The USD Accelerator – Technical Guide, Phone Call Features

In this section …

  • Phone Call Features
    • Call Backs
      • Call Back Queues
    • Close Phone Call on Close of Session
    • Incorrect Customer
    • CTI (Without QGate)

Phone call Features

Despite the move to a multi-channel approach phone calls remain at the heart of most contact centres, and therefore The USD Accelerator contains many features aimed at helping the agents deal with the high volume of calls many companies face.

Call Backs

Call backs are important in multiple scenarios;

  • You might have successfully completed a service request but agree to call the customer back tomorrow, just to check everything is really ok.
  • The customer hasn’t got time to discuss their sales enquiry in detail so you agree to call back at a more appropriate time.
  • Etc.

In all of these circumstances (and more) call backs can be very important. The USD Accelerator provides a quick method to create call backs.

The ability to create calls backs for accounts, contacts, leads and regarding cases has been built into the agent scripts on each of these entities.

The call agent script answer triggers a second agent script to load. In this script you then select one of multiple options to default the time with the call back is required.

Tip:
You can of course also just manually edit the due date!

If you have an existing phone call open, then some of details such as description and priority will be used to default values on the call back. If no phone call is open then the callback will simply be linked to the appropriate entity.

Additionally, if you opt to use a call back queue then the new phone call will be routed to that queue. (you will find details of the call back queue functionality in the next section.) If you are using queues then you’d access them from the Queue Items option.

If not routing call backs to a queue they will be owned by the agent and will show in the my work menu.

Using call backs is an optional feature of The USD Accelerator. To enable the call backs button on the phone call navigation toolbar you will need to ensure the user option “UseCallBacks” it set to “Y”.

Call Back queues

The call back queue option makes use of two options, Callback_QueueID and Callback_QueueName. If these options are populated new call-backs will be automatically routed to this queue.

When making call backs there are two schools of thought, the first being that the agent who created the call back will keep their personal commitment to contact the customer. This is great when you have time for that level of personalised service.

Therefore the second approach is to always route call backs to a queue. By routing to a queue we enable the ability for multiple operators to pick and make calls from a central queue. (Not as personalized but possibly more efficient.)

f session

An option called ClosePhonecallOnSessionClose can be used to ensure phone calls are automatically closed following a session close.

Imagine your agents often work in batch mode or maybe they only make outbound telesales calls. This means that as soon as a phone call is opened it must be made. And therefore closed.

Or imagine your operators only take incoming calls. Whenever they close a session it might be essential they make the incoming call as completed.

In my experience a common frustration for operators is needing to remember to manually close calls.

To force phone calls to be correctly complete this setting can be used so that phone calls are saved then marked as Received or Made, without the operator needing to manually close the call. (Although best practice suggests you should probably still encourage them to save the phone call!)

Incorrect Customer

CTI may occasionally load a customer who isn’t the person on the phone! For example, say a wife phoned up using the husbands phone. The husband’s record may screen pop. Or maybe the agent simply accidently selects the incorrect customer. When these things happen, rather than starting a new session the incorrect customer option can be used.

A button is shown on the phone call. Clicking this will close any contact, lead or account record currently opened. And also blank the details from the phone. The a search tab is opened to enable the operator to locate the correct customer.

The incorrect customer button in the phone call navigation toolbar can be enabled / disabled as required. Using a USD UII option called “IncorrectCustomer”.

Non-Customer Calls

You may occasionally receive a call from someone who isn’t a contact, account or lead. Maybe it is a wrong number or an unwanted sales call! When this type of call happens the agent could simply close the session without entering the details on the phone call. However this would not store a record of these non-customer calls.

Two UII option exist “Non_Customer_GUID” and “Non_Customer_Fullname”. Populating these to the details for a generic contact will enable a non-customer call option. The agent can then assign the call to the generic contact with one click. (To disable this feature simply deactivate these options.)

Incorrectly set from, to or regarding

There maybe cases when the from to or regarding fields are not correctly set. This may simply be “user error” but could also be because of occasional issues in the loiading of the phone call form. To help resolve these issues a “!” icon has been added that when selected we reset the from, to and regarding fields.

CTI (Without QGate)

Computer telephony integration (CTI) is used to automatically pop contact, account and lead records as required. Or when no match is found to allow a search to be completed to locate the required record.

The USD Accelerator has the generic USD listener shipped with USD implemented. You could (of course) edit this to point to a custom listener as required!

The window navigation has been configured to search standard telephone number fields on contact, account and lead entities.

When an exact match is found then the matching lead, contact or account will be loaded in a session. Additionally a phone call is created and set regarding the record loaded.

If multiple matches (or no matches) are returned then a phone call is still created and a session opened. The operator will be positioned on a search screen allowing them to locate the correct customer. When the correct record is loaded it will be automatically associated with the phone call.

The CTI listener is essentially listening for a url, a typical example would be http://localhost:5000/?ANI=07767207939&DNIS=703-555-1234.

By default port 5000 will be used, should your phone system send CTI events on a different port simply create a USD UII Option called “GenericListener” and set it to an alternative port number. (As shown below.)

Note:
Alternatively you can use QGate’s Intelli-CTi product to provide additional CTI capabilities without the need to develop any custom code.

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