A call center is a centralized department that handles inbound and outbound calls from customers and organizations. Call center are located either within an organization or outsourced to another company that are professionals for handling calls.

Types of Call Centers:

There are three most common types of call centers are inbound, outbound, and blended call centers.

Inbound Call centers:

These call centers handle huge volume of calls and then screen forward and logs the calls. An interactive voice response system can answer the call and use ASR technology to address the customers queries with automated message or transfer call to live agent for further information.

Outbound Call Centers:

In these call centers an agent makes call on behalf of client for tasks including provide information, lead generation, telemarketing, customer satisfaction or scheduling.

Blended Call Centers:

Blended Call Centers handles both inbound and outbound calls.

Setting up call center not be an easy task, especially when it come to choosing right open source software and hardware. In this article we will discuss about the open source software, advantages of open source software and popular open source software for call centers. We will discuss about the call center infrastructure.

2) What are Open source software:

Open source software is a code that is designed to be accessi9ble for public. Anyone can see, modify and distribute the code as they can. Open source is developed in decentralized and collaborative way relying on community review and production. Open source softwares are cheaper more flexible and more long than other softwraes because they are open source and developed by the community rather than single person or company.

Examples of Open Source Softwares:

• Linux

• Sugar CRM

• Libra office

• Mozilla Firefox

• Apache web server.

3) Advantage of Open source software:

There are lots of advantages that attract customer organizations to choose the open source softwares.

Transparency:

Open source allows you to exactly know that what kinds of data are moving where or what kinds of changes have happened in code. Open source allow customers to check and track for your self and data without having any rely on third party.

Reliability:

other software codes relies on the single author or company that controling that code to keep updated and working. Open source code outlives its original authors because it is updated through active open source community.

Flexibility:

Because of its emphasis on modifications you can use open source code to address problems that are unique to your bussniess community. You can rely on community to help and peer review and help managing .

Lower cost:

with open source itself it is free what you can pay for when you use a company like Red Hat is support, security hardening and help managing.

Open collaboration:

The existence of active open source communities means that you can find help, resources, and perspectives that reach beyond one interest group or one company.

Scalable:

open source Softwares can be easily scaled up ow down to accommodate cahnges in call volumes.

Support:

There is a large community of developers and users who support open source software, providing a wealth of resources for troubleshooting and problem-solving.

4) Open Source Softwares for Call Center:

There are many open source softwares for set up call centers. Most common open sources softwares for call centers are:

• Asterisk

• Free-switch

• ICT CORE

• ICTBroadcast

• Vicidial

1) Asterisk:

Asterisk is open source software program that is published by Digium that can be used to run as a server for a VoIP service. Asterisk also be used to develop communication softwares and applications. Users have full access to Asterisk’s source code. With this open code users can develop their own services and features based on asterisk capabilities and components.

Asterisk gateway:

Gateway are often required when you are using a SIP trunk service to enable a traditional hardware PBX and analog office phone system to work with VOIP.

IVR, or Interactive Voice Response, means that a customer calling your company phone can operate through the menu by using voice commands. This can greatly improve your company’s customer experience. You can build an IVR program with Asterisk so that your office phone menu will be arranged in the way that you think is best.

For more Detail :https://www.voipreview.org/blog/what-is-asterisk

2) Free switch:

Free-Switch is free and open source server software for real time communications applications such as WebRTC, video, and voice over internet protocol(VOIP). It run on Linux, windows, macOS and Free Bsd. Free-switch is used to build private branch exchange PBX telecommunications systems, IVR services, and so on. It has support for encryption, ZRTP and SIP. It is implemented as core library, which can be embedded into other projects.

For more Detail :https://info.teledynamics.com/blog/all-about-freeswitch

3) ICTCORE:

ICTCore is a freeswitch based communications framework for developers to develop new applications and use rest apis to integrate their applications to empower their applications with unified communications.

Rest APIs can be used to develop new  unified communications applications as well as call center applications too .Both inbound as well as outbound call centers can be developed over ICTCore communications framework and other communications technologies can be integrated with it.

