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Table Of Contents
At-Home/Telecommuter Site (Site8)
Sample Cisco Unified Communications Manager Post-Routed Call Flows
Call Flow #1: General Information Calls (Inbound)
Call Flow #2: Agent-Initiated Calls (Conference/Transfers)
Call Flow #3a: Collection Calls (Outbound)
Call Flow #4: Outsourced (SS&S) Calls
Emergencies and Special Situations
Summary of Call Handling and Queueing
Mid-Atlantic Retail Center (Site6)
North-Central Retail Center (Site7)
South-Central Retail Center (Site8)
Sample Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal Post-Routed Call Flows
Call Flow #1a: Distribution Center Calls (Inbound)
Call Flow #2a: Retail Centers Calls (Inbound)
Call Flow #2b: Retail Center Calls (Conference/Transfers)
Call Flow #3: Retail Credit Account Collection Calls (Outbound)
Emergencies and Special Situations
Summary of Call Handling and Queueing
Test Case Studies
This topic provides a brief overview of Cisco Unified Communications System Release 6.1(1) and the sample business case studies developed to reflect real-world contact center deployments.
This topic contains the following sections:
Introduction
Cisco Unified Communications System delivers fully integrated communications by enabling data, voice, and video to be transmitted over a single, unified IP network infrastructure. Cisco Unified Communications validated systems are designed to optimize feature functionality, reduce configuration and maintenance requirements, and provide interoperability with a wide variety of other applications. Cisco Unified Communications System provides this capability while maintaining a high level of availability, quality of service (QoS), and security for the enterprise network.
Cisco Unified Communications System includes system testing and validation for the following environments:
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IP telephony (IPT)
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In this document, we discuss the testing and verification of only the contact center components of the Cisco Unified Communications System Release 6.1(1).
Overview of Contact Center
Contact center components are an integral part of Cisco Unified Communications family of products. The contact center functionality delivers intelligent contact routing, call treatment, network-to-desktop computer telephony integration (CTI), and multi-channel contact management over an IP infrastructure to call center agents anywhere in the enterprise.
The Cisco IP network infrastructure also permits rapid deployment of emerging applications such as desktop IP telephony, unified messaging, video telephony, desktop collaboration, and enterprise application integration with IP phone displays.
By combining multi-channel automatic call distributor (ACD) functionality with IP telephony in a unified solution, contact center products help to rapidly deploy a distributed contact center infrastructure.
Contact center software profiles each customer using contact-related data such as dialed number and caller-entered digits (CED) and, simultaneously, monitors the resources at contact center to meet customer needs, including agent skills and availability, queue lengths, expected delay and so on.
This combination of customer and contact center data is processed through user-defined routing scripts that graphically reflect a company's business rules, thus enabling contact center software to route each contact to the optimum resource anywhere in the enterprise.
Contact center software enables companies to deploy a complete network-to-desktop CTI strategy, including comprehensive capability at the agent`s workstation. A contact center system delivers a uniquely rich set of data to business applications, providing enterprise-wide call-event and customer-profile information to a targeted agent's desktop.
Understand Test Objectives
The intent of conducting system-wide testing is to define and validate the seamless interoperability and stability of components that comprise a complete and optimized Cisco Unified Communications system.
Cisco has done this by designing, installing, configuring, and testing contact center hardware and software that work together in a predictable, effective, and reliable manner.
Cisco has created two fictitious business case studies and has defined real-world business requirements that exercise specific features and functions of the contact center set of products. The first case study represents a financial firm with distributed call centers, including outsourcer call centers. The second is a large distribution and retail company that supports retail call center operations for its customers.
The business requirements were used to design and configure two test beds with sites that reflect these sample business models. The sites were installed with contact center components for testing and verification of the systems designed for these business models.
The testing focuses in varying degrees on performance and behavior issues such as:
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Sample Business Case Studies
Two sample case studies with business requirements were defined to design contact center call flows, and the software and hardware topologies that would support these call flows.
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Deployment models, site configurations, and complex scripting for the call flows were developed from the business requirements.
Deployment models and test sites for both business models are described in detail in Test Deployment Models and Sites.
Tested Call Flows discusses the specifics of testing call flows and the configuration tasks required to set up these call flows.
