Manual Outbound (SSMD)

In some markets around the world there are genuine concerns about privacy and dialing technologies when contacting consumers by phone. Issues of privacy are to do with which numbers should be called and under what circumstances. These issues are outside the scope of software providers, except insofar as we may be asked by our users to implement relevant local legislation.

But once a decision has been made to dial a number, or group of numbers, then our interest lies in finding the appropriate technology to do this. For example, we have long campaigned, often vociferously and very much as a lone voice, for limits on silent and abandoned calls. And we played an active part in helping national marketing associations and regulators (Ofcom in the UK and the FTC in the US) to formulate regulations to control outbound dialing.

Even today, many years after the FTC first introduced controls for dialers, there is still very real concern in the US (and other countries) about consumer abuse. Given this concern, the issue is how mobile numbers should be dialed, once a decision has been taken that such action is valid under local law (e.g. the number is not on a Do Not Call list and permission to dial has been given, as required).

Regulators are clearly concerned that even when it is legitimate to dial mobile numbers, that dialing technologies can be used to dial lots of numbers in a short space of time, and that this, in itself constitutes abuse.

A simple solution to this concern is to just dial manually. For example this could be done using a rotary phone or push button phone. SSMD offers an alternative manual solution which brings in a number of consumer safeguards that simple manual dialing does not have.

SSMD is effectively a black box that allows communications in just three ways:

1. Passing of numbers from third party applications (as described below)
2. logging agents on and off
3. connecting with SIP/ISDN trunks for managing the dialing process with the carrier network.

Apart from these specific interfaces which cannot be used in any other way, it is a closed system and cannot be adapted, modified, accessed or programed in any way to change either the way in which a number is passed to it, or the method (i.e. manual) by which a number is dialed.

Agent performance controls

1. RNA timeout

   When a call is unanswered, it is not uncommon for a caller to let the call ring for an unnecessarily long time. SSMD permits this time period to be defined for a project/ campaign thereby removing the option from the agent on how long a call should ring.

2. Network response codes

   When dialing manually, a call may be terminated by the network for various reasons. SCC listens to telco network signalling and passes the ‘true’ reason for call termination on to the third party system via SSMD. This ensures that if a number is temporarily unavailable due to a network issue this will be identified and the number can be retried at a later time. Equally if the number is permanently unavailable the signalling can tell SSMD which can in turn advise the third party system that this record should never be redialed.

3. Country-specific network response

   STG is able to interpret signalling messages from many different countries. This ensures that when dialing a range of countries the agent will not have to learn to interpret the different codes/ information they may hear.

Agent quality controls

The close links between the third party system and SSMD enable a number of features that make a supervisor’s job easier:

1. Call Recording

   SSMD permits centrally controlled recording of calls that are then linked to third party data. When reviewing the performance of an agent a supervisor can review call recording and interview output simultaneously.

2. Call Monitoring

   SSMD permits control of agent quality by allowing a supervisor to silently listen to agent calls.

3. Agent Reporting

   Detailed data relating to agent performance and phone call outcomes is fed from SSMD back to the third party system.

4. Agent Scoring (where appropriate)

   While listening to recordings scoring can be performed on the agent’s performance to rate the agent’s quality on each call.

Dialing and reporting controls

Centralised control of the calling list and control of the dialling process bring a number of benefits:

1. Time bounding of calls

   If a number should only be called at a certain time, SSMD together with the third party system will ensure that this can only happen at that time, and that an agent cannot dial at the incorrect time.

2. Reporting on agent performance

   Centralised dialling provides a centralised source of data that gives detailed information about talk, wait and wrap times, and other metrics that will enable a contact center to calculate the number of agents it may require and the likely length and costs of a campaign.

3. Real-time and historic reporting

   Historic reporting provides management level reporting to give a clear picture of how the call center is performing.

An SSMD campaign is set up in Softdial Campaign Manager™ by selecting the Manual Outbound campaign type. See Softdial Campaign Manager™ General Settings

By default, the agent is on-hook. The agent may be nailed up (an off-hook agent) by explicitly specifying the Nailed Up (NU) parameter on the Agent Login [AL] message or in the agent configuration.

