CMS (r11) - Phantom Abandon Call Timer - side effects?

[smurfyIAG]

I'm trying to measure agent "short call" (disconnecting or transferring back to queue) behaviour.
Currently I am tracing my maximum of 400 agents and pulling this data into an external database daily. I can then reasonably easily spot those agents who are cheating the system but this is only collecting data for less than half my agents. How many troublemakers am I missing? The only other way of identifying short calls is excessvely low average handle time or via our Witness call recording database (which I don't want to have to mine for the data).

I generally have a pretty clear understanding of the CMS database and the effect system settings have on the collection of data and have requested my vendor activate the phantom abandon timer in an effort to easily identify agents who may need monitoring/investigating for short calls.
They are reluctant to do so.

I am pretty sure the phantom abandon call timer will allow me to report this but am unsure of all the other side effects of activating the phantom abandon timer. Bearing in mind I am on a 'disconnect supervised' IP environment there shouldn't be any true technically induced "phantom" calls and the only calls being pegged by this timer are going to be actual short calls (either customer actually abandoning the call just as they are presented to the agent or the agent playing tricks and terminating the calls).
I know the phantomabns measure will be added to abncalls and I will need to compensate for that when I am measuring actual abandoned calls for my service calculations but does it affect any other database items?

dwalin made a comment in this thread:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1110944

"it is very dangerous to use this timer in any other condition because cms would not count any of the calls that are shorter than this value. while some supervisor or administrator may think that this is the one they need, truth is that they're wrong. the Right Way to skip the short calls in your calculations is to use a customized report."
Does this imply that ACDCALLS would then not include any call that would be counted as a phantomabn?
I don't see how? I also don't see any other way of measuring "short calls" without using that phantom abandon timer.
call profile (VDN or SPLIT) only allows me to measure numbers prior to answer/abandon, not after the call is answered.

Thoughts?

Sean Murphy
Call Centre Analyst
IAG New Zealand

 

[nohuhu]

smurfyIAG,

the problem really lies not in that abandoned calls are counted or not. the real problem with these "short calls" is that cms doesn't store call history itself but adds up all figures and gives out averages. the Right Way to solve your problem is to use external call history feature to have cms export all call records into a file that you can ftp from the server and do what you want with it.
if you don't want to do all of it yourself, take a look at nice analyzer product, it does exactly what you want (and more).