Contact Expert v7.4 for Skype for Business Server

Workflow menu

The Workflow menu is located under the Operations section of the CE portal and is used to configure how human agents, IVR channels, etc. are utilized to work with customer interactions. It is also the place to tweak operations such as routing inbound, and initiating outbound interactions, handling callback requests, holidays, etc.

Public Holidays

These are the settings of the bank and public holidays affecting a contact centre tenant. You configure the days when the call center is closed or has shortened opening hours.

On public holidays CE redirects incoming calls to the URI specified in the dial rule.

Note

Public Holidays are set on a tenant-level, affecting the operation of every workflow specified in the affected tenant (agents, inbound queues, outbound campaigns, callbacks, and others).

Creating a Public Holiday:

  1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Public Holidays in order to check existing and add new public holidays.
  2. Use the +New public holiday button to specify a new public holiday entry.
  3. Specify the properties described below.
  4. Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.

Specify the following details:

Property Description
Tenant Select a tenant to associate the holiday with.
Name Display name for the public holiday.
Day Date of the holiday.

Callback Parameters

These are a set of configurations affecting the general callback operation for a tenant. In other words, only a single Callback Parameters resource can be created in any given tenant. When no such resource is set for a tenant, then the system uses default values -- these are the same values you see set in the property fields when you create a new resource.

Note

Callback Parameters are set on a tenant-level, affecting the callback behavior for every workflow in the affected tenant.

Creating a Callback Parameter:

  1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Callback Parameters in order to configure existing or create new callback parameters.
  2. Use the +New callback parameters button to specify a new callback parameter.
  3. Specify the properties described below.
  4. Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.

A callback parameter has the following properties:

Property Description
Tenant Select the associated tenant from the list.
Time to Live Timeout in hours to close a callback request with the OK_CALLBACK_TIMEOUT closure code. Default value is 24 (hours).
Retention Period Timeout in minutes to move the callback requests scheduled as Prefer me to the Anyone category. Default value is 15 (minutes).
Hot Call Delay Delay in minutes used to schedule tasks for callbacks requested in queue or calls lost in queue if the Redial lost calls campaign option is enabled. Default value is 5 (minutes).
Hot Call Time to Live Timeout in hours to close callback requests for lost calls with OK_CALLBACK_TIMEOUT closure code. Default value is 168 (hours).
Ignore Skill Indicates to deliver scheduled tasks set to Only Me and Prefer Me to the agent scheduling the callback regardless of the agent's skill set.
Preview Callback Specifies whether to distribute callback requests in preview dialing mode or use progressive dialing mode instead.

Workflow Settings

This page allows tenant administrators to set and control the process of distributing interactions in their tenants.

Editing a Workflow Setting:

  1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Workflow Settings.
  2. Click Edit of a specific tenant.
  3. Modify the properties according to the needs of your organization. See the description below.
  4. Click Submit to apply the changes.

A workflow setting has the following properties:

Property Description
Cloud authorization parameters Allows CE to work with Geomant's cloud based services. The value of the field is to be filled during the system deployment and is provided by Geomant or affiliated business partners. For further details on cloud based and alternate scripting configuration please read the Scripting article.
Cloud connection string Used to connect the on-premises CE services to the cloud components for WebChat media. For further details on chat configuration, please read the WebChat Administration article.
Cloud chat conversation history URL An URL designating the cloud storage of the chat conversation history transcripts.
Enable automatically activating skill changes When a Supervisor updates the skill association of agents, this feature allows the agents to continue working without logging out / logging in. If the agent is on break at the time of the skill-set change and the feature is disabled, the agent goes offline by default after returning from break. The agent is forced to login to the application again. The skill modification happens despite enabling the feature or not, and the agent has no skills during this period of time, hence the behavior of setting the state to offline.
Enable elastic agent retention policy This parameter specifies which agent retention policy to use in the background. If checked, it sets the property value to 'elastic'. Default value is 'fix'.
Enable loose agent retention concept This parameter specifies which agent retention concept to use in the background. If checked, it sets the property value to 'loose'. Default value is 'strict'.
Enable multi-skill predictive dialing (not recommended) Enables the multi skill mode for predictive dialing. Further information to be found in the Multi-skill for Predictive Dialing Mode section.
Enable service level based queuing Enables the prioritization mechanism among queues and campaigns.
Maximum phone numbers per contact This parameters specifies the number of phone fields a contact record can have. Default value is 5.
Maximum number of concurrent chat sessions This parameter specifies the limit of chat task that an agent can have at any given time, adds to he total number of task that can be assigned to an agent.
Maximum number of tasks Maximum number of task active at the agent = 1 Voice + Maximum parked emails per agent + Maximum number of concurrent chat sessions
Maximum parked emails per agent This parameter specifies the limit of parked email tasks an agent can have.

