Adding features, multiplying benefits

Adding features, multiplying benefits OUTBOUND CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT In association with

What is it? BT's Outbound Call Management Solution is based on the software dialler component of the Customer Interaction Suite, which can provide you with all the benefits of automated outbound dialling with the added assurance of BT support throughout the lifetime of your product. Who is it for? The Outbound Call Management solution is suitable for busy contact centres with a Nortel, Avaya or Cisco platform who want to enjoy the benefits of improved customer service and productivity, whilst reducing training requirements. As Outbound Call Management is a flexible solution, changes in customer and business demands can be responded to quickly. Outbound s main function is to automate and add intelligence to the dialling process. Dialling is one of the most important operations in any Customer Contact Centre as it needs to determine the most cost effective way to successfully contact the customer. With an automated dialler, there is no need for manual dialling, nor for time consuming number searching and management of unsuccessful responses such as busy, no answer, fax, answering machines, etc. The right script or application is screenpopped at the agents desktop, providing a soft-telephone capable of handling all telephony operations, guiding script and full customer interaction history. Scripting enables agents to provide customers with detailed and customised information, reducing training time and allowing supervisors to change scripts on-the-fly to quickly respond to changing conditions or business needs. The suite allows you to personalise proactive campaigns improving the customer s perception of the company. Outbound Dialling applications include a wide-range of activities such as telemarketing, telesales, market research, debt collection, fund raising and other revenue-generating business activities. Outbound Dialling can also be used for proactive customer contact, thus improving customer service levels and extending customer relationships. Highlights Choice of Pacing Modes: Preview, Progressive (Power) and Predictive Very Powerful Predictive Dialling Adaptative Algorithms: suitable for under ten agents to thousands of agents. Multiple Time Zones Settings Multiple Telephones per Contact Multiple Dial Rules (per campaign, per contact) On-line Monitoring (inc. Dial Status; Business Outcome) Reporting Easy to Manage with Unified Tool Powerful Scripting tool (RAD; Reuse scripts; Easy to use, easy to change) Integration Capabilities Platform Independent: works on Nortel Meridian 1 and Cisco AVVID platforms Complementary to a Contact Centre Solution Integrates with Web Collaboration module

Creating Campaigns and Contact Lists usupervisor allows you to create and manage effective outbound dialling campaigns, through an intuitive Interface (giving supervisors a high degree of control according to predefined priorities) allowing customisation of each aspect of campaigns to meet specific business needs. Contact List Management The most important considerations include the accuracy of the contact list, re-scheduling parameters, priorities and assigned agents, dial rules, time zones, call qualification and pacing modes. Contact Information The time zone and contact details are set when the contact is created, both can be adjusted by the supervisor or by a script. Contacts have an associated priority and dial rule. Contact Moment A Contact Moment is specified as a date and time in the time zone of the contact. When the moment occurs, the Altitude solution attempts to call the contact. Contact Priority The priority allows you to set rules for call prioritisation, calls with the highest priority are called first. Dial rules can adjust the contact priority to give the contact more or less importance. Priorities are assigned manually or automatically as a consequence or reschedule. Contact Rescheduling Re-schedules are available to use on demand by the agent, the first is defined by the Agent by moment in time, priority, agent, etc. The second call attempt is based upon a definition per unsuccessful tone type; try again after 10 minutes, with a maximum of 5 tries and a reduced priority each time. If for any reason a particular agent is considered to be the most appropriate to get in touch with the customer, then they can be proactively defined at the contact list level. If a manual reschedule is done, the agent can book it to themselves or another colleague. Special Contacts Contacts are promoted to special after an abandoned call or, optionally, after a nuisance call. Special Contacts are called using power dialling, guaranteeing that an agent is available and ready to deal with the contact. Supervisors can define this globally or per campaign. Dial Rules The dials rule describes when to use each telephone number, and how to retry the contact when a call fails. Campaigns have a default dial rule, and contacts may have an overriding dial rule. If you change the definition of a dial rule, all the contacts with that dial rule are immediately affected. This means that you can fine-tune dial rules to achieve the best performance. Access Line Rules Special rules can be defined in order to transform contact telephone numbers into dialled numbers. These rules include the selection of a particular operator (typically for cost-effectiveness reasons) and the selection of accounting codes (a prefix that is appended to the dialled number in order to bill the call to a specific entity). Call History The Altitude solution remembers how many times a contact was called, and the outcome of each call. Using the call history, dial rules can retry the contact or give up. Contact Filters Contact filters are SQL clauses that restrict the admissible contacts at some period of the day. The SQL clauses can only refer to the contact table and to the contact data. Contact filters can be used to implement quotas. Call Qualification For campaigns where real-time monitoring of business information is crucial, the supervisor can check the call qualification status that can be parameterised for each campaign, and make decisions accordingly. Call qualification is critical in a telemarketing activity since it is defined on a campaign basis and allows for an immediate modification of the campaign itself. If a negative outcome related to a specific objection has a high frequency, the supervisor can decide to change the campaign script to include better objection handling in real time.

