Agent Scripts are a powerful part of Unified Service Desk (USD), used correctly could make a real difference to how a call centre operates. I will start off (in this post) by explaining what agent scripts are, how they operate and will discuss how they might be used. In future posts I will cover creating your first script and additional posts explaining how to add various types of actions to the scripts.

When an operator takes a customer telephone call, scripting can be used to guide the calls. This helps the operator easily navigate the system but more importantly helps to provide consistent customer experience. Some scripts are simply place holders for the operator to tick to ensure that a step is completed, for example there might be a standardised approach to opening the phone call.

Other steps can trigger actions, such as reviewing recent cases. Selecting this step might automatically show the associated case view. Or from an account session you might want an option to record the telephone conversation with the customer, clicking on the script action in this example might create a partially completed phone activity in CRM. Prepopulated with details from the account.

Agent scripts are contextual. By this I mean, having opened an account the operator may be presented with options to create a phone call or create a case. Having triggered the creation of a case or a phone call a different script could be dynamically launched related to the previous answer.

Conditions can be added to steps within a script, meaning some options within the script may only be visible in certain situations. You may (for example) have a customer type to indicate if this is a wholesale or retail account. And therefore you may need the scripts to present different options depending on the this customer type. As the services offered to retail customers maybe very different to those needed for wholesale accounts.

This might start to sound a little complicated. And it could be! Creating a script is relatively simple but in some organisations the volume and complexity of the services offered could make script creation a challenging / lengthy activity.

Below I’ve given an example of how a script might look in USD. As always (sorry!) the sample application I’m using has a fishing theme!!! Notice I have numbered four sections, I will mention each of these in more detail below.

1 – Side Panel
The side panel in USD is used to present the scripts to the agent. When I created mine I used a couple of additional configurations which you might find useful. First off I open the side panel automatically when the session is created. I also present some overview information about the session. In the real world this overview might be used to the customer name, contact details, date they last called, account status etc etc. (Whatever is useful in your particular situation.)

2 – Script Drop down
In some situations the operators won’t need to use this drop down! If having started an account session the operator clicked on create a case, the active script might change, to show the questions appropriate to creating a case. Having completed the case the operator may wish to return to the original account related script to conduct additional actions. This drop down supports this ability.

3 – Instructions
In this area you’ll present any instructions / questions the operator should (could) be saying to the customer. Notice how the script is personalised to include the details that relate to the active session.

4 – The Answers
Here a list of possible answers to customer queries would be presented. These might include create a case, place an order etc. In my fishing example, you might want to create a lake or check the weather for the current venue.

Notice how a green tick is displayed next to an answer once this step has been completed.

Having selected an answer the script might move on. (Bringing the drop down in point two into play!) In my example, having displayed or created a lake at a venue, another script would fire that allows the creation of a trip to that lake.