This topic has the following sections:
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Financial Business Case Study
Global Siren Financial (GSF), a global multi-billion dollar financial services firm, offers the following services to its customers:
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Call Centers or Sites
GSF depends on its call centers to be the primary interface to its customers and brokers who resell their securities in the United States. The brokers need to have a reliable, cost effective, and efficient way to manage their customer contacts across the eight contact center sites. These sites participate in the Unified Communications Manager Post-Routed call flow testing.
For ease of use, the site names have been mapped to specific site numbers. Table 1 lists the site name, the site number, the number of agents, and number of agents per Unified Communications Manager cluster, and the Busy Hour Call Attempt (BHCA) at each of the eight sites.
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Cisco Unified Mobile Agents
The 300 mobile agents in Site7 are part of a GSF Pandemic Response Team created to ensure call center operations are not disrupted when a major emergency event could close the formal call centers. The mobile agents are grouped in skill groups modeled after Site2 and Site3 GSF customer service teams, but are distributed across the country. These agents use a Cisco Enterprise Class Teleworker (871) VPN router at home with a cable modem for data connectivity and a GSF-supplied local POTS line to ensure voice quality for their calls.
There are15 mobile outbound agents associated with Site6 using the GSF remote teleworker model and a dedicated POTS line to make outbound calls to customers.
Outsourced Call Center Services
However, over the years, GSF has noticed a decline in call volumes at the call centers as more customers use GSF's web site for services. Rather than closing or consolidating the call centers, GSF has contracted their services on an outsourced basis to one of their partner companies, Siren Supplies and Stores (SS&S).
SS&S has modified their carrier-based routing plans to divert calls automatically by dialed number to agent groups in two outsourcer sites, without consulting the SS&S contact center system first. Calls for these outsourcer agents are routed directly to the sites, with a 50/50 split between the two sites.
Table 2 lists the site name, the site number, the number of outsourcer agents, and the BHCA at the sites that have been set up to offer call center services on a contract basis.
At Site5, specific agent and skill groups have been set up for the outsourcer agents who service SS&S customers only. In addition to these outsourcer agents, Site5 still has dedicated GSF agents that handle inbound GSF customer calls. There is no blending of these core GSF agents with the outsourcer agents at this site.
Site9 has no GSF agents. All agents at this site are outsourcer agents that service only SS&S customers.
Administrative Phones
Additionally, at each site, there are a number of administrative phones in conference rooms, break rooms, and manager offices. These phones generate a minimal amount of call volume, but need to be represented in the test environment to model "real" call center operations.
Table 3 lists the number of administrative phones and the BHCA for the administrative phones per site.
As with any typical telephony implementation, a standard amount of conferences and transfers are performed using the administrative phones within the same site. To model the traffic appropriately, total transfers and conferences are estimated at 5% of the total BHCA for the administrative phones.
Services and Skill Groups
Table 4 lists the services that the agents at the call centers provide to the customers of GSF.
Cross-Trained Agents
GSF has cross-trained the majority of their agents at the various call center sites to provide a variety of account services to both end-customers and brokers who resell their securities.
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GSF offers a banking service to its customers with traditional checking, savings, and investment options like money market and 401K accounts as an internet bank with no traditional branch banking locations.
Chicago and Clifton Agents
The call centers in the Chicago (Site2) and Clifton (Site3) sites are set up to handle the above customer calls and services. These sites use the Computer Telephony Integration Object Server (CTI OS) Desktop Applications to handle call control functions.
Clover and Carefree Agents
Agents in the Clover (Site5) and Carefree (Site6) sites are also set up to handle similar calls, but use Cisco Agent Desktop (CAD) Applications for call control functions. A group of dedicated agents in Carefree (Site6) perform only outbound collection calls on their customer credit card accounts.
Clover and Carson City Agents
A separate group of agents at the Clover (Site5) location are set up as outsourcer agents to handle calls from and provide services to SS&S customers only. Agents at this site use CTI OS Applications for call control functions.
Agents at Carson City (Site9) are set up exclusively as outsourcer agents and do not take any calls from GSF customers, only from its partner company, SS&S. Agents at this site use CAD Applications for call control functions.