Pacing Modes After deciding which contacts are to be called using the features mentioned, the dialler sends the actual dial command to the Altitude solution. The way this operation is accomplished depends on the pacing mode. 3 pacing modes are available: preview, power and predictive, which are set and can be customised per campaign. In each mode, the agents screen displays the contact information. Preview This is used when the agent needs to view the customer profile before making contact. This is widely used in situations where customer data familiarity and accuracy are paramount. In this pacing mode the dial command is requested by the agent, who decides each time when to make the next call. Power or Progressive This mode places calls only when agents are available. It assures that when a customer is called by the system, that call always reaches an agent. The drawback of this pacing mode is the time consumed during the calling process dialling, ringing and unsuccessful tones. Predictive This pacing mode is used mainly to contact a large volume of customers in a short period of time. Predictive dialling frees agents from waiting during the dialling and ringing process. Agents spend their time answering calls and are not distressed with unanswered calls. Campaigns using predictive dialling can achieve talk times of 50 minutes per hour. Predictive dialling predicts when agents will be available. Then, predictive dialling decides how many calls to make based on the success probability and the time for the contact to answer. Probabilities are continually updated for optimal performance. There are three predictive dialling pacing modes to match the different types of campaign: campaigns with many agents, campaigns with few agents, and short calls. Predictive Automatic This is most suitable for campaigns with many agents. Predictive automatic uses the position of the agent in the script application and also past behaviour, plus either the requested retention or the requested nuisance ratio in order to determine when to place calls. The system then predicts how many calls to place, taking into consideration the expected delivery time and success rate of calls placed. The calculation is based upon all agents in the campaign. Predictive Agent-Based This dialling is most suitable for campaigns with few agents. It is similar to predictive automatic; statistics are gathered per campaign but calls are placed per agent. This mode allows the interaction of the agent to decide to postpone the placement of calls. A visual indicator is displayed to the agent when it is about to place a new call. The agent can click the visual indicator to indicate their readiness or to postpone dialling. At any time the agent can also click the visual indicator to start dialling. Predictive Average Talk Time This is most suitable for campaigns that have short call times and small variations in the talk time. Predictive average talk time uses the average duration of calls to determine when to place calls. It uses the average talk time to predict when the agent will finish the current call. This pacing mode can also be used as a first approximation while accurate statistics are being collected for Predictive Automatic. Call Classification In order to achieve such high performance, the predictive dialler needs to know about unsuccessful calls. This capability is performed by a component named the classifier, which is usually connected to the switch. This classifier places and analyzes the result of the actual calls, returning it to the dialler. Depending on the result, calls that are not answered by live contacts can be automatically disconnected. The classifier can filter out calls, resulting in several outcomes; such as busy, no answer, answering machine, fax, modem or invalid number.

