Partnering for customer success
Recently, for a call center in Chennai, we rolled out an interesting combination of technologies for what we’re calling the “Impel Call Center Edition”. We integrated Impel with Asterisk, an open-source IP PBX, and Vicidial, an open-source Predictive Dialer. With this combination, a whole lot of possibilities open up for our customers, both in marketing and in customer support.
Let me describe one example. A global consumer brand uses Impel for national marketing campaigns where, beginning with outbound SMS to prospects, the brand gets SMS responses, calls back respondents, sets up dealer appointments and then gets dealers to report an actual sale – all through Impel. With Impel CCE, the brand can more than double call-volume without adding agents. Moreover, they get all the benefits of call-center management with Asterisk+Vicidial, while being able to look at prospects and customers across interactions, with Impel.
In another case (at the Chennai call center), customer service agents connect with customers for a large insurance provider using Impel CCE. Here, the focus is not (yet) on being able to look at customer interactions over time. It is very clearly on high call-volume and traceability, both of which become immediately available with our new roll-out. And, since the insurance process involves so much of data (nearly 200 columns per customer, over 50,000 customers a month!), you need the heavy lifting that Impel can do.
From our perspective, what’s interesting is the manner in which we deployed this solution. We know our own strengths – and weaknesses. While we can build the best web solutions out there, we know next to nothing about VOIP and related technologies. So, instead of trying to build those skills in-house, we worked with a company that focuses on Asterisk-based solutions. We made the enhancements on the Impel side while they did all the work on the PBX and hardware side. That really worked out – we rolled out the first phase of the solution within three weeks of the customer writing the PO. And we were live and being used by thirty agents within hours of roll-out. Our customer tells us they doubled their call-volume the day after we rolled out Impel CCE – now that’s an achievement both vendor-companies can be proud of!
Technically, too, this roll-out breaks the stereotypical SaaS CRM model. Here we have Impel being accessed across the web, but it works behind the scenes with a server that’s sitting in the customer’s premises. And that in turn throws calls to specific agents’ desktops, for both outbound and inbound calls. On the Impel side, a call may need to be initiated due to an incoming SMS, a new campaign being uploaded, whatever – the users don’t see that complexity at all. So the solution now spans at least three physically-separate networks – the mobile network for SMS, the “cloud” for Impel and our customer’s internal network for the VOIP and call-routing. While all this is quite innovative (even if I say so myself!), it is actually just a good use of off-the-shelf technologies. And that’s what fascinates me – the fact that so much can be done with so little. And for so little! No wonder I’m a fan of open source!
Do you have a CRM-related challenge you want to find an innovative solution to? Come talk to us!