Blending Interactions

In Contact Expert, the routing strategy is dependent on skill priorities. A blended operation is when agents are allowed to participate in a combination of inbound and outbound interaction traffic by associating multiple such skills. Inbound and outbound interactions are routed to agents seamlessly, regulating outbound call volume based on inbound traffic. When inbound traffic is low, outbound calls are automatically generated for a specified campaign. When inbound traffic picks up, the dialer dynamically slows the number of outgoing calls to meet the inbound service levels. This tilts agent productivity towards the inbound direction, allows streamlined staffing and improves customer service.

Agent Retention

In a typical environment, one set of agents have inbound-focused skills, others have outbound. Choices are made as to which agent skill set will have a higher priority. Both inbound and outbound interactions and tasks are routed to the same agent pool with inbound interactions taking precedence over outbound activities. No outbound interaction is initiated from a given skill if there are inbound requests waiting in the associated queue(s). The number of agents retained for inbound interaction handling is determined and is evaluated on a skill basis.

Each time an agent becomes available, the dialer checks the agent's skill set (e.g. Sales or Customer Service) and reorganizes the retained agents in those skills in a way that minimizes the retained time of the agents.

In extreme cases no outbound interaction might be initialized by the system for an extensive period of time, to ensure inbound service levels.

Agents retained in a given skill are released - within 30 seconds - if any of the following conditions becomes true:

  • The skill is no longer associated to any queue or campaign
  • The skill is associated to a campaign or queue, but:
    • None of these campaigns or queues are in RUNNING state
    • None of these campaigns or queues have active start and end times
    • None of these campaigns or queues have an active Active Daily Periods configured in their Dialing Rules
    • The tenant the campaigns or queues belong to has an active Public Holiday
    • The Dialing Rules associated to the queues or campaigns have Queue Holidays
Agent reservation versus retainment

The agent reports on the CE portal present the status of the agent-skill association at any given time so Supervisors are aware of when and why agents are not participating in outbound tasks although they have the proper skills for it.

The Active (retained) status in the reports shows that the agent is retained for inbound interactions in the given skill. Active (reserved) however shows that the agent is about to get a centrally initiated outbound task -- Preview or Progressive -- but the system is not yet able to hand it off to the agent, e.g. because the customer dialled did not yet answer the call.

Do not confuse the retainment/reservation states with agent states such as Busy or Wrapup, etc.

Read more about agent states.

Agent blending state in reports

The Agent Status report indicates if there are agents retained and/or reserved, as well as the skill the agents are retained for.

The Agent Status History report also shows the duration of retained and reserved states as part of the Available agent state.

Retained skills in agent reports

Retention Modes

Retaining agents in a particular skill means that these agents are allocated for handling inbound interactions only, they are not enabled to receive system initiated outbound tasks in this skill. There are two agent retention modes in Contact Expert:

Fixed mode works in a way where the number of retained agents includes the agents who are already occupied with inbound tasks. No more agents can be removed from the outbound interaction process. In other words, you need to specify the overall number of retained agents as the total number of retained agents is fixed.

For example, if you have 5 retained agents and 3 are already handling inbound tasks, then only 2 more agents are available to work with inbound tasks in the specific skill.

Elastic mode however works in a way where the specified number of retained agents should be available – no matter how many agents are already working on inbound interactions. This means you need to define the number of retained agents being in available state regardless of the number of agents already working on inbound calls. In this case the total number of retained agents is 'elastic' depending on the number of inbound tasks.