Remote and Mobile Agents
Site8 is set up as a remote agent site to function like Site2 and handle calls that are routed to Site2. Site6 has a small group of 15 mobile agents that perform outbound calling from their remote phones. Site7 acts as a virtual call center for all mobile agents associated with the call center sites that use their regular PSTN or cell phones to handle call center calls.
Site and Agent Profiles
All the sites discussed in this section are open 24x7. The number of agents listed in the tables are the number of staffed agents per shift.
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Chicago, IL (Site2)
The following is a brief summary of Site2-relevant information:
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Table 5 lists the skill sets of the agents at the Chicago site (total BHCA: 8,694) and the agent to BHCA numbers.
Clifton, TX (Site3)
The following is a brief summary of Site3-relevant information:
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Table 6 lists the skill sets of the agents at the Clifton site (total BHCA: 10,746) and the agent to BHCA numbers.
Clover, UT (Site5)
The following is a brief summary of Site5-relevant information:
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Table 7 lists the skill sets of the agents at the Clover site and the agent to BHCA numbers.
Carefree, AZ (Site6)
The following is a brief summary of Site6-relevant information:
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For the outbound agents in this site that are dedicated to the Customer Collections skill group, the expected call distribution numbers with customers are as follows:
Calls Answered: 1,944 (30% of call volume)
Calls Busy: 2,268 (35% of call volume)
Calls Not Answered: 2,268 (35% of call volume)
Total Calls Dialed: 6,480
The following recorded message (timed to play for 60 seconds) is played for customer calls that are answered by an answering machine:
"We have an important message for you. Please contact Global Siren Financial Bank immediately at 1-888-555-1212. Thank you."
Table 8 lists the skill sets of the agents at the Carefree site (total BHCA: 2,880) and the agent to BHCA numbers.
Virtual Call Center (Site7)
A virtual site was created to "group" all the mobile agents associated with the call center. The following is a brief summary of Site7-relevant information:
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Table 9 lists the skill sets of the mobile agents in the virtual call center (total BHCA: 5,400) and the agent to BHCA numbers.
At-Home/Telecommuter Site (Site8)
A Cisco Remote Agent is located in Site8. Essentially, Site8 can be considered an extension of the call center at Site2 and provides support to GSF customers based on the skill group assignment.
Carson City, NV (Site9)
The following is a brief summary of Site9-relevant information:
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Table 10 lists the skill sets of the agents at the Carson City site (total BHCA: 2,106) and the agent to BHCA numbers.
Sample Cisco Unified Communications Manager Post-Routed Call Flows
The four types of sample call flows discussed in this section are as follows:
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Call Handling Overview
Agents and the Unified Communications Manager clusters at the sites handling the call flows are set up as follows:
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Traffic between Site1/Site4 and Site2, Site3, and Site8 (in Cluster 1) is considered intra-cluster or occurring within their home cluster.
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Traffic between Site5 and Site6 is considered intra-cluster or occurring within their home cluster.
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Traffic between Site1/Site4 and Site5 (occurring between Cluster 1 and Cluster 2) is considered inter-cluster or crossing between clusters.
Typically, all call flows have inbound BHCA targeted for each specific site. As such, there should be adequate agents at each site to handle the inbound local BHCA sent to that site.
Furthermore, specific skill groups and sites are identified as targets for call overflow which occurs when agents are not available at the site that the call originally came in at (local site).
When a call arrives at the local site and agents are unavailable, the system checks for available agents in that skill group at other clustered sites. When selecting an overflow site, agents that belong to the home cluster are preferred over agents in a different cluster.
For instance, using the agent and cluster set up described above, a call that comes into Site5 is first sent to agents at Site5. If agents are unavailable at Site5, then the call is sent to available agents at Site6. If agents are not available at this site either, then the call is sent to agents at Site2, Site3, or Site8.
If agents are not available at any of the sites, the call is usually queued for an agent in that skill group at the local site (Site5 in this example). However, calls can be handled in a variety of ways depending on the call treatment logic and rules.
See Summary of Call Handling and Queueing to understand how calls are handled for the sample call flows described in this section.
Call Flow #1: General Information Calls (Inbound)
GSF provides its customers with toll-free numbers to call into their regional contact centers. Customers who call into these access numbers are presented with a menu of choices. Based on the selection they make, they are transferred to the agents at that site who provide that service for that region.
