Contact center as supermarket: similarity and differences in terms of queues

Keywords: queue log stats, call center monitor, analytics, performance, asternic, queuemetrics, alternatives.

Just fancy: you run a supermarket. You glance at the shopping space and suppose everything is OK: no queues at the billing counter, clients are served in a fast manner — perrrfect! But then you move the focus on the entrance and see a madding crowd that cannot get in. Now change "supermarket" to "contact center" and "clients" to "inbound calls" — and you'll realize that something goes wrong, presumably PBX settings.

Another example: you used to count clients by cash register receipts, the number of clients is equal to the number of receipts. But what if someone got tired of waiting for the cashier's attention and walked away? You will never know about such lost clents. Now change "cashier" to "agent" and you'll see supervisor's headache at peak times.

Sure, you need to catch such situations red-handed. Some hire a thousand-dollar detectives and consultants, some pay the same money for Asternic and QueueMetrics, but the most advanced save the money and use Softphone.Pro Team. Let's compare.

All these product are aimed to Queue logs analytics and quality/performance monitoring. This solutions can analyze activity of any size teams... but unlikely we can say that all of them are easily affordable for any company.

For example, for 10 agents QueueMetrics costs 500 CHF per year (and this is just a first pricing degree). Asternic might look cheaper but the real McCoy is Softptone.Pro Team — if we take five hundred Swiss Franks as a reference point we'll clearly see that

for such money we can analyze calls and activity of 10 agents for 17 months, it's 40 percent longer/cheaper.

Here is our assesment in general terms.

QueueMetrics
Pros: well-known; offers attractive dashboards; tracks agent productivity, working time, payrolls, and conversion rates.
Cons: expensive; no free version.

Asternic
Pros: well-developed and known; free version available.
Cons: free version offers no support and upgrade, functions are much limited; full-power commercial version costs $2000; intermediate $500-option does not include PHP.

Softphone.Pro Team
Pros: cheap and well-supported; many visual reports; the same functionality for less money.
Cons: not found.

Report example