IPCC Enterprise: Outbound calls priority over inbound calls

[holbech]

How can I get outbound calls presented to the agents in SG-A even though there are calls queued to SG-A ?

My customer wish to service callbacks before queued calls.

To me it looks like the dialer doesn't issue the reservation call quick enough to get the agent reserved before the queueing mechanism is grabbing him.

Thanks

/Claus

[dreich]

Hello Claus,

I have a method to queue calls if you use personal call backs as your method of calling back customers.

It allows you to use the preview method in your call backs, and you can give the personal call back calls higher priority over existing inbound calls in queue.

The draw back to personal call backs is that there is no reporting on them. They are not associated with a campaign or a query rule.

Let me know if you would like more information on queuing personal call backs.

David

[holbech]

Hi David

Thank you for your answer.

My issue here is regaring campaign based callback, so I guess your PCB method would not work. (?)

I have tried changing the callback script. I changed the "select route" node into a queue node and setting priority 1 (inbound has 6), but the reservation call is never attempted as long as inbound calls are comming in. So the change must be done on the dialer somewhere (if possible), to have it reserve the agent more agressivly, or maybe on the router, to tell it to hold back the reservation a few seconds. (With the cost of slower inbound call handling).

I hope this can lead to a solution...

Thanks

Claus

[dreich]

I see you have already attempted to queue the agent reservation request. The problem here is that the call needs to stay in queue for a longer period of time in order for it maintain its place in queue.

In order for queuing of reservation request for regular callbacks to work, the following steps must be followed.

Reservation Routing Script:

Queue to skill group node

Next node should be a queue priority node to schedule call backs ahead of other queued calls.

Priority 1 is the highest priority, and 10 is the lowest. 5 is the default.

A wait node should be set to as long or longer than how long you want to wait for an available agent. In our testing we used 3600 seconds (an hour).

The wait node should point to an end node. It is not useful to circle back to another node.

Dialer:

There is a critical registry key in the ICM Dialer hive.

TimeToWaitForMRIResponse - This needs to be to a value that is longer than the PCB routing script wait node. In our testing we used 3800 seconds (200 seconds more than the wait time).

We have only tested this with personal call back calls. The basic principles should all apply to regular callbacks. Please respond with how your testing goes with regular call backs.

David

[dreich]

I should add I believe this will only work for the IPCC Enterprise intgration. If you are doing this with G3, the MR PIM would not be involved so you would not be able to queue the route request.

[holbech]

Hi David

Thank you for your directions. I will test them soon.

But from what I have tried before, I can see from the script monitoring that the script is not called unless there are no incomming calls in queue. So the dialer does not try to reserve the agent.

Is there a way of getting the dialer to send the reservation even though there are no available agents ?

The way with queueing the reservation calls, would lock up dialer ports for each callback entry right ?

That could be a problem if a busy queue with a lot of callbacks locks up all the ports, and denies everyone else access to their callbacks. (because of no dialer ports).

Thanks

Claus

[dreich]

Claus, you are correct. The dialer queries skill group statistics every 2 seconds, and only sends reservation requests if the number of agents currently available is greater than 0. Then it will only send reservation requests for the number of agents currently available. The router will reserve an agent very quickly when there are calls in queue and an agent comes available, so there is a very small window.

I believe the only work around here would be to use the personal call back mode with the alternate VDN option for dialing call backs, as the personal call back will send up the reservation request even if agents are currently on calls.

[ivana.begonja]

Hello,

I've found this old  topic - now we need to handle some similar issue.

What I am interested  in - is there any way to send outbound (Dialer) call to agent before  than inbound call, but without Personal callback included. This is because I do  not need this priority feature for callbacks but for original outbound calls?

Thanks, Ivana

[david.macias]

Inbound calls should take priority over outbound calls, it's in the documentation.

david

[ivana.begonja]

David,

I am aware what is written in documentation, but I'm still asking is there any workarounfd for this?

Tnx, Ivana

[dreich]

The reason inbound calls take priority is because they are queued.

With personal callbacks, we try to reserve the agent even if it is currently busy so we have an opportunity to queue them.

With preview and predictive, we check the skill group once every 2 seconds and only attempt to reserve agents to see if there are available agents. So we won't attempt to reserve an agent if agents are busy with inbound calls. So if you have inbound calls queued up for a skill group that share the same agent pool as the outbound skill group, then those agents will likely be kept too busy with inbound calls. The Dialer won't try to make a reservation request if no agents are available and so there won't be an opportunity to add the calls to queue.

With Transfer to IVR campaigns, you can queue and route customer calls to agents. This would give you more flexibility, but there are some pros and cons.

PROS

You can make smart decisions in the routing script whether it is marked as Answering Machine or Live Voice.

You don't tie up an agent in reservation call waiting to find a customer.

You can prioritize the dialer calls over inbound calls in the scripting.

CONS

Customers will likely spend some time in queue, and may drop out.

The scripting to throttle calls is a little trickier.

The campaign reports and Dialer Detail records no longer tell you whether the call was handled by an agent or not. They stop tracking once the call is sent to the IVR. You only have the inbound call Termination Call Detail records and the inbound skill group and call type to track what happened ot the transfer to IVR calls.

David

[ivana.begonja]

David,

thanks for your advice, I'll try with this Transfer to IVR campaign.

Do you know what happens with call type reports - are the right calls marked as Offered, Handled...?