Things to consider setting up campaigns in Contact Center

Question 

How do I best set up Contact Center Campaigns?

Applies To

• Contact Center

Answer

There are many things to consider when you're setting up your campaigns for Contact Center

• Choose the type of Campaign you want to run
  • Preview - Agents get to see the details of the call before making the interaction - usually requires manual intervention by agents
  • Progressive - Waits until agents are available and then auto dials the next record but only connects to agent when customer answers
  • Predictive - Works on an algorithm to calculate how many records to call to get an agent to connect to a customer quickest 

There are several things to consider for each type of campaign as listed below and there are some things to know for all campaigns based on current system limitations:

Preview

• Can be used On Demand connection
• Requires agents to start the interaction after the call details are presented to them.

Progressive

• Requires Persistent Connection
• Agents need to select Work Offline before finishing post processing otherwise the system will automatically call customers and will register an abandon if the agents change to a different status (work offline, break or logout) after the call to the customer has been made, the customer answers and the agent's status has changed and can no longer be accepted by the agent. 
• Dials one agent one call

Predictive

• Requires Persistent Connection
• Needs 5 agents and 50 records+ in a campaign to be most effective
• Agents need to select Work Offline before finishing post processing otherwise the system will automatically call customers and will register an abandon if the agents change to a different status (work offline, break or logout) after the call to the customer has been made, the customer answers and the agent's status has changed and can no longer be accepted by the agent. 
• May make multiple calls to get that one call for the available agents based on algorithm to keep agents busy without any waiting for connection to calls
• Will stop persistent connection and auto return to progressive style of one agent one call if abandoned rates get close to set percentage.

Information for all Campaign types

• No matter how many records you have in a campaign, the queue will only populate them in batches of 50. 
• When the queue goes below a set threshold in the queue the queue will then be topped up to 50 again from the records available. It will not top up one removed one add. It only tops up when it goes below the threshold.
• Campaign queue levels are based on queue only. So if you have more than one campaign using the same queue it will split that 50 between the campaigns. ie 5 campaigns to one queue, when it needs to top up the queue it will take a little of each campaign to add to the queue. This can lead to issues with one campaign not managing to populate until the threshold is hit on the queue and so the campaign will appear to just stop.  Ideally you'll have one campaign to one queue for maximum benefits - this is best practice for our system.
• Campaigns currently have no priorities at campaign level. Again, if you want to be able to prioritise, you need to have one queue per campaign and prioritise with queue skills/agent skills. Individual records however can't be prioritised in a queue at present. It is first come first served in queues.
• If Campaigns are dynamic, the logic will order the campaigns by records that have not been called or next call time has elapsed, followed by scheduled call time, followed by when added to campaign.
  • Adding a record dynamically without a scheduled time will make the record be dialed after all scheduled and previous records have been tried and retried.
• Priorities are currently set using the queue priorities - for example campaign records attached to queue x with 10 set on the queue will all be dialed before queue y set at 6 on queue level.
• To call Numbers sequentially for multiple numbers in a campaign the Sequential Dialing option needs to be selected under the Dialer tab of the campaign. 
• We support up to 22 contact numbers per record for the dialer to call in sequence.
• If a campaign needs to be paused, you will need to purge the queue as well to stop dialing, otherwise it will continue to dial until the queue is cleared.
• If a campaign is started with no records and is not dynamic, you can not add records to it after it's started. Only Dynamic campaigns can have records added to it via API after it's been started. 
• Dynamic Campaigns do not close on their own as you can add via API more records later. 
• Disposition Actions apply to manually selected transaction codes. If the call doesn't get to an agent (ie through predictive where it dials customer first and if answer then connect with agent) then it will follow the default flows for the automatic codes set in the backend.
• Campaign records can't be updated using the CRM after it's been started, you can only do this using API's on dynamic campaigns.
• As records are filtered before populating a campaign using the TPS/CTPS do not call lists, these records will not show on any reports when the campaign has been started.
• Agent priorities also have effects on the queues even for campaign calls. An agent that is assigned to 2 outbound campaign queues can have a lower priority over one queue to another. The individual agent's calls can will then be weighted based on this.
• Once a campaign is started, you can't amend the details of the campaign. This includes the schedule which if changed will not update the campaign and campaign reserved agents set in the outbound script section. (you will see you can amend the schedule/reserved agent but it won't take effect until campaign is paused/restarted)
• The agent end point has to have a longer timeout to voicemail than the timeouts set in Contact Center or voicemail needs to be turned off otherwise, if an agent times out their end point workplace will answer the call and your customer will hear the agents voicemail.
• Agents can't use DND (Do not disturb on their end point) as this will automatically push calls to voicemail or drop the call if no voicemail is set. This will lead to abandoned calls in campaigns if already connected to an customer, or calls being answered by agent voicemails.