Outdial Queuing
Contact center solutions have typically been used to address the needs of contact centers focused on inbound calls. Now, increasingly, contact centers wishing to gain a competitive business advantage are looking at new ways to contribute incremental revenue to their organization, while proactively managing customer relations – moving away from a cost center towards a profit center. Typical business drivers for adding outbound functionality to a contact center can include:
- Proactive management of customer contact and service issues
- Revenue opportunities to up-sell/cross-sell existing customers
- Migration of the contact center from a cost center to a profit center
- Maximization of agent productivity during off-peak periods
- Monitoring of customer satisfaction.
Some contact centers have struggled to seamlessly integrate outbound call functionality into their existing infrastructure. They have had to rely on manual processes or else have attempted to integrate 3rd party applications into their existing inbound contact center environment.
Zeacom’s Outdial Queuing module has been specifically designed to address these issues. Outdial Queuing extends the functionality of Zeacom’s standard queuing application and covers the requirements of outbound dialing in an integrated solution. Agents can be set up to work in dedicated outbound queues or, by sharing agent resources between inbound and outbound call activity, contact center managers can optimize agent productivity in periods of low inbound traffic by automatically introducing outbound calls to the agents, a procedure known as “call blending”.
CT Control is Zeacom’s base server module which is used to connect all other modules and control PBX traffic. It processes all agent availability requests and is responsible for performing intelligent call delivery using skills-based routing to agents. When agents are logged in as “inbound/outbound” blended agents, CT Control intelligently routes calls to them so that all inbound calls take precedence over outbound calls. This ensures that the contact center’s service level is not compromised as a result of outbound campaigns.
Outbound campaigns can be set up using either Power Dial or Preview Dial modes. The contact center manager, using the administration functions inherent in this module, can set the selected method of delivery on a campaign-by-campaign basis. When the call has been completed, a call resolution template is screenpopped to the agent’s PC desktop via the Agent Desktop application. This must be completed with the appropriate resolution code before the next outbound call can be delivered to the agent.
Managing an outbound campaign is very simple. Using an intuitive administration application, managers can determine:
- The date and time when calls for the campaign will start and end
- Which queue the outbound call requests will be channeled to and consequently which agents will handle the calls
- Which customer phone numbers will receive the calls
Contact center managers can load this information directly into the campaign or import the required contact details and phone numbers from an external database.
With the assistance of Zeacom’s Systems Integration team, contact centers with more complex outbound campaign requirements can further enhance standard Outdial Queuing functionality to include the following:
- Advanced data imports from a customer database
- Screenpop integration to a third party application
- Integration to an Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
- Advanced call flow scripting.
Outdial Queuing provides contact centers with a more flexible outbound calling campaign tool that balances the needs of your agents and customers within the context of your business objectives.
