JoelC707Premium
join:2002-07-09
Stone Mountain, GA
kudos:4 | reply to mazilo
Re: Suggestions for predictive dialing software You are right, to a degree. It is telemarketing but it is for one of our clients that wants to do a phone survey of their customers. The contact list will be relatively small compared to most telemarketing installs but your number could be on the list since our client is Georgia based. And since this entire project will be for calling people who have a prior relationship with our client, the Do Not Call list doesn't apply. That said if this works (this is just a test for us to see if we want to get into this for other clients) we may end up with a broader call base and the DNC may come into play there so being able to scrub numbers based on the DNC list would be a beneficial part of the program.
As to Asterisk, I've had a LOT (and I mean a lot) of people try and talk me out of using it. They all claim it is difficult to setup and some even went as far as to say "you wouldn't be talking to me if I were managing an Asterisk server because I would be stuck in the server room all day". Now granted I've never used the CLI version of it but the GUI version (Trixbox) doesn't seem that complicated and seems like something I could handle. I do know Trixbox lets you manually edit any file but you have to be careful what you edit and how because it could get overwritten by Trixbox. We were going to go for a Call Manager Express setup on a Cisco 2821 router but we needed to scale it back a bit and Asterisk made the most sense considering I already had a spare server to stick it on (we still need to get the 2821 router at some point but it's not as important now). |
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maziloFrom MaziloPremium
join:2002-05-30
Lilburn, GA
kudos:1 | said by JoelC707:The contact list will be relatively small compared to most telemarketing installs but your number could be on the list since our client is Georgia based. That will be cool.
As to Asterisk, I've had a LOT (and I mean a lot) of people try and talk me out of using it. Perhaps, it is time to listen to them, especially if they are experts and can easily be at your disposals in the process of trying to learn asterisk. You will also learn whom your employees really are competent in this matter.
Now granted I've never used the CLI version of it but the GUI version (Trixbox) doesn't seem that complicated and seems like something I could handle. TrixBOX is great and I used it before; however, like an MS Windows, this GUI thing is really not a good idea to learn something for good. It conceals everything from anyone who is trying to learn.
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Mazilo
US Phone: +1-678-601-0907
UK Phone: +44-703-194-2574 |
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JoelC707Premium
join:2002-07-09
Stone Mountain, GA
kudos:4 | My thoughts on using Asterisk have been bouncing back and forth. On one hand I'd rather use something that I can get support on if I need it. While there is plenty community based support out there and I can now buy support from Fonality if I need it, it's not what I would call enterprise grade support. Cisco while being more expensive has the enterprise backing, granted I don't know Cisco that well either but I am leaning and I know my way around IOS already so I've essentially got a leg up on that one. Asterisk is cheaper though (basically free except for the hardware, which I already had) so it won out with my boss.
The people trying to talk me out of Asterisk were other IT people, not employees. The employees here with the exception of the two owners (one is a computer guru and my boss, the other spent 20 years as a Bellsouth manager) know nothing about phone systems. I understand what you're saying about not really learning via the GUI but it's what I've got to work with and I don't see it changing anytime soon unfortunately. |
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