Saturday 14 July 2007

Call Center

Call Center Feature

1. Automatic Call Attendance
-Any incoming calls to the main numbers will be attended by the automatic greeting with Multi Layer Voice portal of the company and shall offer the call routing function to any numbers in the company e.g. “Welcome to Service PLC – please press 1 for sales team, press 2 for accounting, press 3 for customer support, press 0 for agent or press the extension number that you know”. It shall also support concurrent attendants.
-Call center system shall provide difference automatic greeting and difference call routing function to any numbers in the company for each company main number.
-Call center system shall provide tool to each company for recorded welcome announcement or automatic greeting and managed call routing to any numbers in the company.

2 Call Transfer
-Any incoming calls to the main number shall be transferred at anytime by agent and by each individual. The transferring method is open such as dialing special key or sending special commands through the installed J2ME client on the phones that are supported by most of the phones in the market (> 60%).
-Call center system shall generate CDR that give detailed for any incoming calls to the main number and agent or each individual doing transferred call to any numbers.

3 Call Queuing
-Any incoming calls to the main number shall be queued if the agent or attendants cannot response immediately.
- Calls to main numbers are distributed to available attendants or agent. If no attendant (or agent) is available, calls are queued.
-Administrator can specify a maximum number of calls that can be queued. The number can be specified for each company separately.
-Administrator can specify a maximum waiting time for incoming calls. The time can be specified for each company separately.
-If there is no agent available to handle the incoming call, the call is queued. The caller will hear the normal alerting tones, or company specific queue messages. As soon as an agent becomes available, an attempt to connect the call that has been in queue for the longest time will be done. If no agent becomes active before the defined maximum queue time limit is exceeded, the call is handled according to the overflow plan for this scenario.
-When the incoming-call queue for a company has the maximum allowed number of callers, or when a call in a queue has waited longer than the specified maximum waiting time, calls are handled according to predefined directions at the following
-A specified announcement is played and the incoming call is terminated.
-A specified announcement is played and the call is connected to another number that can be for example: A defined voicemail, another numbers.
-The call queue bar in Attendant Client shall show the queues by name, the number of calls in each queue, and the queuing time for the call that has been in the queue the longest.
-The different queues shall be assigned different priorities. There might be, for example, a high priority queue, normal priority queue and a queue for internal calls (low priority).

4 Agent Console (or Switchboard or Attendant Client)
-The agent console shall support all call management through web interface/GUI or special-key phone.
-The attendant client shall be efficient tool for handling of incoming calls. Corporate directory and Short message handling functions are also accessed via attendant client.
-Attendant Clients are typically located on a customer’s premises. The Attendant Client application (HTTPs) access to Call center system via public internet.
-GSM Mobile and fix line telephone handset for agent voice communication is also required. Since no additional hardware is needed, the call agent can be located practically anywhere.
-The call agent can use the attendant client to retrieve calls from queues, park calls, transfer calls, returned calls, put callers in a queue to busy parties, initiate own calls by corporate directory or any manually entered public number, etc.
-Attendant Client shall provide corporate directory with include extensive search features that can be used to find relevant information. Information in the name, department, skills, title and phone number fields, among others, can be used as search criteria. Also, different ways to spell a name, or nicknames of a subscriber, can be listed in the directory and later used to find the correct information.
-Attendant Client shall print basic reports based on the information in the corporate directory, Call detail record of their company, Call successful and call failure of their company, etc.
-Attendant Client shall be able to add/modify/remove greeting menu.
-Any mobile of the same company can make outgoing calls via Call center system with main numbers showing.

5 Company phone directory
-The phone directory shall contain real-time information about the company and its employees, such as the name, department, skills, title, address, additional note and phone number. The attendants client shall have the tool to find the information or person the caller asked for.
-An external phone book shall be used to store contact information for external contacts with each entry including name, company, phone numbers, address, and additional note. The attendant shall have the tool to find the information or person the caller asked for.

6 Group SMS
-The user or call agent can log in to the attendance client to send SMS or group SMS. The authorized company user can use the group SMS function of the attendance client to notify the company information to the employees. The authorized company user can dial the company central number to tell the call agent to send SMS to specified numbers of groups. The user can leave a message to the Attendant, who edits it to message and sends it to the recipients. The Call center Call center system shall send the SMS to a group of users at specified time.

7 Agent and company extension number availability status
-The Call center system shall keep track of the states of the agents and extension number. The hunting schemes use the information when connecting calls.

8 Hunting Schemes
-When the incoming calls to the main number are connected to the active agents or extension number, the Call center system shall has different algorithms to select the agent or extension number for call connecting. The automatic call distribution and group hunting is based on the priorities assigned to the agents (extension number), the orderliness of list number, status of the agents (extension number) and the time agents have been idle since the last handled call.
-The Call center systems shall have algorithms that protect looping from automatic Call center system hunting or hunting schemes.

9 Recording
-Call centers in regulated industries have a legal obligation to record calls-All customer interactions must be monitored and recorded-Recorded calls are critical for resolving customer disputes-Protect confidential customer information-Recorded calls are required for training and coaching

10 Variations on the generic call center model
The various components in a call center have many variations on the model developed above. A few of the variations are listed below:
-Remote Agents – An alternative to housing all agents in a central facility is to use remote agents. These agents work from home and use a Basic Rate ISDN access line to communicate with a central computing platform. Remote agents are more cost effective as they don't have to travel to work, however the call center must still cover the cost of the ISDN line. VOIP technology can also be used to remove the need for the ISDN, although the desktop application being used needs to be web enabled or VPN is used.
-Temporary Agents – Temporary agents are useful as they can be called upon if demand increases more rapidly than planned. They are offered a certain number of quarter hours a month. They are paid for the amount they actually work, and the difference between the amount offered and the amount guaranteed is also paid. Managers must use forecasting methods to determine the number of hours offered so that the difference is minimized.
-Virtual Call Centers – Virtual Call Centers are created using many smaller centers in different locations and connecting them to one another. The advantage of virtual call centers is that they improve service levels, provide emergency backup and enable extended operating hours over isolated call centers. There are two methods used to route traffic around call centers: pre-delivery and post-delivery. Pre-delivery involves using an external switch to route the calls to the appropriate center and post-delivery enables call centers to route a call they've received to another call center.
-Interaction Centers – As call centers evolve and deal with more media than telephony alone, some have taken to the term, "interaction center". Email, Web Callback, Chat and more are gradually being added to the role.