Looking for callback functionality or way to improve speech to text

[larsg23]

Hello,

I have a callback dilemma and hope someone can give me some ideas.

At this moment we use an external contact center to transfer our calls to when all agents are busy or the waiting time exceeds 5 minutes. Because we are not satisfied with the external contact center i am looking for the best alternative.

The big advantage of the external contact center is that we know where our calls are about, because of that we can let the right agent call back instead of first having to ask why our customer called and then in some cases let another agent call back later.

1. My first guess was changing to the voicemail option and let the Google voice to text API transcribe the voicemails, this is a great option but most of our calls are in dutch and the Google speech to text is not the best to transcribe dutch numbers to text. If anyone knows options to improve this, then please let me know.
2. My second guess was to do the same but then with a different speech to text API. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an option to automatically download voicemails from 3CX or let 3CX send them as an attachment by e-mail, the only option i found was to login to 3CX and download the voicemails.
3. The third guess was using the 3CX builtin callback functionality, that gives two disadvantages:
   1. Callbacks are pushed to the next free agent, i would like to give agents the choice when they make the call back. Is this possible?
   2. What happens if a calls come from a hidden number or a customer wants to receive the callback on a different number?

If anyone has better alternatives then the options i have found, free feel to share them!

Thank you in advance.

Kind regards,
Lars

 

[VoIPTools]

It appears you have your 3CX server hosted with 3CX? If so, your options are somewhat restricted (restrictions are in place to ensure 3CX has the ability to provide a known, reliable service that could be complicated by unique customizations (CFD for example)).

One of the challenges with getting a good transcription of your voicemail may have less to do with the Dutch language, and more to do with the "basic" quality of the voicemail audio recording. I have tried many, many different voice-to-text engines and none of them work very well with 3CX voicemails or recordings.

If you were able to use the CFD (you would -- at least for now -- have to move your 3CX server to a different hosting company that supports customization), the CFD has the ability to stream audio directly to Google, at a higher audio quality. You may find that approach provides a better transcription.

I assume we are talking about calls that come in outside of regular business hours. Presumably you have people designated as "on-call" to answer these calls. While 3CX cannot perform the pre-screening function provided by your current live-answering service, you can still have someone "live-answer" these calls. For example, you could:

• Install the 3CX client on your cell phone
• Have queue calls forwarded to your cell phone (ring simultaneously)

I suppose you could have an IVR perform basic screening of these calls by first offering the caller some options:

• For emergency after-hours support ($75 fee), press 1
• For non-emergency issues, press 2 to leave a voicemail
• For priority support, enter your Account number (this requires a Call Flow Designer application)

But there are other challenges with these approaches -- call being answered by the cell phone's voicemail, scheduling people to be on-call, tracking performance, escalation if nobody answers the call, etc. You might want to take a look at our 3CX On Call Manager tool. We address a lot of these challenges.

 

[larsg23]

Ok, that's some usefull information. We use the callback more for the moments that all agents are busy or the waiting time exceeds a limit, we don't use it as an outside office hours service. I think the best thing for now is to look for a different company with people that can answer these calls for us and take a message and do some smart automated things with the messages they send us. I don't think there is any automation tool out there yet that can achieve the same result.