Nuisance Calls Since the number of contacts that are launched in predictive mode is greater than the number of available agents, contacts may answer the telephone before an agent is available. Depending on how the campaign has been configured, the suite can: Immediately disconnect the call Place the call in the campaign retention queue Calls that are immediately disconnected are considered nuisance calls. Calls put in the retention queue wait for an agent to become available. A retention queue dramatically helps the performance of predictive dialling, even if the queue only holds the call for a few seconds. Some contacts may decide not to wait and instead hang-up (abandoned calls) or the dialler may decide to hang-up a call if the retention time-out is attained. Again these calls are considered nuisance calls. Supervisors define the desired nuisance ratio per campaign. The nuisance ratio is typically proportional to the achieved agent talk time per hour. We recommend nuisance ratios lower than 5%. Fast Algorithm Stabilisation Period The Stabilisation Period is the time the algorithm takes to stabilise between over-dialling (Higher nuisance) and under dialling (Lower talk-time per hour), when initiating the campaign, or on changing conditions like removing agents. Selecting the Pacing Mode Pacing Modes can be selected according to specific campaign objectives. The Pacing Mode can also be adjusted online. It is even possible to build campaigns in such a way that customers are contacted in different pacing modes according to the contact data, predictive call duration and volume. For example in a debt collection situation, first contacts may use predictive, while second and further contacts use preview dialling. Unified Supervisor Tool The Unified Supervisor offers comprehensive monitoring and performance analysis across all elements of a multimedia interaction environment through an easy-to-use interface. Delivering comprehensive real time data to supervisors and managers concerning campaigns, agents, call and email queues and outbound dialling status. Supervisors can respond to environmental changes with dynamic adjustments online, such as changing the dial pacing mode of an outbound campaign, or adjusting the minimum skills requirements for incoming calls in order to shorten wait times. It allows organisations to achieve desired service levels and a costeffective operation in the increasingly complex environment of customer interaction. Historical Reporting Historical reports allow analysis into past campaigns, agent and contact behaviour. This information can help plan future campaigns. Blend Inbound and Outbound Dialling The suite optimises your investment by efficiently managing the use of resources in your Contact Centre. It delivers a blended Contact Centre operation, resulting in significant productivity improvements. This blended capability operates seamlessly, allowing agents to switch between inbound and outbound calls quickly and easily as call volumes dictate. Agents are appropriately alerted via a screen pop if they are answering or placing calls.

Key Features Choice of Pacing Modes: Preview, Progressive (Power) and Predictive Best of breed Predictive dialling algorithms Real time response environment Powerful and Easy to Use Scripting Tool Unified On-line monitoring, management and reporting tool Pre-defined Alarms Priorities, Dial Rules, Time-Zones, Rescheduling Call History Unified agent desktop Unified view of the customer Unified login Call logging Extended media capabilities (voice, email, web collaboration, IVR, Recorder) Support for both single and multi-site configurations Part of a Full Contact Centre Management Solution, modular and completely integrated Switch independent Support for IPT switch Platforms Platform Independence Truly Switch Independent Support for Nortel Meridian 1/Symposium Support for VoIP Technology through Cisco AVVID Call Manager and Nortel Succession Support for Major Database Systems Integration Tools are provided for Contact List Loading during system operation Open Architecture Standard APIs: C, C++, COM; DCOM; Corba Easy and Straightforward Integration with Enterprise Systems Out-of-the-box Integration with SAP and Siebel applications To find out about BT s Customer Interaction Suite, and the range of available finance and support options, please contact your BT Account Manager or call us on Freefone 0800 389 4848 For information on related products and services, or on BT s wider capabilities, you can visit our website at www.bt.com/convergentsolutions Offices worldwide The telecommunications services described in this publication are subject to availability and may be modified from time to time. Services and equipment are provided subject to British Telecommunications plc s respective standard conditions of contract. Nothing in this publication forms any part of any contract. British Telecommunications plc 2003 Registered office: 81 Newgate Street, London EC1A 7AJ Registered in England No: 1800000 Produced by BT Global Services, Convergent Solutions Designed by H&P Graphics Limited (10269) PHME 43255/06/03 Printed on paper which meets international environmental standards Connections that get results.