Agents and the Unified Communications Manager clusters at the sites handling the Unified Communications Manager Post-Routed call flow are set up as follows:
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Table 11 provides a list of the sites and their local access numbers, estimated BHCA, and agents per site for General Information Requests lines.
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Call Flow Logic
The CRS plays the following series of prompts and messages (of 10 second duration) for calls that come into the call centers:
"Thank you for calling Global Siren Financial. Please select from one of the following services:
For your current account information and balances, press 1
To request information on any of our banking or brokerage services, press 2
To speak to a personal banker, press 3
Or stay on the line to be transferred to a personal banker."
If the caller presses:
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`x1404 - Member Banking Skill."If the user does not make a selection when prompted, after multiple requests for a response, the system plays a courtesy message and disconnects the user.
Call Handling and Queueing
GSF has published toll-free numbers for each regional area to encourage local contact with the regional call centers. All calls coming into these toll free numbers will be designated to the specific site (or cluster of sites) the call arrived at. For example, calls from the Chicago (Site2) toll-free number are targeted to be answered by an agent in that skill group at that site (based on the longest available or most idle agent).
If there are no available agents, the call stays in a call queue at that site for the next available agent. Unnecessary intra-site call transfers and network usage are avoided by keeping the calls "local."
Unanswered calls remain in their respective queues, regardless of the length of time they are in queue. The number of calls in any of these queues is controlled by a variable in an admin script, which varies based upon conditions such as agent-to-call ratios, and so on.
If there are more than 20 calls in any of these queues, the caller hears an announcement before being put on hold:
"We are experiencing heavier than normal call volumes. There are << number of calls inserted from real time feed >> ahead of you in this queue. You may wish to call back later for faster service."
The system does not terminate this call. Callers who wish to wait are allowed to continue to hold in queue once this message is played. It is up to the caller's discretion to hang up and terminate the call.
Agents/BHCA to Skill Group Breakdown
For the local-line inbound traffic dealing with General Information Requests, Table 12 lists the BHCA and the number of agents available for each of the related skill groups at Chicago, Clifton, Clover, and Carefree.
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Call Flow #2: Agent-Initiated Calls (Conference/Transfers)
Once a call is answered by an agent, the agent may need to perform additional call processing manually using the conference and transfer features of contact center functionality.
Based on historical volumes, GSF expects that agents will need to transfer 2.5% of all calls terminating with them using a post-route that they have initiated. Additionally, another 2.5% of conferences would be comprised of premium customers, who are identified by the system when they call a special toll-free number. The original agent, as a courtesy, would conference premium customer calls to the agent from the second skill group, instead of doing a blind transfer
Typically, calls conference/transfer between agent groups are designated to the same service or Unified Communications Manager cluster. For instance, Chicago (Site2) calls that transfer or conference typically only go to Clifton (Site3) as intra-cluster traffic. In the same manner, Clover (Site5) calls only go to Carefree (Site6).
Approximately, a total of 5% of calls are transferred and/or conferenced from Chicago (Site2) to Clifton (Site3) and from Clover (Site5) to Carefree (Site6).
Call Flow #2a - Conference/Transfer to Another Skill Group
When callers mistakenly select wrong menu choices or dial wrong numbers, the agent taking the call may need to re-direct the caller to a different agent in a specific skill group to handle their request.
Rather than asking the customer to call back, GSF wants the agents to re-qualify calls using the same routing logic that would have been used if the caller had made the correct choice initially.
Agents at all the sites use the Cisco Unified Intelligent Contact Management (Unified ICM) Dialed Number Plan and CTI OS/CAD Desktop Applications for re-routing calls to another agent group.
Calls from Call Flow #1 are the most likely to require re-direction to a different site because of caller or system error. Other call types are handled on an exception basis.
The dial plan handling this type of a call initiates the transfer/conference to a local group first before considering agents at other sites within the same cluster or a different cluster. If no agents are available, the call is queued at the CRS in the home cluster for an agent in the new group, but at a higher priority, as the caller may already have waited in queue for an agent, prior to the transfer.
Call Handling and Queueing
An example of this type of transfer is as follows:
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Table 13 System Transfer Numbers
Account Inquiry
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Literature Request
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Member Banking
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Brokerage Service
4007
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Once the call is queued, the system plays an announcement telling the caller the number of calls already in queue for this service (using a real-time message).
