Outbound Campaign parameters explanation

[Igor1906]

I'm interesting in following parameters:

1.Dialer abandoned delay

Question is:what does it mean that dialer abandon a call?? In what cases call can be abandoned by the Dialer??

2.Abandon calls limit

Question is: How this parameter influences outbound campaign?

[shayonasul]

Outbound Option conforms to the regulations implemented by the FCC to comply with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. That is, the system supplies customers in the United States with the software tools necessary for them to abide by those regulations. These mechanisms are designed to be flexible enough to be tailored to satisfy similar requirements in other regions.

Outbound Option conforms to the regulations implemented by the FTC. That is, the Commission?s revisions clamp down forcefully on "abandoned" calls, or instances where a consumer answers the phone and finds dead air-the telemarketer has already disconnected or cannot provide an agent for the call. While theoretically the FTC now prohibits all abandoned calls, the agency has established practical parameters for acceptable abandoned call rates.

A call is not considered abandoned if it is answered by a live agent. A call is considered abandoned if, after two seconds, no live agents are available, a recorded message is played identifying the seller and noting on whose behalf the call is being made. In addition, to guard against abandoned calls, telemarketers are required to give consumers ample time to answer the phone by allowing it to ring for 15 seconds or four rings.

The amended Telemarketing Sales Rule now specifies that when a person answers the telephone, businesses can abandon no more than two percent of calls. The default abandon call limit is 2% of total calls made. To police the abandonment rates, the FTC now requires all businesses to keep detailed records on compliance with abandonment standards.

To meet the 2% abandonment rate, you will need to have enough staff in your outbound option or you can route the calls to 'Abandon IVR Route point' where you can play a specific message.

HTH,

Sulabh

P.S.: Please rate helpful posts.

[Igor1906]

Thanks. and what about second question?

[shayonasul]

Outbound option has basically 3 main modes Preview, Progressive & Predictive. For first 2 modes the 'abandoned calls' limit won't be of that significance as the agent gets a chance to view the end-customer's information and then either accept/reject the call. For Predictive however, where the agent doesn't get a chance to pre-screen the call it becomes significant. The predictive dialer runs on algorithm which you can tweak in your scripting by specifying the value in 'Lines per agent' under Dialing Algorithm. For eg: the dialer can send out 3 calls per agent, that would mean the other 2 calls can end up being 'abandoned'. However, there's a provision 'Skill Group' tab in Campaign configuration to provide an 'Abandon IVR route point'. Essentially you can queue the call and play a company specific message while the caller is on hold, preventing the call from being marked as 'abandoned' due to lack of available agents.

Or you don't provide the 'abandon ivr route point', allowing the dialer to mark the call as 'abandoned' and then re-scheduling it sometime later for 2nd attempt.

So it would entirely depend on your business rules as to what effect an 'abandoned' call has. Say for example, if it's tele-marketing company than one attempt should be good enough. And if it's a health company where nurses/insurance agents are trying to get in touch with patient/customer than you might want to consider providing 'abandon ivr route point' or re-scheduling the call for 2nd attempt.

HTH

Sulabh

PS: Please rate helpful posts.

[aaron_simpson]

I think that with "Cisco Outbound progressive mode" agent has not any changes to view the end-customer's information before call, it's not like "Preview mode".

We can also set fixed number of lines in progressive mode, for example 3 lines per 2 agents. Then it's really possible to get much abandoned calls because amount of lines is not variable.

In Predictive Mode initial value "Lines per agent" is a seed which system increments to "Maximum lines per agent" depending how much there is agents and how much is drop rate (abandoned call rate). Unfortunately I've not seen any deeper description how this system works.

I think not many use "Abandon IVR route point" option in Europe where my coordinates are.

On "Skill Group" tab there is option "Overflow agents per dialer" which can be set to for example 1 or 2 if there is for example 50-100 agents logged in to system. Anyone used it? This way dialer or dialers reserve 1-2 agents for abandoned calls.

I have some questions if anyone could help:

- which CallResult codes are abandoned calls (drops) in Dialing_List table? Is it 13 or 16?

- is it possible to do a registry tweak so that abandoned calls have maximum reach attempts 1 or 2 and all other results are handled normally based on settings from "campaign general" tab? I don't want to dial abandoned call again and again. Unfortunately it seems to be possible.

- how to monitor amount of abandoned calls? From cisco reports "Dialer Half Hour" I see only abandoned calls per dialer, not by campaign which would be more useful.

[shayonasul]

Hi Aaron,

1) For abandoned calls the CallResult code is 16, please refer to Appendix E > Page 205/206 at the following link (Outbound Option User's Guide):

http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/products/ps524/c1626/ccmigration_09186a0080225ca9.pdf

2) I don't think it's possible to stop dialing abandoned calls by a registry tweak.

3) To monitor abandoned calls by campaign, run the following report from WebView:

Outbound Option > Campaign Query Rule > Run the report 'camqry11' (Status of all campaigns Half Hour) - This allows you to select your various campaigns.

HTH, Please rate helpful posts.

Sulabh

[aaron_simpson]

I was reading about CallResult 13.. "Customer

not contacted, stopped by the outbound

option dialer due to some error condition.

This result code can also mean that

a dialer call was terminated by the network

before a result code could be returned"

I've tried to monitor our Dialing_List -table. During 3 last hours we have only 7 which had CallResult 16, but 51 occasions which had CallResult 13, CallStatus R.

Thanks Shayonasul, I can see now from camqry11 that these 7 were abandoned calls / drops. Makes me wonder what's this CallResult 13..?