Data Sheet Cisco Outbound Option Today s contact center is about more than just handling inbound telephone calls it is about fully integrated, multi-channel customer interaction. The Cisco Intelligent Contact Management (ICM) Enterprise Edition and Cisco Contact Center (CC) Enterprise Edition solutions enable your business to implement a single solution to transparently blend multiple communication channels, including voice, Web, and e-mail. This offers your customers the choice of interacting with your contact center via telephone, Web callback, voice over (Vo), text chat, or e-mail. To provide these alternatives to customers, Cisco ICM Enterprise and Cisco CC Enterprise offer Cisco Web Collaboration Option, Cisco E-Mail Manager Option, Cisco Outbound Option, and Cisco Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) Option as tightly integrated components. The Cisco ICM Enterprise and Cisco CC Enterprise Editions are strategic platforms that enable customers to move into the next phase of customer contact beyond today s Contact Center to a Customer Interaction Network. The Customer Interaction Network is a distributed, -based customer service infrastructure that comprises a continuously evolving suite of innovative, multi-channel services and customer relationship management applications. These services and applications provide enhanced responsiveness and streamlined customer exchanges to help your organization deliver superior customer service. A Customer Interaction Network extends customer service capabilities across the entire organization, giving your business a more integrated and collaborative approach to customer satisfaction. Cisco Outbound Option Overview Cisco ICM Enterprise and Cisco CC Enterprise Editions enable companies to distribute inbound service volume to a variety of termination points, including automatic call distributors (ACDs), interactive-voice-response systems (IVRs), home agents, and network terminations. The addition of Cisco Outbound Option with its combination of outbound dialing modes complements the powerful inbound call-handling capabilities of the ICM and CC platforms with a robust outbound call management solution. The ability for agents to handle both inbound and outbound contacts offers a way to optimize contact center resources. The Cisco Outbound Option enables the multi-functional contact center to take advantage of the ICM enterprise management allowing contact center managers in need of outbound campaign solutions to take advantage of the enterprise view that Cisco ICM Enterprise and Cisco CC Enterprise maintain over agent resources. All contents are Copyright 1992 2004 All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 1 of 5
Features and Benefits Dialer The Cisco Outbound Option dialer component is responsible for requesting campaign lists from the Outbound Option Campaign Manager, placing outbound calls, reserving agents, and classifying calls. Each dialer receives skill group information from the contact center solution. For CC, Dialer places outbound calls through a Voice Gateway via the Cisco CallManager. For a traditional ACD (Avaya G3 and Avaya Multivantage), Outbound Dialer places outbound calls using Dialogic cards via the ACD. Dialing modes Cisco Outbound Option offers three different dialing modes; predictive, preview, and progressive power dialing. Predictive This mode is a dedicated dialing mode that handles contacts by continually adjusting the number of call originations needed per agent to achieve near 100-percent agent utilization. Preview This mode enables the dialer to first reserve or lock an agent by placing a phantom call on the ACD. When reserved, Outbound Option posts a screen pop to the agent s CTI desktop, allowing the agent to dial, skip, or cancel the request. Progressive power dialing This mode enables campaign administrators to configure the dialing rate such that Outbound Option does not attempt to predict the number of lines needed per agent and instead dials a set number of lines per agent. This number can be configured and set to a single line per agent. This feature attempts to guarantee that an agent is available when a customer answers his or her phone. Blended modes This feature enables Cisco ICM Enterprise and Cisco CC Enterprise to deliver both inbound and outbound (preview) calls to the same group of agents dynamically. Differing from the dedicated modes, blending enables an agent to switch between receipt of inbound and outbound calls on a call-by-call basis. This mode also employs the CTI desktop to deliver contact information to the agent either prior to an outbound call or as an inbound call is received. Campaign management This feature enables call center managers to effectively administer and manage dialing campaigns by providing the ability to configure campaigns, create query rules, and import dialing lists. Campaigns can be configured to provide callbacks, which can be initiated based on the request of a party to be called back, or be automatically initiated by the system based on failure to contact a live party. Personal callback This feature provides an agent the ability to insert a record into the Dialing List table to be called at a later time. The agent can then enter, directly into the desktop