Campaigns and Dialing Methods
A campaign defines work of a particular type within the call center. This work may be fulfilled by one or more agents within the call center. The campaign is therefore the fundamental unit of organisation within the call center.
This is reflected in Softdial CallGem™. When an agent logs in to Softdial CallGem™, the agent logs in to do work on a given campaign, but may be temporarily moved to one or more secondary campaigns to maximise agent efficiency.
When an agent is moved between campaigns (known as blending), the agent is always moved back to the primary campaign when the work on the secondary campaign is complete.
Campaign types
There are 3 types of campaigns supported by Softdial CallGem™:
Outbound
Outbound campaigns (predictive, progressive or preview) have no access to inbound queues but an agent can be a member of both an outbound campaign and a member of a queue servicing one or more Inbound campaigns e.g. for call blending.
System
The system campaign
- is intended for users who treat Softdial CallGem™ as a PBX.
- has support for multiple work queues. These are known as queues (previously referred to as Huntgroups).
Behaviour of queues is as per a typical PBX.
For more detail on campaign types, see Dialing Methods.
The campaign layer
The campaign layer interface within Softdial CallGem™ provides the means to feed work (e.g. numbers to be dialed on outbound campaigns) into the various campaigns and handle data that is collected or updated during the course of a campaign. It also provides the means to create and configure campaigns.
A key function of the campaign layer is to handle all communication between the database and Softdial CallGem™. The campaign layer manages the gathering of contact information (and any data associated with each contact) from the database and passes it onto Softdial CallGem™. The campaign layer also manages the results (agent outcome and any data update) from Softdial CallGem™ and writes this information back to the database. If the result of the call is no connect the call attempt information from the telephony network, e.g. number busy, is also passed via the campaign layer back to the database.
The campaign layer also controls:
- campaign scheduling
- retry and callback management including multiple numbers per contact handling
- campaign specific telephony configuration
- multiple list management
- time zone management
- Do Not Call list management
- End of List management
- list filtering
- call recording and metadata included with recordings
Nailed-up agents
Other than for preview on-hook and inbound on-hook campaigns, agents who are logged into outbound or inbound campaigns are nailed-up by default. For agents logged into the System campaign, it is optional whether they are nailed-up. An agent can only be logged into one campaign at a time.
There are 2 ways in which the nail-up behaviour can be controlled:
- by using the Nailed Up (NU) parameter of the Agent Login [AL] message
- by configuring Station Nailup on Logon in the
Calls always stay on the one campaign but agents can move from one campaign to another.
See also Station Nailup on Login.