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Call Flow #3a: Collection Calls (Outbound)
The outbound Collections skill group performs follow-up calls to GSF customers. The Collections group at Carefree (Site6) has 108 dedicated agents (including 15 mobile agents) who make outbound calls using the Collections campaign.
A group of 108 agents make an estimated 1300 BHCA outbound calls. The number refers to the number of successful calls, which is estimated at 30% of the total calls placed by the Cisco Unified Outbound Dialer (Unified OUTD) as shown below:
Calls Answered: 1,300 (30% of call volume)
Calls Busy: 1,519 (35% of call volume)
Calls Not Answered: 1,519 (35% of call volume)
Total Calls Dialed: 4,338
Call Handling and Queueing
Outbound calls are handled by a predictive dialer where the system dials several calls at once. This is done since some of the calls do not complete due to bad numbers, busy lines, etc. When a customer answers the call, an agent is immediately connected to the customer to perform the collections request.
If the customer asks the agent to call back later, the agent can set up the system in one of two ways:
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At the Carefree (Site6) site, calls are made in the Predictive Mode, using agents from the `63101 - Collections' group to make the outbound collection calls as well as take any inbound calls meant for this skill group assignment.
If the outbound Campaign detects an answering machine, the system plays the following 60-second message to the customer before terminating the call:
"We have an important message for you - please contact Global Siren Financial Bank immediately at 1-888-555-1212. Thank you."Call Flow #4: Outsourced (SS&S) Calls
GSF has assigned outsourcer agents at Site5 and Site9 to handle overflow calls from their partner company, Siren Supplies & Stores. Customers calling into SS&S are diverted at the carrier network to the GSF locations by dialed number.
Table 14 provides a list of the sites and their internal redirect numbers, estimated BHCA, and agents per site for the outsourced calls.
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Call Flow Logic
The CRS plays the following series of prompts and messages (of 10 second duration) for the calls coming into the outsourcer GSF sites:
"Thank you for calling Siren Supplies & Stores, your call may be recorded for quality purposes."
If the call came in on the:
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If agents are not available at any location, the call is held in queue for the next available agent at the site where the call came in.
Call Handling and Queueing
If there are no available agents, the call stays in a call queue at that site for the next available agent.
Unanswered calls remain in their respective queues, regardless of the length of time they are in queue. The number of calls in any of these queues is controlled by a variable in an admin script, which varies based upon conditions such as agent-to-call ratios, etc.
If there are more than 20 calls in any of these queues, the caller hears an announcement before being put on hold:
"We are experiencing heavier than normal call volumes. There are << number of calls inserted from real time feed >> ahead of you in this queue. You may wish to call back later for faster service."
The system does not terminate this call. Callers who wish to wait are allowed to continue to hold in queue once this message is played. It is up to the caller's discretion to hang up and terminate the call.
Agents /BHCA to Skill Group Breakdown
For the local-line inbound traffic dealing with redirected outsourced calls, Table 15 lists the BHCA and the number of outsourcer agents available for each of the related skill groups at Culver and Carson City.
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Emergencies and Special Situations
If a site has to be closed for an emergency, for instance, a bomb threat, a special site emergency skill group is defined with a specific agent associated with it. All the standard call flows check to make sure the emergency agent has not logged into the emergency skill group, before attempting to process the call for that site.
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Calls queued for a site that is in emergency close will be requalified to select another site for the queue.
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Summary of Call Handling and Queueing
Based on routing scripts defined by the business logic, it can be seen that the contact center system handles and queues different types of calls in a variety of ways.
Table 16 summarizes this information and lists the different types of sample Unified Communications Manager Post-Routed call flows discussed previously, the sites that are eligible to handle them, and their treatment by the contact center system.
Retail Business Case Study
This section describes the business profile and requirements of the sample retail business, Siren Supplies and Stores (SS&S), a large distribution and retail operations company. SS&S plans to deploy Cisco Unified Communications contact center family of products to replace aging equipment in distribution branch offices and retail centers nation-wide.
The SS&S business operations is set up as follows in the locations listed below:
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Using Cisco Unified Mobile Agent (Unified MA) functionality, SS&S Distribution Operations has assigned 200 agents to a Pandemic Disaster Team as part of a virtual call center, These agents can work either from home or at the distribution center. SS&S has set up these mobile agents with local POTS lines to enable them to work from home when a disaster prevents them from being at the distribution center.
