Outbound dialer/ agent reservation

[fabien.damien]

Hi All,

i've installed outbound dialer version 7.5.7, during campaign activity dialer reservers all the agents of the Outbound skill group.

any idea how this behavior can be changed?

Thanks,

[pratik.rb]

Is "broadcast" hunting enabled in the CSQ configuration. Try changing to Longest Idle if it is the problem.

.

[fabien.damien]

i'm sorry, i didn't mention that i was using IPCC dialer.

regards,

[geoff]

What do you want to change?

Do you know what "OUTBOUND_PERCENT" on the skill group set on the Admin Script does?

Regards,

Geoff

[fabien.damien]

Hi Geoff,

as per outbound dialer user guide find the definition of Outbound_Percent:

Percentage of agents logged into a particular skill group used for outbound calls in each skill group is configured through an administrative script. This value can be changed dynamically throughout the day based on any data available to the script (service level, time of day, etc.). For example, an administrative script is set up to use 100% of the agents in skill group A for a predictive outbound campaign. If it is known that there will be a “lull” of in the inbound call volume at noon which reduces that percentage to 30%, the script can be set to increase the percentage of agents used for outbound calls to 70%

which means this variable defines the percentage of agents in the skill group that are active outbound caller, but this does not mean that at each outbound call all agents should be reserved.I think it should reserve one agent at a time.

Note that i am using "preview mode"

hope it is clear now,

Thanks,

[geoff]

fabien.damien wrote:
 but this does not mean that at each outbound call all agents should be reserved.I think it should reserve one agent at a time.
Note that i am using "preview mode"

Why do you want that? Only available agents are reserved. In a testing situation, just make one agent ready. If you want such an unusual operation, tell the agents to go ready in a staggered fashion. ;-)

Seriously - the Dialer has a job to do - call people. If it reserved one agent, then placed a call - what are all the other agents going to do?

What is your reason for asking this?

Regards,

Geoff

[fabien.damien]

maybe other agents would like to take inbound calls?

[geoff]

That's what Dynamic Reskilling is for. Have the team leader/supervisor use Dynamic Reskilling to remove the oubound skill from the agent.

Regards,

Geoff

[Nathan Luk]

You can either manually manage the agents using dynamic reskilling as Geoff mentions or you move it to a blended skill group so you queue your

inbound calls to the same skill group used for outbound and use the outbound percentage to control how many agents you keep available for inbound.

Remember that if you have a blended skill group that inbound calls will take precedence so if all agents are on calls and inbound calls come in and an agent becomes available, they will get the inbound call before they are reserved for an outbound call. You would use the outbound percentage to control how many agents the dialler reserves in order to keep agents available to take calls immediately as they come in if the contact centre are concerned about inbound service levels.

[fabien.damien]

Guys thanks for your replies very helpful and informative, but i think you didn't get my problem.

what is happening in my case is all agents (at the same time) are getting reserved once dialer is ready to make an outbound call.

I hope it's clear now.

[Nathan Luk]

Once the dialler has records available, it queries the skill group configured for it and then reserves as many as it can at the same time while adhering to the outbound_percent skill group variable. I don't believe there is any way to change this behaviour in regards to reserving all available agents simultaneously. The closest thing you could do is change the PortThrottleCount registry setting on the dialer which dictates the max number of ports to use for dialing (which I believe also includes reservation although this may have changed in 7.5 with the advent of virtual reservation calls). So while this could potentially throttle the number of agents it would try to reserve at any one time, it would also throttle the number of outbound customer calls it would make at any one point in time.

I'm struggling to figure out why this would be much of an issue though? If the agents are available for dialer calls shouldn't they be reserved as soon as possible? You can use the outbound percentage to keep a minimum % of agents available for inbound calls if you like but if the issue is just around how the dialer reserves all available agents (excluding any which are kept free for inbound calls if you use outbound percentage) at the same time I'm not sure what issues this would cause, it's just trying to start making outbound calls as quickly as it can and therefore get your agents occupied instead of sitting idle which is a good thing isn't it?