Using SSMD, the only type of call that can be launched is an agent-specific call. One and only one call may be handled by an agent at a time. It is not possible to queue agent-specific calls in the same way as one might do on an outbound ACD campaign.

SSMD cannot schedule calls. Callback requests with a scheduled time are placed immediately to avoid any delays and any appearance of queueing. SSMD implements a callback lookahead period allowing calls that have been scheduled for callback at the same time to be ordered by the agent. See SSMDCallbackLookaheadMins in Registry Settings

It is possible to attach session data to the call by performing a data lookup in the same way as one would do for inbound calls. Softdial Campaign Manager™ treats an Manual Outbound campaign the same as an inbound campaign for data management purposes. This means no caching of calls and no retries.

It also means that in order for Softdial Campaign Manager™ to be able to update customer data as part of an agent or IVR script. a data lookup must be performed.

There has been a small change made to Softdial Scripter™ to support the Begin Manual [BM] message triggering a script session for a campaign. The user configures and publishes scripts for an Outbound Manual campaign in the same way as a normal Outbound campaign. The one difference in script behaviour being that a data lookup must be performed to bind the call data to a customer record.

The operational flow of SSMD is as follows.

1. A third party application can log agents on or off SSMD.
2. When an agent is logged on to SSMD, they indicate when they are free to initiate dialing of a number. This could be following logon, after a break period, or immediately after having completed their previous call.
3. As soon as the agent indicates their free state, SSMD sends a message to the third party application that is connected to it, asking for a number to dial.
4. The third party application sends a number to SSMD. It also displays the number on the agent’s screen. The agent chooses when to initiate dialing.
5. They can do this by either clicking on a radio button that is linked to the number, or clicking on the number itself, as displayed on the screen.

Show message sequence

1. The agent receives an Agent Ready [AR] message, immediately followed by a Begin Manual [BM] message. The Begin Manual [BM] message triggers a screen pop in the same way as the Agent Connect [AC] or Begin Preview [BP] message, except that the Begin Manual [BM] message has no call session associated with it and no data.
2. An agent-specific call is launched by the agent sending a Make Call [MC] message with the Agent Name (AN) parameter and not the Follow-up Call (FC) parameter. Follow-up calls may be made within the context of an agent-specific ACD call in the same way as for any other ACD campaign.
3. Once an agent-specific call is launched, the agent hears call progress for the dial to the customer. This means that the agents station is tied up before launching the call in the same way as an outbound call launch from a system campaign agent.
4. If the call fails to connect, the call is returned with a Number Back [NB] message in the normal way. If the call connects the agent is talking and has access to the same set of call control requests as any other ACD agent.
5. Start Wrap [SW] or call hangup puts the agent into wrap; the wrap phase is ended by a Transaction Complete [TC], placing the agent back into a ready state and immediately issuing a new Begin Manual [BM] message.

   This means that Manual Outbound scripts should end immediately after the Transaction Complete [TC] as a new screen pop will immediately follow.

   The default behaviour on agent hang up is to end the customer call and put the agent into wrap. This is now true for all campaign types and regardless of whether the agent is nailed up or not.

See also the No Numbers [NN] message.

The dialling itself is handled by Softdial Telephony Gateway™ (STG). SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) signalling and RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) are managed by SCC. Configuration settings for connection to the PSTN (public switched telephone network) are configured on the SCC server.

When commanded by SSMD, SCC establishes a connection between the agent and the respondent. Status information about the call is communicated back to SSMD, which in turn advises external systems.

From V10.7.1337 - On an SSMD campaign, some calls may be unanswered by the agent, e.g. the extension did not ring, or the agent did not answer within the RNA timeout.

For reporting purposes, these call failures have a switch outcome of Call Failure (Session Data [IZ], Reason (RE) parameter of 6) to differentiate them from Call Not Made (RE of 0).