP server seems quite good on the surface, as the CallWeaver project would probably fall into this category, but how you managed the ACD is another item - ACD=Automated Call distribution Personally, I don't feel comfortable with the current support for VoIP services to be able to manage any significant call volumes. In addition you have to contend with Internet contention ratios which can on occasion make VoIP calls sound like Mickey Mouse due to the compression or drop the call entirely. I don't think we need the facility to record calls, as there wouldn't be a financial or legal implication, nor would there be a manager wanting to coach us on how we handle those calls! Sorry for being somewhat dis-jointed in this but these are as they came out so to speak. I've had the requirement to set up things like this before, using traditional telephony, and although it can be quite effective, the enthusiasm is high at the start, with lots of people to help you, but six months down the line, when it's only just a couple of you doing this it gets to be no fun at all. But if we could join up with the Ohio mob to offer UK / US support using VoIP that'd be cool! Yeah I know that goes against what I just said but it is an almost free society after all!! E -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Dave Walker Sent: 06 June 2007 13:15 To: British Ubuntu Talk Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Face to Face support on the Ohio On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 09:19 +0100, Chris Rowson wrote: > > Yes I guess what we could really do with is some sort of webpage which > > would allow us to track support issues and to see which have been > > resolved . If only there was some widely used Voice over IP software > > which enables us to make calls which could be recorded and which could > > be provided on spec [1] > > > > Services like sipgate allow a voice message to be left when the > 'phone' isn't answered. Sipgate can then email the voice message in a > .wav format to any email address you specify. > > Chris > If were looking at doing it this way, then why not host our own Asterisk server. We could then have a 'Ring Group' that volunteers could sign-in/out of 'include me' status. The 'ring group', could work by 'call all users registered', round robin or remembers who last answered the call and pushes to next on the list. If nobody is online / or answers, then the call is passed to voicemail that could either be emailed to a select group - or uploaded to a 'tracking system' online. A support volunteer could sign in either via VOIP (ekiga, SIP phone etc) or could call somebodies normal telephone number. Outbound trunks are very reasonably priced. Kind Regards, Dave Walker -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