application, the time and date information most convenient for the customer to be contacted. The contact record is modified in the Dialing List table, indicating a telephone number to call and a time to place the call, thereby allowing Cisco Outbound Option to offer the call to the specified agent at the designated time. Enhanced Call Progress Analysis The Outbound Option Dialer has the ability to automatically detect an answering machine, fax machine or modem for CC Enterprise Edition. Outbound Option achieves a 99.99% active voice detection with answering machine detection enabled and call results are recorded in Outbound reports, which tally the customer premise device detected during a campaign. In addition, a special mode in the dialer allows for beep detection in the welcome message. All contents are Copyright 1992 2004 All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 2 of 5
Transfer to IVR This feature enables pre-recorded IVR campaigns to be accomplished by providing the ability to play an automated message to a live caller from an IVR or leave pre-recorded messages on an answering machine. With answering machine detection enabled, live callers reached by the dialer can be connected to an agent and answering machines directed to an IVR. This eliminates agents from connecting to answering machines providing higher utilization of agent resources in the contact center. Do Not Call list This feature provides the capability to add entries into a Do Not Call table. By eliminating calls that are in the Do Not Call list, companies using the Cisco Outbound Option achieve a higher call completion success rate, while eliminating nuisance calls. Import Mechanism Cisco Outbound Option employs a file import mechanism whereby text-file imports can be kicked off on a ad-hoc basis (file polling). A third party application or batch process can create or copy an import text file as soon as it has contact information available. Imports can also be scheduled based on customer preference. Integration with the Cisco CTI Option The Cisco CTI Option supports agents in blended mode by gathering call variables (for example, dialing list ID, time zone, account number, phone number, campaign ID and name, Customer Name and query rule ID) necessary to correctly handle the call, sending it to the appropriate agent or skill group and delivering customer information to the agent either prior to an outbound call or as an inbound call is received. Reporting The sophisticated data storage design of the Cisco ICM Enterprise and Cisco CC Enterprise allow management of inbound and outbound calls within the same environment, enabling comprehensive reporting across the enterprise. Cisco Contact Center Services and Support Cisco Contact Center services and support reduce the cost, time, and complexity of implementing a contact center. Cisco and its partners have designed and deployed some of today s largest and most complex contact centers meaning that they understand how to integrate a contact center solution into your network infrastructure, a solution that will help you more quickly realize business results and gain a competitive advantage. Based on this extensive experience, Cisco has set industry standards with a services blueprint that defines critical service requirements to accelerate your success with Cisco Contact Center solutions. Cisco and partner service programs map to this services blueprint, providing you a flexible suite of collaborative offerings that help you plan, design, implement, operate, and grow a contact center solution. Through these services, your organization benefits from the experience gained by Cisco and its partners. Taking advantage of this valuable experience, you can create and maintain a resilient solution that will meet your business needs today and in the future. Summary Outbound dialing and call blending are vital to companies that desire outbound capabilities and demand maximum utilization of contact center resources. Combining the power of Cisco ICM Enterprise Edition, Cisco CC Enterprise Edition and CTI, the Cisco Outbound Option provides the ability to design complex outbound campaigns, maximize the use of skilled agents, utilize individual dialing modes, and deliver rich call contact information to a best-in-class CTI desktop. This combination enables businesses to achieve higher levels of productivity and customer satisfaction continuing the evolution towards a true Customer Interaction Network. All contents are Copyright 1992 2004 All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 3 of 5
Figure 1 Outbound Option for Cisco Contact Center PSTN V Voice Gateway Cisco CallManager Caller Phone CTI Server Outbound Agents Desktop and Phones _Dialer _Dialer Cisco CallManager PG ICM ICM Central Controller Logger DB Outbound Database Webview Client Campaign Manager Figure 2 Outbound Option for Traditional ACD (Avaya G3 and Multivantage) PSTN Traditional ACD Caller Phone CTI Server Outbound Agents Desktop and Phones Dialer Dialer ACD PG ICM ICM Central Controller Logger DB Outbound Database Campaign Manager Webview Client All contents are Copyright 1992 2004 All rights reserved. Important Notices and Privacy Statement. Page 4 of 5
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