Technical overview

Semafone can be deployed within your telephony provider network cloud, or within your premises. When hosted within your telephony provider's network cloud, no hardware or softwre needs to be deployed within your organisation. Access to Semafone is provided either through your payment gateway provider, or through the Internet. The following describes the deployment of Semafone within your own premises rather than through the telephony cloud.

Semafone uses standard carrier grade telephony cards with its own software application, and can be used regardless of the call recording systems or telephony systems already in place. Semafone has been designed in such a way that it can be implemented across the enterprise without the need to upgrade any existing systems.

Semafone fits seamlessly into your contact centre architecture with minimal impact on your current IT and telephony systems. Its core architecture design principle is to provide a variety of simple integration options that reduce project risk and enable extremely rapid implementation.

Technical architecture: Semafone has a modular design to allow flexibility for resilience and scalability.

Physical architecture: Semafone platforms are flexible enough to fit around your current telephony installation, even spread across multiple sites and thousands of lines.

How does Semafone integrate with existing systems?

At the most basic level, Semafone will work alongside your current systems (Automatic Call Distributor (ACD), call recording equipment and CRM systems) without the need for modification.

Semafone can sit trunk-side or extension-side of your existing infrastructure and has two main points of integration:

Telephony integration: Semafone connects to your telephony infrastructure between your telephony provider (public telephone network) and your call centre telephony infrastructure (ACD, call recording) or between your ACD and your call recording solution for extension-side call recording. Fundamentally, Semafone's telephony cards must be upstream of your call recording solution.

Application integration: Semafone can integrate directly with your chosen payment gateway. Semafone enabled payment gateway pages display asterisks as the caller enters their card details for each keypad stroke. These pages also allow the agent to control Semafone (i.e. reset a field should the caller make a mistake while entering their card details).

Using these pages ensures that the contact centre remains out of scope for PCI DSS, as no card data enters this environment. Alternatively, Semafone's API can be used to integrate directly with the organisation's CRM - and it is still possible to keep the CRM and the contact centre out of scope of PCI DSS.