SoftBCom CEO Vladimir K. Dudchenko speaks about the Russian call-center market present and future

Vladimir K. Dudchenko founded SoftBCom in 2003 and remains a partner and the company’s permanent CEO.
He boasts 40 years working on IT projects, 20 of which were spent in the Russian and Soviet aerospace industry.
SoftBCom has expertise in various areas - mainly on IT infrastructure, applications performance management, security and communications.
Among its customers industrial and financial leaders, as well as mid-size and small companies.
More information at corporate websites: softbcom.ru and softbcom.com


Vladimir K. Dudchenko (right) and Vladimir V.Dudchenko – SoftBCom co-founders.

Could you please summarize for our readers the role of your company in the Russian call-center market in the last year?



Call center is a very broad concept, so call center market is also a very broad category.
It looks like a pyramid, with corporate-strength solutions at the top. These are used in huge call centers of major banks, telecom operators, etc.
At the bottom, there is a market generated by small businesses, which would only use free software, and use local labor force to tune it (zero spent on licenses, 0-100 EUR on labor per installation). Between these two there is a slice of small-to medium aspiring businesses, who pay a lot of attention to quality of client servicing and who have ambitions to grow.
In between these two extremities, there is the sector where we operate.
This sector is not so big in commercial sense, but is very important in the current economical conditions. It includes specific businesses, which have restricted resources, but try to develop and use their customer relations as the most important asset (and in many cases, they really succeed in that). This sector is growing, and it is the future, like early mammals during the late dinosaur era. We cater to the needs of such clients and we strongly believe that their market share can only grow.
Our own ambition is to be the best provider of services/solutions for this sector. Our analysis of call center management instruments shows that QueueMetrics by Loway is the most effective tool in the mentioned market sector, and we believe that our company has the deepest expertise in Russia in implementing this instrument and using it for resolving specific problems faced by our clients.
And this pays off. Say, in the last year we’ve had a rather large and complicated project (among others), in which we have helped our client to solve management tasks for a 200 seats call center.
This was practically fully done with the help of QueueMetrics. Loway has provided a very effective support for that, and we appreciate this help very much.

Could you give me an example of how you have dealt with a customer’s issue using QueueMetrics?

I will mention examples of the last few months.
Example 1. Building a customized report on calls transferred from a queue to separate agents.
Example 2. Building a customized report on calls served in chains of queues (multi-stint mode).
Example 3. Integrating the agent’s panel with an application that has several useful functions.
1) It shows to the agent the id of the advertisement that is associated with the number dialed by the calling client.
2) It bounds the client’s number to one of possible company’s divisions, so that the next call from this client would be treated in the “smart transfer” mode.
3) The agent can input the call result and leave a comment.
All these data will be reflected in a standard QueueMetrics report.

What’s your view on the Asterisk call-center industry future in your country?



Asterisk-based call centers are the best way to build effective customer relations in small- and mid-range companies.
No big resources are needed; the range of functions is quite wide. I believe that in addition to “pure” Asterisk companies planning to combine call center functions with building reliable telephony may try mobidick solution by pascom. It is an Asterisk-based solution of industrial functionality that also may be combined with QueueMetrics.
In reality the range of Asterisk-based solutions which may be used together with QueueMetrics is rather wide. Besides that, we launch our own integrated Asterisk-based solution (starting in the nearest couple of months).
It uses QueueMetrics and is compatible with “pure” Asterisk, as well as with mobidick.
There is a big buzz in the market concerning digital channels, their importance and their growing role. Still all the latest researches show that voice communications hold the leading positions, and there are no signs that this situation will change anytime soon. On the other side, Asterisk-based call centers could well be run in multi-channel mode.
Collecting information over various channels and creating corresponding reports by QueueMetrics is quite possible. QueueMetrics also has a number of features allowing integration of digital channels, both operationally and in analytically.
We believe that small and mid-range companies are the core of the future economic development, when it happens. And Asterisk-based solutions are exactly the tool that will allow such companies win the competition.