We have been working with a client on a Hosted restaurant booking solution, providing the CTI and call tracking systems. This was complicated by the simple fact that the booking system was a closed system by another supplier.
The system works by the restaurant diverting their line to a DDI number we provide that sends the call to the system with the destination matching a defined number for that restaurant when the call enters the system the relevant settings are looked up in a database and audio message file, IVR options and CallerID name are set and the call is passed to the IVR. The caller then chooses their preferred option, The call can be depending of the time of day be passed to the call centre for a booking to be taken on the restaurants behalf or the call is passed to the restaurant where in many a Hosted Gigaset Dect handset is provided for them to take the booking or call the call centre for free.
The system has changed and evolved over time and by using Asterisk has meant that we can accommodate most requests for changes, Most recently we updated the statistics package to Asternic Pro
Statistics. This has allowed much more detailed reports to be created for queues and agents.
The calls are delivered to the platform over a EFM circuit from Gradwell.net providing quality and reliability combined with increased capacity over the original ISDN30 circuit.
For disaster recovery we provide a backup system in a data-centre that is kept in sync with the office system so in the case of power outage or system failure calls can be diverted to this system and calls take on mobile phones. Switching to back-up system is completed by the single click of a button on a web-page that instigates the diversion of the lines and starts the backup system automatically.
Currently we are migrating the database services off to a separate VMware server with 3 VMs, one for each of the core web or mysql servers. This will allow the service to scale as there are now over 1 million records per datatbase and it is showing no sign of slowing.