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Outbound calling without being interrupted by incoming calls

If Puzzel agents that usually answer incoming calls/written requests sometimes should make outgoing calls without being interrupted by incoming calls/requests, there are different ways to do this.

Before you conclude what is the best solution for your company, you should consider the effects the different alternatives have on the reported Time logged on and Time in pause, Time per pause reason, and the reported time in Wrap-up and AHT.

1) A separate profile for Outbound mode/Back-office

The admin creates a profile called e.g. "Outbound mode" containing only Phone.If an agent wants to make several outgoing calls without being interrupted by incoming calls or written requests, the agent can (log off and) log on with profile Outbound mode/Back-office

The agents initial status after logon to queue is Ready, until the first outbound call is started. When the outbound call is finished, the status changes from Connected to Wrap-up (pre-defined to x sec).

If a new outbound call is started while in Wrap-up, the Wrap-up is ended and status is changed to Connecting and then Connected.
If Wrap-up status ends before a new call is started, the agents status will be Ready until he initiates a new call, but no incoming call/request is sent to the agent while in status Ready.

2) Use a Pause reason between outbound calls

If using a separate profile is not what you want, you can tell the agents to use a specific Pause reason between outbound calls (if the predefined Wrap-up is not long enough for both wrap-up and preparation for the next call).

We suggest the admin creates a Pause reason called e.g. "Outbound prep."

The agents first outbound call can be done while in status Wrap-up or Ready (when logged on with a profile containing incoming queues). After the outbound call has ended, the agents status is Wrap-up (for the pre-defined x sec).

To avoid receiving an incoming call (or written request) when Wrap-up has ended, the agent must select Pause reason "Outbound prep." while in Wrap-up.

When the agent initiates a new outgoing call, the pause reason is ended and status is set to Connecting and then Connected.

3) Long pre-defined Wrap-up or allow agent to extend Wrap-up

If the pre-defined Wrap-up (Users Products Agent timeouts: Wrap-up timeout phone) is long, e.g. 5 minutes, the agent can stay in status Wrap-up while doing after call wrap-up and while preparing for the next outgoing call. With such a long pre-defined Wrap-up, the agent should:

initiate a new outbound call to end the Wrap-up
or
click Ready to end Wrap-up and receive a new incoming call/written request from queue

The actual time in Wrap-up is reported per agent in Real-time Ticker and in Statistics report Details per agent/Details per agent per queue, so its easy to see which agents have the longest average Wrap-up.

If the agent is allowed to extend wrap-up after a call (Users Products Agent application: Possible to extend wrap-up with seconds), the agent can extend wrap-up as much as needed to stay in wrap-up while preparing for the next outgoing call.

With one of these Wrap-up solutions, the reported Wrap-up will be the sum of after call Wrap-up and preparation for next outbound call.

Reporting

The time in status Connected (speak time), in Wrap-up and the total time in Pause is reported in Real-time Ticker User group/Agent and in Statistics reports Details for agents incl. time logged on and Details per agent per queue. The time spent per pause reasons is shown in Ticker, but in Statistics this is only shown in report Time per pause reason.

Both these agent reports show per agent the Avg. speaktime, Avg.wrap-up, AHT, Time logged on ex pause and the total Time in pause, but they do not show time per pause reason. If agents spend time in a pause reason (e.g. Outbound prep.) between outgoing calls, this time is included in Time in pause.

Report Time per pause type shows per agent the Time logged on incl pause, Time logged on excl pause, Time in pause and in addition, the Time per pause type.