Phone systems, what do people like?

[iaind]

Were relocating our head office to much larger premises, our existing Avaya IP500 probably won't cut it for what we need!

I'm looking to put together a contact centre with 40+ agents and up to 60 normal office users. They're wanting reporting, call recording and wallboards. SMS and email integration would be nice. As far as im concerned a desktop app for the agents and CTI/screen pop ability is a must. They're also talking about handling automatic outbound calls

So what do people like, what neat new features are around at the moment? I've been out the loop for a bit, last time I put a new system in was about 5 years ago.

Not too bothered about reusing the existing handsets as I can use the system at another site. Anyone used the higher end avaya stuff? I quite like the IP Office for small deployments.

I've used Alcatel before which I liked and have a demo of the current kit in the new year. I also want to look at cisco.

I know a lot of it is personal taste, so what do people like?

 

[iaind]

Cool I'll check it out, means we can reuse the existing phones I guess.

I thought the first suggestion around here was going to be asterisk, which i was ready to rubbish and dismiss. But looking at switchvox...., looks awesome!

 

[iaind]

Whats the avaya kit like for cost? The IP office is really cheap for what it is...

 

[iaind]

Had good experiences and reliability NEC-Philips Neax IPS (medium sized enterprise) or Univerge (Total Scalability/Resilience) system with Zeacom CTI are probably worth a look.

http://www.nec-philips.co.uk/
http://www.zeacom.com/

Not sure they still make the Neax though... it's been a while

Will have a look, I used zeacom in my last place, albeit with a cisco PBX - it's exactly what I want, although not sure what cost is like.

Keep the IP500, it can handle everything you want to do upto 384 users.

For the call reporting you can use CCR and/or Oak Report 09 - CCR for the agents and then oak for all other users.

For call recording you would want Voicemail Pro with Contact centre.

For CTI/Screen popping you could use One-X (this is the replacement for phone manager).

For the automatic outbound calling I would recommend something like NMS-Adaptive - currently only tested this in a 6 user call centre, but it works very well.

NMS also do an SMS service - although never used it so cannot actually comment on it.

What do you mean by email integration?

The IP500 is great, but not for this purpose. Weak features, no redundancy (unless you buy another and then it's pretty poor redundancy), CCR is a bag of crap and were having to put a new system in anyway as they are moving individual departments.

By email integration, I'm thinking of what zeacom would call multimedia queuing.