For more detail: https://ictcore.org/ 

4) ICTBroadcast:

ICTBroadcast is open source asterisk based software solution for call centers, telemarketing and service providers. ICTBroadcast is a unified communications auto dialer software and call center software, it features Voice, SMS, Fax  and Email communications. It is an all one software solution based on open-source asterisk communications switch. ICTBroadcast features multiple dialing modes such as progressive dialing, predictive dialing, power dialing, preview dialing as well as manual dialing through WebRTC web phones. ICTBroadcast is also a complete inbound & outbound call center software solution features a variety of campaigns.

For more details: https://www.ictbroadcast.com/ 

4) Open sources software for Call Center:

Vicidial is an open-source web-based call center software that can be used to manage and track inbound and outbound telephones calls. It is designed for small to medium sized businesses and can be used for telemarketing, customer services and other types of phone based operations. Some of features of vicidial include automatic call distribution, call recording and real time call monitoring and reporting. It also support multiple languages and can be integrated with third party softwares such as CRM software systems. The software is built on the Asterisk PBX system, which is also open-source, and can be customized to suit the specific needs of an organization.

5) Call center Infrastructure:

The most critical asset of a call center after human resources is its infrastructure.

The infrastructure should allow an outsourcing vendor to maintain multiple applications and systems for multiple clients and should enable rapid deployment and integration. Hence it becomes necessary for an outsourcing vendor to select the right infrastructure and architecture.

Infrastructure requirements of a typical customer service center include the following:

1. Telecommunication network

2. Hardware

3. Software

1) Telecommunication network:

Telecommunication network connect a caller with the live agent. The basic element of a telecommunication network include public switched telephone network(PSTN), router, long distance carrier, Ethernet Switch and contact center server. Companies have recently started using the voice over internet protocol (VOIP) technology, which is used to transmit voice, fax and data to another location through IP network.

2) Hardware:

Customer service center should have state of the art hardware components such as local area network LAN, desktop for agents, automatic call distributor, predictive dialer, CTI, web integration, interactive voice response and voice logging and messaging.

3) Software:

Software is important as telecommunication network and hardware in a call center. Customer relationship Management (CRM) software are available that enable an agent to gather information about customer. CRM software also allow segregation of customers into different types and determining the value of each type.

6) Setting up and Configuring the Software:

There are various steps for setting up and configuring the software and setup of call center. It depend upon the functionality and software and hardware that we will use.

Steps:

1. Install the Software: Download and install the software that you will choose to used also install the Ozeki phone system software on the open source operating system such as Linux that will act as the server for the call center.

2. Configure hardware: Connect the necessary hardware such as voice modem PBX or IP-based telephony card to computer.

3. Create new Extension: In the Ozeki phone system software create a new extension for each agent that will working in call center.

4. Setup call routing: configure the call routing setting to direct incoming calls to appropriate extensions. This can be done using variety of method such as ring groups or IVR menus.

5. Configure call queues: Set up call queues to hold incoming call when agent all agents are busy. This allows call to be answered in the order they were received.

6. Enable call recording: Setup the call recording feature if desired to record calls for quality assurance or training purposes.

7. Test system: test the call center system by taking test calls and checking that the call are being routes and handled correctly.

8. Train agent: Train the agents on how to use the software and the call center systems so they can effectively handles calls and use the features provides.

9. Monitor and Maintain the System: Monitor and maintain the system regularly to ensure it is running smoothly and make any necessary adjustments or updates.

3) Conclusion:

Setting Up a call center using free and open source software such as Ozeki phone system, Asterisk, free-switch, open VBX and so on can not be easy and can be cost effective solution for small to medium businesses. The process include installing the software, configuring the hardware, configure trunks,setting up call routing and testing the system.

However, it's important to note that while free and open-source software can be a great option, it may not have the same level of support and features as paid software. It's important to do your research and compare different options to find the best fit for your organization's needs.