MAXI (Maxi.az) is one of the top-5 online retailers of electronics and home appliances in Azerbaijan. The platform grew out of the Integral Plus store network, has been online since 2016 and won the NETTY award in 2018 as the country's best e-commerce site. For an omnichannel seller where 50–60% of all orders come in by phone, call quality is not a technical detail — it is direct sales. We integrated the Ringostat virtual PBX with the company's corporate CRM and turned telephony into a managed, fully automated sales channel.
Client & market
Maxi.az is an omnichannel platform that combines an online storefront with an offline store network. The company is among the five largest online retailers in Azerbaijan in electronics and home appliances, and its NETTY 2018 win cemented its reputation as one of the country's benchmark e-commerce sites.
In this model the phone remains the main sales channel: customers call to check stock, compare models, place an order or arrange delivery. Half or more of all orders are born in a conversation with an operator — so any telephony problem is felt immediately in revenue.
The challenge: the channel that brings half the revenue ran unstably
The previous IP-telephony setup did not deliver stable quality. Audio problems were reported on both sides — by operators and by customers. On top of that, the call architecture was overcomplicated: a call passed through several connection nodes, and each node added latency and became a potential bottleneck.
Poor audibility cost orders
When more than half of all orders are placed by phone, every "could you repeat that, please" is lost time — and sometimes a lost customer. An operator who mishears a model or a delivery address risks getting the order wrong; a customer who struggles to hear the consultant simply hangs up.
A complex architecture with many nodes
The long signal path "customer — several intermediate nodes — operator" not only lowered quality but also made diagnostics hard: when something went wrong, it was difficult to tell exactly which segment caused the problem.
How we approached the project
We treated telephony not as a standalone service but as part of the sales system, so we built the integration around the real path of a call — from the first ring to the customer card in the CRM. The work moved in clear stages:
- Call audit. We mapped the existing signal path and found the nodes that added latency and degraded audibility.
- A server in Azerbaijan. We moved telephony to the Ringostat virtual PBX with a server inside the country, closing the "customer — operator — server" loop within one jurisdiction.
- Smart routing. We set up automatic distribution of calls among available operators across departments — the online store and the feedback service.
- CRM integration. We linked telephony to the corporate CRM so that every incoming call automatically creates a lead and a call record.
- The "Smart Phone" extension. We added a browser app that shows the operator the customer card before they pick up.
- Multilingual menu and recording. We launched a voice menu in Azerbaijani and Russian and enabled call recording for quality control.
- Metrics and launch. We configured per-employee metrics and put the solution into live operation.
What we built
Instead of a fragile chain of nodes, the company got a single managed contact center in which the phone and the CRM work as one:
- an incoming call automatically creates a lead and a record in the CRM — with no manual data entry;
- missed calls automatically turn into call-back tasks, so no customer is lost;
- the operator instantly sees who is calling: a returning customer's name and purchase history appear before they answer;
- a recording of every conversation is available for quality control and dispute resolution;
- accepted, missed and unanswered calls are counted for each employee.
Smart routing
Calls distribute themselves among available operators of the online store and the feedback service.
"Smart Phone" in the browser
The extension shows the customer's data before the operator even picks up.
Automatic lead creation
Every call becomes a lead and a record in the CRM, and a missed one becomes a call-back task.
Multilingual voice menu
An IVR in Azerbaijani and Russian greets the customer and guides them to the right department.
Architecture & call quality
Technically, the solution is built around the Ringostat virtual PBX integrated with the corporate CRM through real-time data exchange. The main quality lever turned out to be not complex settings but geography: the Ringostat server in Azerbaijan shortened the signal path and removed the extra intermediate nodes.
| Aspect | Before integration | After integration |
|---|---|---|
| Call quality | Audibility issues for operators and customers | Server in Azerbaijan, clean audio |
| Call path | Several intermediate connection nodes | Closed "customer — operator — server" loop |
| Order creation | Operator entered data manually | Lead and record created automatically |
| Missed calls | Easily lost | Automatic call-back task |
| Customer recognition | Operator did not know who was calling | Name and purchase history before answering |
| Quality control | No objective data | Call recording and per-person metrics |
Results
The quality problem was solved at its root: by closing the "customer — operator — server" loop inside Azerbaijan, the company got consistently clean audio in the channel that brings 50–60% of orders. Phone sales became a fully automated process — operators no longer waste time entering orders by hand, instantly recognize returning customers by name and purchase history, and work against transparent metrics. And for the first time management could see telephony in numbers: how many calls were accepted, how many missed and how many still need to be handled.
If the phone brings you a meaningful share of orders while your telephony lives apart from your CRM, we are ready to bring them into one managed channel. Explore our other projects or get in touch to discuss integrating telephony with your CRM.
