UCCX - Notify or Prevent All Agent Logout When Queue Has Contacts

[Brian Carscadden]

Client requests a notification or ability to prevent CAD agents logging out at the end of the day when there's still a caller in queue. I lalready have regular failsafe checks that will divert to department VM in this case, but they prefer another approach. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Brian

[Anthony Holloway · Accepted solution]

Hey Brian,

You're already doing the right thing: checking logged in Agent metrics in the script to make a determination on whether or not the caller can be served by an Agent.  This is the best approach.

You cannot prevent Agents from logging out.  In fact, no matter what you attempt, what's to stop the employee from simply leaving the office and going home?  Are you going to lock them in the office until the queue is cleared?

Now about notifying Agents, well this is a default feature of CAD.  Any CAD agent can use CAD reports to view the current number of contacts waiting across all queues they support.  That value being anything other than a 0 is notification that they need to stay logged in and take more calls.

What happens when a phantom call is stuck in queue and an Agent is sitting around for an hour waiting and wondering why it's not being delivered to them?

Anthony Holloway

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[Brian Carscadden]

All valid points, and all explained to the client more or less.

It should be "last call" to the agents. 5:30pm the queue stops recieving calls. Agents wrap up their call and check queue stats to see it's zero, then log out.

I explained this as procedural to the client's supervisors and got some push back. I can imagine a basic feature that when a CAD agent logs out a simple pop-up of the queue stats with a warning when calls are in queue. Simple notification certainly do-able in CAD, but developers apparently left it out.

Not quite following you on the phantom call concern. My phantom calls for courtesy callback operate like any other call in queue, with the caveat that it will time-out after an hour, then drop. Not the most customer-friendly, but a necessary evil due to UCCX limits.

Thanks for the feedback nonetheless, much appreciated!

Regards,

Brian

[Anthony Holloway]

Phantom calls: UCCX has been known to drop the ball on call control over a real call, and then it's CTI ghost floats around in the system until the end of time.  Or an Engine restart.  Suffice it to say, it happens, and your Agents may stand around waiting for it.

On the topic of the alert for CAD, that actually sounds like a really cool idea.  You could implement your own I suppose, but oh man, it would be a huge work effort to build this from the ground up.

A couple of things pop into my head:

1. CAD workflow action on logout
2. External app running on Agent PC receives logout event with agent ID
3. External app calls backend server to process the request and see if Agent's assigned skills and resource group have waiting contact via DB or CTI integration. Possibly via HTTP trigger if you have premium.
4. External app then conditionally pops a notice, however, it still will not prevent the logout action, only serve to notify them.

Anthony Holloway

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[Tanner Ezell]

Implementing this into CAD is a lost cause and I'm not certain you'll be able to accomplish this with Finesse either.

As you might imagine, this generally is considered a training issue. There are a couple of options I can think of, none of which will prevent your users turning off their compuers and walking away.

That being said, here's an idea off the top of my head:

An application (external to the contact center) monitors for agent logout events, checks to see if callers are in queue and performs an action. Those actions could be, for example:

• An alert with a notification or prompt is generated on the phone. This could be text that shows on the agents IP Phone followed by an alert chime.
• A call or email could be placed to a supervisor, an agent or someone else that a call is in queue and no agents are logged in.

There are options available to you, but ultimately this comes down to training your agents to not logout with calls in queue. Technology can only aid in giving a best effort to prevent this from happening.

Another solution is to check for agents logged in in the queue loop of your script. If no agents are logged in for that queue, play the caller a message, and disconnect. This is terrible from a customer experience standpoint, but would prevent callers waiting in queue indefinitely.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Tanner Ezell
www.ctilogic.com