Noobie -- Needs help with 30 seat call center

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

I’m a noobie, with an unusual problem.

I need 100’s of local DIDs in the USA routed to my call center in the USA, which has 10 operators. We have to answer as “Hi this XYZ Corp, how can we help you?” Our clients want us to basically be their off-hours receptionist. The calls aren’t very frequent, that’s why we can cover so many lines with so few operators.

I’d like to be able to scale this to 1000’s of DIDs, a hundreds of operators.

I don’t want to have 100 phones to answer!! This all has to route to the 10 inbound lines. I need a IVR or voice messaging system that’s smart enough to answer “This is XYZ Corp, please leave a message” if my operators are swamped. Call queuing. And I’d even like to route calls by operator skill set.

So far the best that I’ve been able to find off-the-shelf is ‘ifbyphone.com’ they can do the call routing, queing, voicemail, virtual receptionist, and many other features, and connect those DIDs to my operators, even routing by skill set, so that
we get the operator most familiar with XYZ corps business to handle the call. Plus they have an API that will send an HTTP request to my server and allow me to give a customized message to the operator, telling them about the caller (if we have any prior records) They have another HTTP interface for click-to-dial.

But they don’t do VOIP – they just terminate the inbound calls to a POTS endpoint. Which I can get from my local ISP or phone company.

This all costs $0.08 per minute, not counting the POTS endpoints. DIDs cost $5 setup, $3/month. The routing, queuing, and other features are “free” and nice, but $0.08 per minute adds up FAST. And my POTS provider is going to charge me TOO!!

QUESTION 1.

Can I do better with Asterisk? I’ve read that VOIP.ms and Telasip.com (Voip Xpress) offer VOIP calls for about $0.01 per inbound minute, and possibly even free inbound per minute, if I pay per port ($30 each / month)

But, How much would it cost to set up an Asterisk server for up to 30 seats?
How low can I get those per-minute inbound call rates and still get acceptable call quality?
How long will it take to get this operational?
Can I get those fancy features?

QUESTION 2.

Can anybody help me do this? or can I hire you to build a turn-key solution? I’m in Lakeland FL.
How much would a 30 seat turnkey system cost?

2

Hi. I’m the VP of Sales and Services at Ifbyphone and I just wanted to offer a couple of additional data points. Ifbyphone offers 2 types of services: pre-built applications (that you refer to in your post) and asterisk hosting. So if you choose to develop this in Asterisk we can still host it for you and you can avoid building out a complete telco environment. In this hosted environment you can also terminate to SIP, so that would save you some costs. Also just so you know our per minute rate is 3.5 cents to 7.9 cents depending on your volume (there is also a 1/2 cent surcharge for inbound calls to toll free numbers).

Our local phone numbers are $2.95 to acquire and $1.95 monthly but we do offer substantial volume discounts. So if you are talking about hundreds or thousands of numbers we can work with you.

Bottom line - if you are already talking to someone at Ifbyphone, give them a call back and we’ll get a sales engineer on the phone with you to talk through the options and help you figure out which is the better fit - using the pre-built applications or building it yourself. If not just give us a call at 877.295.5100.

Cindy

P.S.

3

Thanks – I’ll definitely keep in touch with you.

I have to keep my costs low. I’ve done a business model spreadsheet on this whole operation, and there isn’t any room for high per-minute rates.

Mark