Com.Tel Deploys Sangoma PBX to Support 700 Operators Across Italy

The Customer

In the context of the global coronavirus pandemic (COVID‑19), Italian officials considered it necessary to set up telephone support services for people confined to their homes, facing various personal, family and relationship problems. The first trial of this initiative began in Palermo, at the Cana Guidance Centre of the Italian Confederation of Family Counsellors. Starting with a Sangoma PBX with 40 extensions donated by Com.Tel, a renowned Sangoma partner in the region, the telephone service connected trained operators with people needing advice and support during their isolation. This initial experience was a great success and led to a national expansion. The Italian Episcopal Conference, an assembly of bishops responsible for managing the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, decided to adopt the idea and develop it into a national service accessible to all Italians.

Business Challenges

This service represented a unique project with simple but strict constraints, particularly concerning the budget. The installed PBX system had to be extremely flexible to allow call centre operators to work with mobile devices and personal computers wherever they were, while preserving anonymity. In addition, the platform had to be configurable to integrate with cloud services, given the bandwidth volumes required to connect hundreds of calls simultaneously. The organisation’s management contacted Com.Tel, the Sangoma partner that had donated the PBX used in the initial project in Palermo. Relying on Com.Tel’s experience in networks and telecommunications, the organisation gave them full control over the suppliers to choose and the configuration of the service’s PBX network.

Solutions From Sangoma

Antonio Adorno, Com.Tel’s regional director for Sicily and Calabria, immediately thought Sangoma’s robust and flexible PBX systems and equipment would be the ideal choice for the project. The team got to work designing a system flexible enough to meet the project’s needs, using fully licensed Sangoma PBX software that enables call centre management and daily statistics on a cloud service. In addition, robust desktop and mobile clients were installed to allow operators to connect and manage calls from smartphones and personal computers.

The Results

The service began with approximately 400 configured operators, with the intention of immediately increasing the number of fully operational agents to 700. The service was announced nationwide in July 2020, gaining significant visibility and coverage through communications from the Roman Catholic Church in Italy. Leaders from all parties are satisfied with the solution’s performance and flexibility, as well as its ability to meet all their needs and integrate with many different services to address any new requirements as the service continues to operate and grow. They also appreciate its limited economic impact on tight budgets and its ability to integrate easily and run on a cloud platform, in addition to its compatibility with many carrier- and client-side SIP solutions.

The Episcopal Conference and Com.Tel were proud to choose Sangoma as the telecommunications provider for this important project because, with limited effort and tight budgets, it was possible to create a highly professional, easy-to-use platform capable of offering:

The ability to greet callers with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology
Smooth call distribution without restrictions
The flexibility to offer a variety of hold messages depending on the situation
Incredible ease of use for call center agents
The ability for operators to easily use a smartphone application or desktop softphone to manage calls
Full remote control of the platform, including access to statistics and the implementation of changes and new services
Complete anonymity for operators working from the comfort of their homes.

Ultimately, the Sangoma PBX solution designed for this project represented an innovative solution to an emergency situation.