Each agent has a laptop computer with a Cisco Enterprise Class Teleworker 871 VPN router attached to a cable modem or DSL connection in their home. Because QoS is not available on the high-speed cable service, SS&S has set up dedicated voice lines to each mobile agent's home.
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Some retail center agents are subject matter experts that act as "backup" to the frontline agents when they are unable to handle certain customer issues. The frontline agents can conference the call with these special agents and, if necessary, transfer the call to them to handle.
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Call Centers or Sites
The site names have been mapped to specific site numbers. These sites participate in the Unified CVP Post-Routed call flows testing.
Table 17 lists the various SS&S office sites, number of agents, and Unified Communications Manager clusters at each site, and the Busy Hour Call Attempt (BHCA) at each of the seven sites.
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Administrative Phones
Additionally, at each site, there are a number of administrative phones in conference rooms, break rooms, and manager offices. These phones generate a minimal amount of call volume, but need to be represented in the contact center environment to model "real" call center operations.
Table 18 lists the number of administrative phones and the Busy Hour Call Attempt (BHCA) for the administrative phones per site.
As with any typical Telephony implementation, a standard amount of conferences and transfers are performed using the administrative phones within the same site. To model the traffic appropriately, conferences and transfers are estimated at 5% of the total BHCA for the administrative phones.
Services and Skill Groups
Table 19 lists the services that the agents at the distribution centers and the retail centers provide to the customers of SS&S.
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Cross-Trained Agents
SS&S has cross-trained the majority of their agents at the various call center sites to provide a variety of account services to customers.
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SS&S offers retail call center operations for its customers such as catalog and specialty item sales, retail centers with major appliances and electronics, and computer technical support.
Distribution Center Agents
The distribution center (Site3) is set up to handle customer calls and provide services based on their specific skill groups. This site uses the Cisco Agent Desktop (CAD) to handle call control functions.
Retail Center Agents
The agents in the retail centers in the Mid-Atlantic Retail Center (Site6), North-Central Retail Center (Site7), and South-Central Retail Center (Site8) locations are also set up to handle similar calls, but use CTI OS Desktop Applications for call control functions.
Blended agents (including mobile agents) in the Mid-Atlantic Retail Center (Site6) perform both inbound retail and outbound collection calls on their customer credit card accounts.
Unified Mobile Agents
Using Unified MA functionality, 200 mobile agents are associated with Site3 to handle customer calls and 15 mobile agents are associated with Site6 for outbound calling. Mobile agents have been assigned to specific mobile skill groups; however, supervisors can reassign mobile agents to an non-mobile skill group if the agent is assigned to work locally at Site3.
Site and Agent Profiles
All the sites discussed in this section are open 24x7. The number of agents listed in the tables are the number of staffed agents per shift.
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Virtual Call Center (Site2)
A virtual site was created to "group" all the mobile agents associated with the call center. The following is a brief summary of Site2-relevant information:
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Table 9 lists the skill sets of the mobile agents in the virtual call center (total BHCA: 3,600) and the agent to BHCA numbers.
Distribution Center (Site3)
The following is a brief summary of Site3-relevant information:
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Table 21 lists the skill sets of the agents at the distribution center (total BHCA: 5,400) and the agent to BHCA numbers.
Mid-Atlantic Retail Center (Site6)
The following is a brief summary of Site6-relevant information:
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For the outbound agents in this site that are dedicated to the Retail Credit Account Collections skill group, the expected call distribution numbers with customers are as follows:
Calls Answered: 1,314 (30% of call volume)
Calls Busy: 1,533 (35% of call volume)
Calls Not Answered: 1,533 (35% of call volume)
Total Calls Dialed: 4,380
Table 22 lists the skill sets of the agents at the Mid-Atlantic Retail Center (total BHCA:12,490) and the agent to BHCA numbers.
North-Central Retail Center (Site7)
The following is a brief summary of Site7-relevant information:
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Table 23 lists the skill sets of the agents at the North-Central Retail Center (total BHCA: 12,518) and the agent to BHCA numbers.
