Vendor / Customer Discovery Questionnaire (generic template)¶
Use this for any new prospect where we don't yet know the business or infrastructure. Once filled out, Astradial engineering can propose a feasibility-to-integrate verdict within 2 business days.
Estimated time to complete: 25–35 minutes with the prospect's IT person or telecom admin. Sales can fill Sections 1 and 12 ahead of time to shorten the call.
Send to: hari@astradial.com Questions? Reply to this email — happy to jump on a short call.
Section 1 — Business profile¶
| Field | Your answer |
|---|---|
| Company name | |
| Industry / vertical (hotel, hospital, clinic, real estate, BPO, retail, logistics, etc.) | |
| Headquarters city / country | |
| Approximate headcount | |
| Number of physical locations with phones | |
| Primary use of phone system (customer calls / internal ops / emergency / sales / mixed) | |
| Website |
Section 2 — Primary contacts¶
| Role | Name | Phone / WhatsApp | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decision maker (owner / COO / IT head) | |||
| Day-to-day IT contact | |||
| Telecom / AMC vendor (if different from IT) | |||
| Compliance / legal (if regulated industry) | |||
| Preferred language for communication | |||
| Best time window to reach you (IST / local TZ) |
Section 3 — Current PBX setup¶
What phone system are you using today?
- [ ] On-premise hardware PBX (branded box in a rack) — brand: _, model: _
- [ ] On-premise software PBX on a server (FreePBX, 3CX, Asterisk-based, etc.) — which: ____
- [ ] Cloud PBX / hosted VoIP (RingCentral, Zoom Phone, Knowlarity, Exotel, etc.) — provider: ____
- [ ] Nothing yet — this will be our first phone system
- [ ] Other / don't know — please describe: ____
| Field | Your answer |
|---|---|
| PBX age (install year) | |
| Firmware / software version | |
| Who maintains it today? (internal / AMC / unmanaged) | |
| Any known limitations / pain points with current system? | |
| Admin access available? (web UI and/or SSH) | Yes / No / Partial |
Section 4 — Trunks (how calls enter and leave the building)¶
What type of connection(s) carry your phone calls? Tick all that apply:
- [ ] SIP trunk from an ITSP (IP-based, configured in software). Provider: ____
- [ ] PRI / E1 digital line (30-channel, copper or fiber from telecom). Provider: ____
- [ ] Analog landlines (2–8 copper phone lines from telecom). How many: ____
- [ ] GSM gateway with SIM cards for mobile termination. SIMs: ____
- [ ] ISDN / BRI (older digital trunk, uncommon now)
- [ ] WebRTC / SIP over internet from a softphone app (Zoiper, Linphone, etc.)
- [ ] Other / don't know — describe: ____
For each active trunk:
| Trunk | Provider | Plan / product | Channels | Monthly cost | Contract ends |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | |||||
| 2 | |||||
| 3 |
Are you planning any trunk changes in the next 12 months? (renewals, switches, adding capacity)
Section 5 — Phone numbers (DIDs)¶
What phone numbers are printed / published that must keep ringing after any migration? (website, business cards, Google listings, booking platforms, email signatures, etc.)
| # | Phone number | Published where | Rings what today | Business-critical? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yes / No | |||
| 2 | Yes / No | |||
| 3 | Yes / No | |||
| 4 | Yes / No | |||
| 5 | Yes / No |
Do you have a toll-free / 1800 / 400 / short-code number? Yes / No → if yes: ____
Any emergency numbers dialled from within the office (100 / 101 / 102 / 108 / 112 in India; 911 / 999 elsewhere)? Confirm these must keep working: Yes / No
Section 6 — Extensions and phones¶
| Field | Your answer |
|---|---|
| Total extensions currently active | |
| Planned growth (in 12–24 months) | |
| Phones by type: | |
| Analog phones (with regular phone cord) | |
| IP phones (network cable, brand: ____) | |
| Softphones on computers / apps | |
| Mobile apps |
Departmental breakdown (rough estimate is fine):
| Department / area | Ext range or count | Phone type |
|---|---|---|
(Attach a spreadsheet if you have one.)
Section 7 — Current call features in active use¶
Tick everything your team uses today. We need to preserve each after any migration.
Core call handling: - [ ] Call transfer (warm / blind) - [ ] Hunt groups / ring groups (multiple phones ring at once) - [ ] Call queues with hold music - [ ] IVR ("Press 1 for …") - [ ] Voicemail - [ ] Voicemail-to-email - [ ] Night mode / after-hours routing - [ ] Holiday / weekend routing
Operations: - [ ] Call recording — how configured today: ____ - [ ] Call monitoring / barge-in for supervisors - [ ] Call forwarding to mobiles - [ ] Do-not-disturb per extension - [ ] Call reporting / analytics dashboards - [ ] Music on hold (custom audio) - [ ] Intercom / paging - [ ] Overhead PA announcements
Advanced / optional: - [ ] CRM / PMS / HIS integration (screen-pop, click-to-call, auto-logging) - [ ] WhatsApp or SMS outbound from the phone system - [ ] AI voice bot / auto-receptionist - [ ] Video calling - [ ] WebRTC click-to-call from website - [ ] Multi-language IVR / agent routing
Anything else important:
Section 8 — Software systems that touch phones¶
| System | In use? | Vendor / product | API available? | What's it used for? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CRM (Salesforce, Zoho, HubSpot, etc.) | Yes / No | Yes / No | ||
| Property Management System (hotels) | Yes / No | |||
| Hospital Information System | Yes / No | |||
| Electronic Medical Records | Yes / No | |||
| E-commerce / booking platform | Yes / No | |||
| Accounting / billing | Yes / No | |||
| Ticketing / helpdesk | Yes / No | |||
| WhatsApp Business / SMS platform | Yes / No | |||
| Marketing automation | Yes / No |
Section 9 — What you want from Astradial¶
Please describe, in your own words, the specific outcomes you want.
