Business case: homeworkers & Askia
At one of the largest market research agencies in Belgium, a brand new telephony and Askia surveying infrastructure had to be put in place for a very challenging project: 40,000 interviews were to be conducted within an extremely limited timeframe with people running the interviews from their home workplace, all of this with a very strict deadline. On top of that, it was the first time that the client would use Askia software for CATI interviewing. This resulted in:
- A progressive dialling environment for 75 agents being put in place quickly
- A complex and extensive survey being run with very specific business rules: new numbers could only be called between 17h and 21h (call-backs anytime), an extremely detailed glossary for the agents, large quota definitions, and so on
- Supervisors and agents working both remotely (home workers) and at the client's headquarters at the same time
Because the client did not want to change the existing infrastructure into a VoIP setup, MI4C implemented a setup with homeworkers without using this technology. From a technological point of view, this was all made possible by means of a:
- 3 server infrastructure setup
- Analogue extensions for the agents at the client's premises
- External E1’s (ISDN) for the connection towards the respondents and the home workers
This resulted in a setup of a telephony server that was calling out towards the homeworkers and respondents at the same time. The moment a respondent picked up the phone, the homeworker would receive the call as well. By means of an advanced locating and log-in system, homeworkers could even use their own "basic" analogue phone...
A schematic overview of this setup:
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