Play an announcement and return call to agent? 1

[Shauneee]

Hi,

We currently on CM3.15 and I'm wondering if the following is possible...

An agent will answer an incoming call but at some part of the conversation we need to play them a 2 minute announcement - now, whilst we could simply get the agent to read out the statement, we are a little "untrusting" (as you know, even if humans read things out, they can read them out wrong!) so what I was wondering is can we "transfer" the call to a VDN (or similiar), get that VDN to play the announcement and transfer the call back to the original agent (i.e. transferring back to the queue is not acceptable - it must come back to the original agent)...

The only way I could think is something along using ANI and several steps... something along lines of....

01 Announement 1234
02 goto step 10 if ani = 5001
03 goto step 11 if ani = 5002
.
.
.
10 route to number 5001 unconditionally
11 route to number 5002 unconditionally

(where 5001/2 etc would be agent numbers) - only thing is, we have 60 agents so potentially very messey... also how would ACW etc feature in this?

Now it must be possible (HSBC bank have a system that lets you rest your PIN and the call will come back to the original agent) - do I need something else to do it? (Maybe some kind of adjunct processing? if so what? or is something along the VDN route above doable...? (Hope all that makes sense)

many thanks in advance for anyones advice...

Shaun

 

[SF0751]

I would record the announcement and have the agent conference the call to the announcement, remaining on the line while the announcement is played.

Susan
“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
Then, when you criticize them, you are a mile away ...
and you have their shoes.”

 

[Shauneee]

SF0751...

Thanks for the reply - Now, you're not going to believe me when I say this but we did think of that (honest! - and sorry for not saying so in the original post) - only down side we could think of is that our agent would have to stay fairly quite as we disable the mute button (long story but basically we want to report on how long they keep clients on hold and some had worked out if they use the mute button... If only agents could just worry about doing thier job - hey ho - guess that is one we all face! - anyway)... Have to say that this is the favoured way at present but just wondered if I had missed something blindingly obvious or could get some "add-on" to do it...

Many thanks

Shaun

 

[Stinney]

Putting the ANI where you have it in the vector will most likely use the caller's ANI not the agent's extension.

If you need to use a vector to hanlde this, you can use variables to route the call back to the agent. I'd write it like this:

01 set [local collect variable] = [ani variable] ADD none
02 wait time 2 seconds hearing silence (allows time for agent to press transfer and not clip the beginning of annonucement)
03 announcement XXXX
04 route-to number [local collect variable] with cov y if unconditionally
05 stop

If you go this route, and if you're not using it already, you probably should use a timed after call work. The agent needs to be unavailable during the time the caller is listening to the announcement and while they wait for the caller to come back. If they go back to available after transferring, you risk having the agent get another call while they are waiting for the caller to come back. If try to use AUX, the agent could still get a call if they don't press AUX quick enough (or forget to go into AUX). Also, if the caller abandons during the announcement, they could wait an unessasary amount of time in AUX waiting for the caller to come back.

You could set a timed ACW that would allow enough time for the caller to come back, but also will automatically put the agent back in Available, if too much time passes and the caller doesn't return to them.

Also, if agents have a coverage path with voicemail, the caller will route to their voicemail if for some reason the agent doesn't answer. Do you really want this?

You also need to consider how reporting will be effected. If initially it's routed to the queue, then directly back to the agent, once it's routed back to the agent directly, you lose all of the skill report data.

- Stinney

Favorite all too common vendor responses: "We've never seen this issue before." AND "No one's ever wanted to use it like that before.

 

[Shauneee]

Stinney

Ah-ha thanks very much for that - I'm hoping the ani will be the agent's (will try that) but never thought of the variable route (annoying as use them for other things - just forgot you can define one as ANI - oh well) - will give that a try as certainly would make a tidy solution... Not to fussed about the stats as immediatley after playing the announcemnet the agent will be transferring them somewhere else (it's just we can't do that as part of the VDN/vector as we need to do an announced transfer)

Many thanks for the responses - Shaun

 

[Stinney]

If the agent is just going to transfer the caller to someplace else after the announcement, why don't you just put the routing in the vector? Why does it have to go back to the agent to transfer the call?

If it's a case that they could be transfering the caller to different places, you can add a step at the beginning of the vector for the agent to dial the number to transfer the caller to after the announcement.

01 collect X digits after announcemnet XXXX (agent enters number, then presses transfer)
02 wait time 2 seconds hearing silence (allows time for agent to press transfer and not clip the beginning of annonucement)
03 announcement XXXX
04 route-to digits with cov y
05 stop


- Stinney

Favorite all too common vendor responses: "We've never seen this issue before." AND "No one's ever wanted to use it like that before.

 

[Shauneee]

Good question - let me explain... In our call centre, our agents will be taking the front-line calls (as normal) but if a certain condition is met we need to play the announcement (in preference to them read a script - being as this is a regulatory requirment - hence the prefernce to play an announcement) and then (after the announcement) do an announced transfer to a thrid party (in this case transfer the call out of our call centre) but we need to tell the party that we are transfering to all the relevant details such as name, address etc as opposed to just a blind transfer... Hope that makes sense... Shaun

 

[jimbojimbo]

There are a couple of different ways to handle this. A CTI applicaiton would be best since you want to transfer the caller which means you want to make sure the agent doesn't get another call so you would need to make him busy until the call comes back.