[jdev] Re: Thinking about a Jabber based notification system for a call center

[Hal Rottenberg]

Adam,

Your scenario sounds extremely plausible.  I have some experience in
call centers, having worked in several in my early IT years.  Six or
so years later my job has changed several times (still at the same
company), yet I still have daily interaction with dozens of call
center employees worldwide.
Now I don't mean to be telling you how to do your job, but if I were
you, I'd seriously reconsider the read-only requirement.  The reason
is simple.  We have seen that better communication between agents
results in a more consistent sharing of knowledge, as well as an
improved customer experience.  This can yield lower average call
times.

Ok, rant mode off.  This topic is quite close to me.  Literally the
reason I got involved in Jabber years ago was because I discovered it
while evaluating instant messaging products for the call center I
worked on at the time.

Anyway...  Yeah, just grab any of several open source or commercial
jabber servers that can talk to an LDAP server, or Windows Active
Directory, and you are good to go.

On the client side, I think you'll find several fit within your
requirements.  I'm a little surprised  actually, this sounds like a
relatively straightforward projct.  :)

Look at my signature for one such client suggestion, which happens to
be QT-based.  I'll leave it to others to suggest a good server match,
but I know at least three top of my head can do what you want.

On 1/20/06, Adam Hunt <kinema at gmail.com> wrote:
> DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT VERY WELL VERSED IN JABBER.
>
>
>
> I work in a 700+ seat call center where I would like to use Jabber for
> real-time notifications.  Essentially what I would like is a read-only or
> one way client for the agents on the floor.
>
>
>
> I would like it so that any supervisor or operations manager can message any
> individual agent, team, group of teams (e.g. all teams on one operations
> managers group of teams), all agents currently logged in and all agents in a
> particular queue (some agents are in more then one queue).  To accomplish
> this it would seem like some sort of class based system would be required.
>
>
>
> Also I do not need nor want the agents to be able to chat with each other or
> even reply to messages sent by supervisors/managers.  A receipt conformation
> might be helpful so that the sender knows that the message has been read.
> It would also be great if it were possible to see if an agent is currently
> on the computer or if the computer has been locked.
>
>
>
> I would like the client to automatically login to the server when the user
> logs into Windows without the user needing to authenticate.  Ideally the
> Windows username would be the JID.  I don't feel there would be any need for
> a password.
>
>
>
> The client should stay hidden in the system tray when no message has been
> received.  When the tray icon is clicked a history of messages at least
> covering the current login session should be displayed.
>
>
>
> Is there anything out there that would fulfill my needs?  How difficult
> would it be to code such a client in something like Python or Ruby (Qt would
> be really nice).
>
>
>
> Open source licensed clients, libraries and other bits of code are more then
> okay.
>
>
>
> Thanks for your input.
>
>
>
> --adam
>
>
>
>
>


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