Examples: "Record every inbound customer call for quality training", "Click-to-call a customer from our CRM in one click", "AI voice bot to handle enquiries after hours in Hindi/English", "Send SMS reminders automatically", "Dashboard showing daily call volume per team", "Automatic ticket creation when a customer calls about a complaint", "Move our phone numbers from BSNL to a cloud provider and save on line rental", etc.
Must-have (for day 1):
Nice to have (can be phase 2):
Longer-term aspirations:
Section 10 — Compliance, security, data residency¶
Does your business fall under any of these regulatory regimes? Tick all that apply:
- [ ] DPDP Act 2023 (all Indian businesses handling personal data)
- [ ] HIPAA-style patient data (healthcare)
- [ ] PCI-DSS (card payments processed over phone)
- [ ] SEBI / RBI (financial services in India)
- [ ] Telecom licensing (you're reselling telco services)
- [ ] GDPR (EU customers)
- [ ] None / not sure
Call-recording consent rules that apply to you?
- [ ] Announcement before recording ("this call may be recorded")
- [ ] Explicit opt-in (caller presses a key)
- [ ] Written consent via a form / app
- [ ] No consent currently captured
- [ ] Not sure
Data retention policy?
| Data | Retention period | Auto-purge? |
|---|---|---|
| Call recordings | Yes / No | |
| Call logs / CDRs | Yes / No | |
| Voicemail messages | Yes / No |
Who on your team can legitimately access recordings / logs? (roles, not individual names)
Do you need data to be stored in a specific geography? (e.g., India-only for data-sovereignty)
Section 11 — Network infrastructure¶
| Field | Your answer |
|---|---|
| Primary ISP | |
| Secondary ISP (failover), if any | |
| Approximate upload / download bandwidth | |
| Static public IP on your internet connection? | Yes / No |
| Firewall / router brand and model | |
| Can your IT team add outbound firewall rules for us? | Yes / No |
| Do you have a separate VLAN for voice traffic? | Yes / No / don't know |
| QoS / traffic prioritisation configured? | Yes / No / don't know |
| Any corporate proxy or content filter between workstations and internet? | Yes / No |
Section 12 — Reliability / uptime expectations¶
| Question | Your answer |
|---|---|
| Expected uptime SLA (99% / 99.9% / 99.99% / 24×7 no downtime)? | |
| Has your phone system ever had a critical outage? When, why, how long? | |
| Who is the 24×7 on-call contact for phones today? | |
| If our cloud becomes unreachable, what must continue to work locally? | |
| Any scheduled maintenance windows your business tolerates? |
Section 13 — Photos of current rack (helps a lot)¶
Please send clear phone photos of:
- The whole rack, front — overview
- The whole rack, back — overview
- Close-up of the PBX (branded box with label visible)
- Any cards or modules plugged into the PBX (PRI, FXO, FXS, SIP — labels visible)
- Any wall-mounted termination box labelled NTU / MDF / telecom
- Any external gateways (GSM / SIP converters / VoIP boxes)
- Your firewall / router — front and rear
- Cables entering the rack from the building (carrier / trunk side)
- A phone on an employee's desk — front, showing make / model
Phone photos are fine. Do not disassemble anything.
Section 14 — Migration preferences and constraints¶
| Question | Your answer |
|---|---|
| Preferred day / time for major changes | |
| Blackout dates — any periods when outages would be catastrophic? (events, sales seasons, audits, inspections) | |
| Minimum notice required before a change window | |
| Who must be onsite for each change? | |
| Are there cabling / electrical changes you'd accept if we recommend them? | |
| Any budget ceiling for one-time integration cost? | |
| Any preference for monthly vs. annual billing? | |
| Any hardware procurement restrictions? (vendor approvals, import rules) |
Section 15 — What happens after you return this¶
- Astradial reviews your answers (2 business days; longer for regulated industries).
- We send back:
- A proposed architecture specific to your setup
- A feasibility verdict: clean fit / fit with caveats / not yet feasible + reasons
- A migration plan + timeline
- A quote (one-time + monthly)
- You approve, request changes, or bring in legal / compliance review.
- We schedule a kick-off call + (if needed) a site visit.
- Pilot on a small subset first, then staged rollout.
Section 16 — Anything else¶
Anything we haven't asked that you think matters:
Questionnaire version: 1.0 — 2026-04-21 Prepared by: Astradial Engineering