ASTERISK Based Open Source IP-PBX System for Accountable Customer Support Service

Customer support service has now become an integral part of every large enterprise since customer satisfaction is largely determined by the quality of service he/she receives after purchase of a product/service. Traditionally legacy phone based PBX systems are deployed to provide customer support service where operators are appointed to receive calls and respond to customers' queries or complaints. Unfortunately such a system severely lacks accountability from the support service personnel. There are often cases such as operator is not in his desk while the phone is ringing or may deliberately leave the phone unattended, misbehaving with customers, not registering complaints and doing the necessary follow-ups etc. There is very little system support for the management to monitor and track such inappropriate conducts from the support service employees. However all these desirable features can be achievable if the legacy PBX system is replaced by an IP-PBX system. In this paper, we propose a solution for accountable customer support service using Asterisk based open source IP-PBX system. Being open source, Asterisk given the flexibility to create rich features set for customer support service at a very low cost.