Outbound Agent Campaign without Agent

[ciscogini]

Using the PRDECTIVE mode can I run a outbound campaign with out any agent logged in to the queue?

[Edward Umansky]

Are you referring to an IVR based campaign? You cannot run any agent based campaign with no available agents. You can technically run an IVR campaign in Predictive mode, however Cisco recommends setting an IVR campaign to a progressive mode with 1 line per agent (in this case IVR port).

The problem with running the IVR campaign in predictive is that IVR ports are not reserved like agents are, the dialer just transfers the calls blindly. That means calls are never abandoned and the predictive mode will have nothing to throttle against. It will just keep increasing the dialing rate until it hits the maximum, even if you have no idle IVR ports.

[ciscogini]

if I set the maximum number to more then the number of IVR ports I have

What happnes when all the IVR ports are utalized and will be call be abandoned.

[Edward Umansky]

The dialer has no awareness of the state of the IVR; all it knows is the number of IVR ports you configure which acts as a substitute for number of available agents. Since the dialer doesn't know when the ports are actually idle or not, that number never changes, so the dialer never really has a need to abandon (maybe if you simultaneously had more connects than configured IVR ports, unlikely scenario unless you had very few ports).

It is ok to set the configured IVR ports to more than you actually have, depending on your hit rate/call handling time. Remember though, the dialer never knows whether a port is being used or not, so if your call handling time is very long and your hit rate high you can run out of ports even if you configure less ports than your maximum.

One solution to preventing this is in your admin script, check the number of available ivr ports and set the campaign to INBOUND when it drops too low.

[Edward Umansky]

If you do run out of ports it will transfer anyways (it doesn't know you're out), the call will then fail when you try to send it to the ivr.

[ciscogini]

In IVR basec campaign does the dialer always use the route point configured under the SKILL GROUP Selection TAB in the Campaign configuration?

Is there way to tell the diler to use a differnt IVR Route point when it runs the IRV campaing and use the IVR Route poitn when the call goes to voice Mail

[ciscogini]

Also is there a way to use the Abandoned IVR Route point in IVR based Campaign.

[Edward Umansky]

No, when you select Abandon on AMD in the Campaign options it will drop the call, not send it to the Abandon route point (At least in 7.x, you may want to verify in 6).

The Abandon route point is only used if an agent is not available when the dialer gets a connect. Since an IVR campaign always sees ports available, it won't abandon this way, so the abandon route point will never be used.

You cannot send voice mail detects to a separate IVR route point than live detects, Cisco introduced this type of functionality in 7.1(1). I had a TAC case on this with 7.0 and Cisco's answer at the time was querying the dialing list table as I described before.

[ciscogini]

So you really built query in the IVR to the Dialer Database correct.

You mentined above that

"The Abandon route point is only used if an agent is not available when the dialer gets a connect."

Does this hold tue when the agents are logged in and they are in a NOT READY State.

Which mode does this work in " PREDICTIVE" or " PROGRESSIVE" or the third one?

[geoff]

Predictive and progressive work in a very similar way. All that changes is the number of calls the Dialer places when it sees an available agent and sends the reservation call.

It's not really "predicting" anything - it's certainly not predicting when an agent would become free and placing a call in anticipation of the event.

When an agent is reserved, the Dialer then places a number of calls - could be 1, could be more. If no one answers, the agent stays reserved and it places a few more. This is easy to see when you play with it.

If both of the original calls are answered, the first is transferred to the agent, overlaying the reservation call.

The other is a "nuisance call" and there are regulations in place as to how you must handle this.

The "Abandon route point" enables you to play a message and apologize. ;-)

Regards,

Geoff