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South-Central Retail Center (Site8)
The following is a brief summary of Site8-relevant information:
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Table 24 lists the skill sets of the agents at the South-Central Retail Center (total BHCA: 11,284) and the agent to BHCA numbers.
Sample Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal Post-Routed Call Flows
The sample call flows created for this business case study reflect the typical retail customer business requirements. These sample call flows exercise specific features and functions of the contact center environment.
The three types of sample call flows discussed in this section are as follows:
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Call Handling Overview
Agents and the Unified Communications Manager clusters at the sites handling the call flows are set up as follows:
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Traffic between Site1/Site5 and Site6 (in Cluster 1) is considered intracluster or occurring within their home cluster.
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Traffic between sites at Cluster 1 and Cluster 2 is considered intercluster or crossing between clusters.
Typically, all call flows have inbound BHCA targeted for each specific site. As such, there should be adequate agents at each site to handle the inbound local BHCA sent to that site.
Furthermore, specific skill groups and sites are identified as targets for call overflow which occurs when agents are not available at the site that the call originally came in at (local site).
When a call arrives at the local site and agents are unavailable, the system checks for available agents in that skill group at other clustered sites. When selecting an overflow site, the agents that belong to the home cluster are preferred over agents in a different cluster.
For instance, using the agent and cluster set up described above, a call that comes into Site6 is first sent to agents at Site6. If agents are unavailable at Site6, then the call is only sent to available agents at Site7 or Site8.
If agents are not available at any of the above sites, the call is usually queued for an agent in that skill group at the local site (Site6 in the example). However, calls can be handled in a variety of ways depending on the call treatment logic and rules.
See Summary of Call Handling and Queueing to understand how calls are handled for the sample call flows described in this section.
All BHCA and Erlang Calculations are made with the following assumptions across all call flows:
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At the distribution center, multiple voice gateways are loaded with the Cisco Unified Survivable Remote Site Telephony (Unified SRST) functionality to allow them to process calls, even if the connection to the data centers fails. In the event that the SRST mode kicks in, all calls are automatically re-routed to another site using a direct transfer to the main number of the target site.
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Call Flow #1a: Distribution Center Calls (Inbound)
SS&S provides customers with local and toll-free phone numbers to call into their regional distribution centers. The toll-free numbers are routed by the long distance carrier based upon the originating location of the caller and presented to the regional site on a local number mapped to that site.
Customers who call into these access numbers are presented with a menu of choices. Based on the selection they make, they are transferred to the local agents who provide that service for that region.
Agents and the Unified Communications Manager clusters at the sites handling the Unified CVP Post-Routed call flow are set up as follows:
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Table 25 lists the distribution center and its local access number, estimated BHCA, and agents for inbound Unified CVP Post-Routed calls.
Note
Call Flow Logic
Depending on the destination, calls coming into the distribution center are presented with a welcome greeting and then with an opening menu (of 10 second duration):
"Thank you for calling Siren Supplies & Stores' Distribution Center. Please select from the following services:
Press 1 if you wish to place a new order from our catalog
Press 2 if you want to check on the status of an order
Press 3 for our Speciality Items Catalog
Or stay on the line and someone will assist you shortly."
If the caller presses:
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"Sorry you are having difficulty. Please try again later. Goodbye.".
If the user does not make a selection when prompted, after making multiple requests for a response, the system disconnects the user after playing a courtesy message.
Call Handling and Queueing
SS&S has installed the local line calling functionality to encourage local contact with the central distribution center. All calls coming into the local line at the distribution center (Site3) will be answered by an agent in that skill group at that site (based on the longest available or most idle agent).
If there are no agents available in each of the skill groups, the call is held in queue for the next available agent in that skill group at that site.
Unanswered calls remain in their respective queues, regardless of the length of time they are in queue. The number of calls in any of these queues is controlled by a variable in an admin script, which varies based upon conditions such as agent-to-call ratios, etc.
If there are more than 20 calls in any of these queues, the caller hears an announcement before being put on hold:
"We are experiencing heavier than normal call volumes. There are << number of calls inserted from real time feed >> ahead of you in this queue. You may wish to call back later for faster service."
The system does not terminate this call. Callers who wish to wait are allowed to continue to hold in queue once this message is played. It is up to the caller's discretion to hang up and terminate the call.
