SoftPhones Recommandation

I’m looking for the best softphone software that I could use in a business environnement. It will be used in a Call Center. I’m not necesserly looking for a free solution.

I would like to receive some comments and suggestions.

Thx in Adv

We’ve had fairly good luck with Counterpath’s (formerly XTen) Eyebeam softphone. It’s not free, but it was the easiest to set up, use, and troubleshoot of the 50-odd phones that I have looked at.

There might be something fairly new out that I haven’t yet seen, but Eyebeam/XLite (xlite is the free version, somewhat crippled) has done very well for us.

FYI, we’re a 400 seat call center, and almost all of our agents are on softphones, where managers/executives are on Polycom 501’s.

can i ask what soundcards and headsets you’re fondest of ? are there any you would avoid ?

sure, we’re using VXI Passport 20-VU USB headsets. We had started with Plantronics DSP-400’s, and while they sound great, they break VERY easily. our failure rate was over 25% in 3 months (that’s over 100 headsets in three months) whereas the VXI failure rate is well below 5%, and most of those were from broken wiring when the agents slammed the cord in their desk or whatnot.

we had very bad luck using the onboard sound drivers and standard headsets, but that was with the old version of xlite. the new one might be much better, but i couldn’t tell you outside of a test lab setup.

the nice thing about the VXi’s is that they have a USB adapter and then the headset itself, which gives us a few advantages:

  1. we can use splitters to jack in a trainer or manager so they can hear the entire call while sitting next to the rep.
  2. user moves are easy - they unplug their headset and move to the new computer and plug back in without crawling under their desk.
  3. if we ever move to a desk phone (polycoms, probably) we can get a different adapter and continue to use the same headset.

are softphones the answer for a call center? i’d say yes, if your organization can support them. for us, their a godsend, as we have almost daily move or change requests - being able to remotely configure the computer AND phone (via VNC) makes life much easier for the IT department.

sorry to go off on a tangent, but i figure this might help.

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