how do you use global variables in SCCS? 3

[kevmarriott]

My new Call centre Manager is keen to implement expected wait time announcements. However the last tine they tried (not by me) to do this, apparently an over inflated estimated of wait time was played to callers and as a result the abandoned rate went through the roof and the initiative was canceled. This time around I would like to determine the real wait time for a live skillset but play the voice segments in another 'test' skillset before unleashing it on our customers. I guess I need a global variable to do this.

 

[dulfo666]

It wont work that way.

The expected wait time is by the skill set you want to report on.

I would suggest that you use a little test idea that I use.

When testing put in a clause for the clid of the phone you will be testing from. that way the realscript runs, the changes only run for the phone you are using. You will then get the correct times.

ps. I have used expected wait times before, they only really work for a call centre, skill set, that has a high number of calls. I found it was better to report on position in queue. Just decide on what position you will start letting callers know they are at. You dont want, "You are 96th in the queue, good luck..."

 

[Milesprower]

dulfo666 is right - Nortel's canned EWT formula is based on conditions over the last 10 minutes. You need fairly constant call traffic (not spiky), at least 20 - 30 active agents logged into the skillset, and cannot use priority.

There are two approaches to make the announcements less likely to be wrong.

One, use ranges: If the EWT is between 60-119 seconds, play an anouncement that says "your call is expected to be answered in 2 minutes or less."

Two, use your own formula for EWT instead of Nortel's. There are lots of people who have experimented with different formulas. Perhaps others will post some sample formulas and why they use them.

 

[DancingDave]

We had a very similar situation i.e. wanted to implement EWT on our internal Helpdesk, but without impacting production calls.

We set up a parallel script, that queued to the same skillset as the production script, on a different CDN.

The tester dialled the test CDN on a regular basis, got the EWT and then monitored how long it was before the got answered.

For similar reasons to those above, we found it to be relatively inaccurate, however, we did go live with a message that kicked in if EWT was higher than five minutes. It was fairly general (we have high call volumes, please phone back if it's not important sort of thing) and was meant to get people to abandon if they had a less important call.

An example of how to script this is below (also includes a check to stop the EWT being played to customer if it goes up). The script plays the EWT in minutes and seconds, but as mentioned above, you could set it to play the message in bands of EWT (indeed this is better as some people will undoubtedly have a stopwatch!)

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1358678&page=3

There's always position in the queue (I can post you a script if you want). It has a check in it so, if you use skillset priorities in your call centre, the customer won't find themselves dropping down the queue!

DD