Is there a better way to overflow calls...???

[gblucas]

I have times where our main call center queue can have wait times of more than 30 minutes and have 40+ calls on hold. I have other agents that have the skills necessary to take some of these calls, but they are assigned to other skills.

Here is what it is doing currently...We queue the call to the main skill, then the caller waits 12 minutes in queue, then we start to look for the overflow skill to queue the call to. I have 3 different groups I need to check to make sure that their queue times are down, before I can send a call to them.

Here is the vector as written…

Number: 97 Name: Main Call Center
Multimedia? n Meet-me Conf? n Lock? n
Basic? y EAS? y G3V4 Enhanced? y ANI/II-Digits? y ASAI Routing? n
Prompting? y LAI? n G3V4 Adv Route? y CINFO? y BSR? y Holidays? y

01 queue-to skill 1 pri m
02 goto step 30 if staffed-agents in skill 98 > 0
03 announcement 2702
04 wait-time 129 secs hearing music
05 announcement 2702
06 wait-time 129 secs hearing music
07 announcement 2702
08 wait-time 129 secs hearing music
09 announcement 2702
10 wait-time 129 secs hearing music
11 announcement 2702
12 wait-time 129 secs hearing silence
13 goto step 23 if oldest-call-wait in skill 21 pri m < 720
14 goto step 25 if oldest-call-wait in skill 28 pri m < 900
15 goto step 27 if oldest-call-wait in skill 7 pri m < 300
16 announcement 2702
17 wait-time 180 secs hearing music
18 goto step 16 if unconditionally
19
20
21
22
23 queue-to skill 93 pri m
24 goto step 14 if unconditionally
25 queue-to skill 94 pri m
26 goto step 15 if unconditionally
27 queue-to skill 95 pri m
28 goto step 16 if unconditionally
29
30 disconnect after announcement 2705
31
32

Is there a better way to do this?

gblucas

MV1.1, G3si, EAS, CMS 9.0

 

[Fds911]

I hope we're on the same wavelength here....

You could make use of the Expected Wait Time (EWT) function.

That way you could make a queuing decision based on the expected customer experience before they queue for 12 mins.

I use this fairly frequently to achieve a similar effect.
It functions much as your oldest-call-wait instructions

eg:
goto step 13 if expected-wait for skill 1 pri m > 720

This could be used to check whatever thresholds you wish as the call enters the vector.

In your case, I'd EWT skill 1 > 12mins, then EWT each of your overflow skills in turn looking for a better queuing alternative.

The algorithum appears to be quite accurate in our applications, however it's effectivness appears to drop off as calls queue longer. I don't think it adequately adjusts it's output based on abandonment rates during long queue times. The result is it may return an EWT of 7 mins when the reality may be 6:30.
It also tends to struggle if half your staff log out for lunch....

Hope this helped

Frazer

 

[98Converter]

Take a look at Avaya's Business Advocate.

This incorporates predictive wait times and agent pooling, plus....

Just a thought.

Thanks,
CJH

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. ARISTOTLE 384-322 B.C.

 

[gblucas]

Fds911,

The call center manager wants to have the customer wait 12 mins before we even think about overflow. The is technical support for a software product. He believes that if we can handle the call within the 12 minutes, the tech support people have done their job. After that he has other agents in other departments that are cross trained to take the calls, and we want the calls to go to them, if their own queues are within the limits for their department.

I have experienced the EWT having rapid changes on our system, so we elected not to go with it.

98Converter,

You are right, Advocate will help me process the calls better, but we don't have budget for it. We are running MV1.1 on a duplicated SCC's with CMS 9. We have budget for a CMS upgrade, and we are not allowed to spend the budget money at this time, so I am trying to find a better way.

Thanks for both of your imput, and anyone else out there.

gblucas