For example, if you have 5 retained agents on a skill, and 3 are already working on inbound calls then the dialing mechanism removes another 2 agents from the outbound call process, so the number of agents available for receiving inbound tasks adds up to 5.

Retention Policies and Concepts

While Retention Mode affects how many agents are retained for inbound interactions in a skill, Retention Policies and Retention Concepts affect the focus of retention on the skill level the particular agents are associated to (if more than one).

Elastic Agent Retention Policy

In order to protect service levels for inbound interactions, this option limits agent retainment to the agents who are in available state only, answering inbound requests quicker.

Setting elastic agent retention policy:

  1. Navigate to Operations→Workflows→Workflow Settings.
  2. Click Edit of the specific tenant.
  3. Tick the Enable elastic agent retention policy checkbox in order to enable this function.
  4. Click Submit to save the changes.

If checked, the properties can be administered by changing the Number of Agents Retained for Inbound Calls parameter of the particular skill. The value should be a number between 0-1000. See General Properties of Skills section for further information.

Note

Predictive outbound dialing should be disabled when enabling Elastic agent retention policy.

Loose Agent Retention concept

Agents can be retained for inbound interactions on a skill basis, and agents can be assigned more than one skill. Therefore it is possible an agent is elected to be retained for inbound calls on one of her skills, but not on the others. This means retained agents will be available for inbound calls in the designated skills only. In turn this could generate situations where an agent is retained for inbound calls in one of her skills but receives an outbound task in another thus defeating the point of the retainment in the first place (as the agent is effectively not retained, not available to take inbound calls in the skill the retainment was decided).

When however the retention concept is configured to be loosely interpreted, as soon as the agent is elected to be retained in any of the associated skills, the system retains this agent in all the rest of the skills. No outbound interactions will be delivered to retained agents from any of their skills while the loose concept is active.

Having this option disabled (retention concept being Strict) will limit the scope of retention to the designated skills only.

Setting loose agent retention concept:

  1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Workflow Settings.
  2. Click Edit of the specific tenant.
  3. Tick the Enable loose agent retention policy checkbox in order to enable this function.
  4. Click Submit to save the changes.

Service Level Based Queuing

This is an optional prioritization mechanism among the queues/campaigns. If this option is enabled, an advanced routing strategy is applied with regards to the queue importance during delivering interactions to agents.

Setting service level based queueing:

  1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Workflow Settings.
  2. Click Edit of the specific tenant.
  3. Tick the Enable service level based queuing checkbox for this global Contact Expert feature.
  4. Click Submit to save the changes.
  5. The queue priorities can be manipulated by an additional skill parameter called Service Level Target.
  6. Navigate to Operations → Agents → Skills.
  7. Click Edit of a preferred skill.
  8. Specify the Service Level Target value in seconds.

Changing these values for the skills associated with the queues will effectively result in queue prioritization. The lower the value the higher the priority. See General Properties of Skills section for further information.

Read more about queue priorities.

Maximum Phone Numbers Per Contact

This setting enables administrators to determine the number of phone numbers that can be registered for a contact.

Setting the maximum number of phone numbers per contact:

  1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Workflow Settings.
  2. Click Edit of the specific tenant.
  3. Specify the Maximum phone numbers per contact.
  4. Click Submit to save the changes.

Read more on how to register phone numbers for contact records in the Modification of a Contact Record article.

Maximum Parked Emails per Agent

Administrators can set the maximum number of parked email an agent can handle at a time. Valid values are between 1 and 10 regardless of email direction (inbound / outbound).

Setting the maximum number of parked emails per agent:

  1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Workflow Settings.
  2. Click Edit of the specific tenant.
  3. Specify the number of email tasks an agent can have in parked state at once.
  4. Click Submit to save the changes.

Maximum Number of Concurrent Chat Sessions

This value controls how many chat tasks agents in the affected tenant can work with in parallel. Valid values are between 1 and 10.

Setting the maximum number of concurrent chat sessions

  1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Workflow Settings.
  2. Click Edit of the specific tenant.
  3. Set the number of concurrent chat tasks agents can work on at once.
  4. Click Submit to save the changes.
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