The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

Requirement
Intermedi@ (http://intermediamarketing.com) needed to create a VoIP call recording platform on top of a large scale SIP based telephony system with zero impact to IT systems and customer experience.

Prior approaches for VoIP call recording and monitoring created performance bottlenecks in the number of simultaneous calls that could be recorded and in the quality of voice service delivered by the SIP servers.

Intermedi@'s call center call recording need was driven by four primary areas: 1) adherence to customer contractual service level agreements 2) compliance to regulatory legislation; 3) improving the quality of the customer experience; and 4) enhancing the training and performance of the call center agent.

Intermedi@ has an IT staff of about 45 individuals with an operating philosophy of providing comprehensive and flexible solutions for its Fortune 500 customer base. 

The call center environment features extensive use of Open Source applications.  The inbound/outbound calling/dialing is performed by several Asterisk PBXs and VICIDIAL dialer engines with MySQL, Apache Tomcat and GNU Linux for database and browser interface functionality.

Oreka TR's open source core meant that Intermedi@ could do advanced evaluation and make sure it was technically viable before committing to use Oreka for VoIP recording on Asterisk and VICIDIAL. This approach enabled Intermedi@ to quickly identify areas to enhance Oreka TR's solution design, rapidly modify the code, and extensively testing the enhancements before deploying the VoIP call recording system.

"The traditional recording systems we looked at were proprietary with limited integration flexibility.  With Oreka TR, we implemented the whole stack without any proprietary part. We got support from OrecX and we also made a few in-house changes to the system that would not have been possible with a traditional solution."  Matt Roth, Project Lead.

Solution Design
To solve the performance bottlenecks that Intermedi@ was experiencing, OrecX deployed Oreka TR VoIP recording application in a distributed architecture with several Oreka core VoIP recording servers running on each Asterisk server and with a central Oreka Database/User Interface server.  Oreka

Also, the transcoding and storage of the audio data is centralized.  Audio data is captured in wire format at each Asterisk and VICIDIAL server, and then forwarded to the central server where it is transcoded to Intermedi@'s preferred storage format. 

Intermedi@ requested that Oreka be integrated with QueueMetrics, their existing call center performance management applications, so that Users can monitor real-time VoIP interactions, as well as playback recorded VoIP transactions from within QueueMetrics for additional performance monitoring capabilities.

Lastly, Intermedi@ received international recognition for the Oreka TR call recording and monitoring project when it was recognized and awarded by Linux World as the "Best New Use of Open Source" in 2006.

Business Benefits
According to Intermedi@, the total cost to design (including external consultants), build out the IT environment, and implement Oreka TR VoIP call recording and real-time monitoring was $500,000 less than competitive vendors.  Further, maintenance costs amount to another $100,000 in annual savings.

Qualitative benefits include: improved customer quality, increased efficiency in agent training; investment security (access to code); and independence from single vendor for support and professional services.

As a result of implementing Oreka TR VoIP call recording and monitoring, Intermedi@ Marketing Solutions has saved a substantial amount on the upfront and on-going investment as well as improved its ability to engage and take on new customers from the savings and increased call recording functionality.

"The capabilities of the Oreka TR open source recording solution allowed us to take on work for which we would otherwise not been able. The enhanced monitoring features and the integration to our performance analytics tool increased our call quality and gave us additional capacity to pursue new clients.  Vance Dailey, VP, Information Technology

About IMS Media:
Headquartered in West Chester, PA. Founded in 1983, InterMedi@ Marketing Solutions is a direct marketing and information technology resource company that focuses on secure customized, end-to-end e-commerce, sales and customer relationship management solutions. InterMedi@ has been recognized nationally for its commitment to quality. Intermedi@ has approximately 2000 employees, 6 call center locations with over 1000 agent positions.

About OrecX:
Based in Chicago, OrecX provides open source VoIP and TDM recording solutions at a fraction of the cost of proprietary recording applications that run $1,000--$4,000 per user. OrecX is the primary developer and sponsor of the Oreka open source call recording project hosted on sourceforge.net www.oreka.org. Over 24,000 users have downloaded the open source version of Oreka.