Billy Chia, marketing lead for Respoke and Asterisk guru speaks about the future of Asterisk call-center industry.

Billy Chia is the marketing lead for Respoke, a web communications platform that makes it easy for web and mobile developers to add live video, voice, messaging and data features to any website or app. Respoke is a service of Digium, Inc. To see more from Billy you can follow him on Twitter.

Q: Could you summarize for our readers your company profile, your target customer and reference market?
Digium is the founding company and primary sponsor of the Asterisk open source project. Digium provides many products and services built from Asterisk, and designed to work together with Asterisk, including IP Phones, Telephony Cards and the Switchvox Cloud hosted Unified Communication solution. I lead the marketing efforts for Respoke, a new service offering from Digium. Respoke provides a cloud platform and set of developer tools designed specifically for web and mobile developers to allow them to easily add communications features to any website or app. (More info at www.respoke.io)

Q: Mr. Chia, what's your view on the Asterisk call-center industry future in the next two years?
Asterisk is a technology that has fueled growth world-wide in the call-center industry. It is used by companies of all sizes from the largest Fortune 500 companies, to SMBs and startups, to create powerful, flexible, and cost-efficient solutions. The flexible customizability of Asterisk has become a key differentiator allowing companies to target niche applications gaining an advantage over their competition. The cost savings involved in using an Asterisk-based solution versus traditional, proprietary software make it particularly attractive. Together, Asterisk and the call-center is a winning combination sure to see greater adoption over the next two years.

Q: What kind of benefits do you experience with the QueueMetrics and Asterisk integration?
Although I do not work with QueueMetrics directly, I have been a part of the Asterisk community for many years. In that time I have had the opportunity to speak one-on-one with hundreds of Asterisk integrators. It is clear that QueueMetrics has a reputation for excellence in the Asterisk community.

Q: What are the key factors which make a successful Asterisk based call-centre?
Targeting the features that provide customer value is the key factor in call-center success. There is no one-size-fits all when it comes to doing customer service. A call-center is one of the most important components of a business because of the direct contact with customers. Because each industry and market is unique, success in the call-center relies upon targeting features that are specific to your market. Using a solution flexible enough to meet your needs is paramount.

Q: What are your thoughts about present and future strategic role of Asterisk call-center analysis softwares in our market?
With the recent release of Asterisk 13, data is being made more accessible than ever before from the core engine to Asterisk applications developers via API. The future of analytics software will take advantage of these new interfaces to provide metrics and insight into customer behavior.