Contact Expert v7.6
Contact Expert Terms
Documents throughout this knowledge base are riddled with terms related to Contact Expert, we intend to explain all of these here.
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Agent script | An agent script is a sequence of web forms that contains prompts, information, and/or data entry fields to help agents perform the tasks that a specific queue or campaign requires. If a user script is available for the queue or campaign that the agent is working in, Contact Expert loads the script webpage in the script area of the Contact Expert window where agents can navigate forwards and backwards in the pages of the script as necessary.
When you are using an agent script for a customer interaction, the application saves all the choices that you make and the input that you enter into the script in the contact history of the particular customer.
|
| Break | A break is a time-out period for the agent when he or she does not receive any contact center task. Every time a contact center task is finished, the agent can decide to go on a break. When he or she goes on break, the agent has to select a reason for the break from a list of so-called workcodes that the supervisor sets up. While the agent is on break, the application is locked – except for when he or she is on a lookup-type break, the agent cannot use the Contact Expert functions, and his or her Lync presence status changes to CE - Break. The agent can report an issue or log out even while he or she is on break. The application reminds the agent every 30 seconds via pop-up alert windows that he or she is on break, and it keeps a record of how long the agent spends on break, as well as the workcodes he or she selects for the break periods. |
| Business tag | Business tags are short phrases that supervisors assign to queues and campaigns, and that describe the type or purpose, as well as the business outcome of the contact center interactions that the queue or campaign handles. Unlike closure codes, business tags are specific to queues and campaigns, and are not globally pre-generated by the Contact Expert application. Business tags often have associated sub-tags that give further details of the outcome of a customer interaction. Contact Expert requires agents to choose a business tag to describe every one of their customer interactions. Examples of business tags and sub-tags include Complaint – Forwarded to IT, Seasonal Promotion – Customer interested, and Inquiry – Provided necessary information. |
| Callback | A callback is a possible outcome of a contact center customer interaction. The agent or the Contact Expert application schedules a second call, email, or instant message to the same contact, with the same purpose as the original interaction, at or until a predetermined later date. This could happen automatically when no-one answers an outbound call, determined by the rescheduling rules of the campaign, or the agent can manually schedule a callback based on the request of the customer or potential customer. |
| Campaign | In essence, campaigns are all the outbound interactions, with the exception of callbacks, that a contact center that runs Contact Expert initiates. A special type of campaign is a blended campaign, which includes inbound as well as outbound interaction traffic. A campaign is a series of interactions (voice calls, emails, text messages, or IMs) that a contact center can automatically initiate with a specific list of contacts that the owner of the contact center wants to get in touch with for a specific purpose (such as informing them about a product promotion, or collecting data from them). Apart from the list of contacts and the purpose, a campaign includes the type of agent (with the necessary skill) that is required for the purpose of the campaign. If all the preset conditions for starting or continuing a campaign are met and the required type of agent is available, Contact Expert will start the specified type of interaction with the next-in-line contact on the list of contacts, and hand it over to a required type of agent. Specification for a campaign in Contact Expert may also include preferences such as a time limit within which the contacts must be reached, the dial mode of the campaign the media channel that agents must use, or the number of failed contact attempts that the campaign allows for each contact before moving on to the next contact. |
| Closure code | Closure codes are phrases and sentences that describe whether a customer interaction was successful from a technical point of view. The same set of closure codes is available globally across the whole application for each queue or campaign. Contact Expert can specify closure codes automatically or might require agents to choose one or more closure code for each of their customer interactions. |
| Contact | A contact is the record that a contact center keeps of each of its customers or potential customers. A contact is assigned to a queue or campaign, and includes the name, one or more phone numbers, one or more email addresses, every previous interaction between the customer and the contact center, and any other details that the contact center learned about the customer during the interactions (such as the data that agents have entered into the agent scripts while they were interacting with the customer). A Contact Expert contact can include multiple phone numbers, each of which can have a separate allowed dialing time and retry attempt limit that a supervisor sets up for them. |
| Dial mode | The dial mode of an outbound voice call or a callback specifies whether or not Contact Expert, when it assigns the call to an agent, gives the agent some time to familiarize himself or herself with the contact details, and get ready for the call. The dial mode of a call can be preview, progressive or predictive, and depends on how the parent campaign was set up. If the call is a preview call, the agent has the option of browsing the details and available interaction history of the contact that he or she is going to call. Supervisors can either set the maximum duration of this preview time, or let the agent decide how long he or she needs to get ready for the call. If the call is a progressive call, Contact Expert dials the contact in the background, and hands the call to the agent only after the customer or potential customer answers the call. With progressive calls, the agent has no time to get ready for the call, and does not decide when to start the call. |
| Lookup | A 'Lookup' break is essentially an administrative break: when the agent goes on a 'Lookup' break, the screen that pops up lets him or her search for, modify, or dial contacts, browse his or her own task history, and browse for and start an overdue or waiting callback task that was assigned to him or her. To reflect this, when an agent is on a 'Lookup' break, his or her Lync presence status changes to CE - Admin. |
| Queue | A queue is the dynamic list of the calls, emails, text messages, and IMs that arrive in the contact center and have something in common (for example, all are complaints about a specific product or service), taken as a group. Contact Expert supervisors and administrators usually set up a separate queue for every possible category of inbound customer interaction. Contact Expert can dynamically rank and sort the calls within a queue based on various predefined parameters, and route each one to an appropriate agent (who has the skill that the given queue requires) in the order of their relative priority within the queue. Important indicators for queues are their size, and the average time, as well as the longest time that a caller has to wait in the queue before the system routes him or her to an agent. |
| Service level | A contact center’s service level is the number of interactions that the center handles within a certain period of time, expressed as a percentage. In Contact Expert, if the real-time service level falls below the acceptable threshold that the supervisor of the center had set up, the background of the service level indicator icon on the wallboard or agent dashboard turns red. |
| Skill | Skills are short phrases that describe the various types of customer interactions that a contact center, or a contact center agent handles. When a supervisor sets up an agent account, he or she must assign one or more skills at various skill levels to the account, because Contact Expert uses skills to automatically determine which agents will handle which type of tasks in the contact center, and in what order (usually in order of descending skill level). Each queue and campaign has a specific skill assigned to it, and the agents that have this skill get the tasks related to the queue or campaign. Examples of skills include foreign languages, and areas of expertise such as debt collection, sales, or data collection. |