Call Flow #2a: Retail Centers Calls (Inbound)
SS&S provides customers with local and toll-free phone numbers to call into their retail centers. The toll-free numbers are routed by the long distance carrier based upon the originating location of the caller and presented to the retail site on a local number mapped to that site.
Table 26 provides a list of the retail centers and their local access numbers, estimated BHCA, and agents per retail site for inbound Unified CVP Post-Routed calls.
Note
Call Flow Logic
Calls coming into the retail centers are presented with a welcome greeting and then with an opening menu (of 10 second duration) specific for that site:
"Thank you for calling Siren Supplies & Stores' (Mid-Atlantic/North-Central/ South-Central) Super Center. Please select from the following departments for assistance:
Press 1 for Electronics and Personal Computers
Press 2 for Major Appliances
Press 3 for Music and Movies
Press 4 for Technical Support for your Siren PC or Electronic Equipment
Or stay on the line and someone will assist you shortly."
If the caller presses:
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"Sorry you are having difficulty. Please try again later. Goodbye."
If the user does not make a selection when prompted, after making multiple requests for a response, the system disconnects the user after playing a courtesy message.
Call Handling and Queueing
If there are no agents available in each of the skill groups, the call is held in queue for the next available agent in that skill group for that site.
Unanswered calls remain in their respective queues, regardless of the length of time they are in queue. The number of calls in any of these queues is controlled by a variable in an admin script, which varies based upon conditions such as agent-to-call ratios, etc.
If there are more than 20 calls in any of these queues, the caller hears an announcement before being put on hold:
"We are experiencing heavier than normal call volumes. There are << number of calls inserted from real time feed >> ahead of you in this queue. You may wish to call back later for faster service."
The system does not terminate this call. Callers who wish to wait are allowed to continue to hold in queue once this message is played. It is up to the caller's discretion to hang up and terminate the call.
Call Flow #2b: Retail Center Calls (Conference/Transfers)
The retail centers provide frontline agents who handle the majority of the inbound calls for SS&S. However, when a frontline agent is unable to answer a question or resolve a customer issue, they can conference in or transfer the call to a backup agent or subject matter expert. These backup agents are part of Technical Support Escalation groups located at all three retail centers (Site6, Site7, and Site8).
Each location has a dedicated internal phone number for the agents to call to access the escalation groups at the sites. Within each site, specific numbers have been set up for conferences and transfers to individually track these calls.
Table 27 provides the internal numbers for the Technical Support Escalation groups at the retail centers.
Call Flow #3: Retail Credit Account Collection Calls (Outbound)
The outbound Collections skill group performs follow-up calls to SS&S customers using the Collections campaign.
The group of 73 (including 15 mobile) blended agents make an estimated 1,314 BHCA outbound calls. This number refers to the number of successful calls, which is estimated at 30% of the total calls placed by the Unified OUTD as shown below:
Calls Answered: 1,314 (30% of call volume)
Calls Busy: 1,533 (35% of call volume)
Calls Not Answered: 1,533 (35% of call volume)
Total Calls Dialed: 4,380
Call Handling and Queueing
Outbound calls are handled by a predictive dialer where the system dials several calls at once. This is done since some of the calls do not complete due to bad numbers, busy lines, etc. When a customer answers the call, an agent is immediately connected to the customer to perform the collections request.
If the customer asks the agent to call back later, the agent can set up the system in one of two ways:
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At the Mid-Atlantic Retail Center (Site6), calls are made in the Predictive Mode, using agents from the `604 - Retail Credit Account Collections' group to make the outbound calls.
If the outbound Campaign detects an answering machine (or call answering service), the system plays the following message to the customer before terminating the call:
"We have an important message for you from Siren Supplies and Stores. Please call us at 1-866-747-3677 as soon as you can. Thank you."
Emergencies and Special Situations
If a site has to be closed for an emergency, for instance, a bomb threat, a special site emergency skill group is defined with a specific agent associated with it. All the standard call flows check to make sure the emergency agent has not logged into the emergency skill group, before attempting to process the call for that site.
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Calls queued for a site that is in emergency close will be re-qualified to select another site for the queue.
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Summary of Call Handling and Queueing
Based on routing scripts defined by the business logic, it can be seen that the contact center system handles and queues different types of calls in a variety of ways.
Table 28 summarizes this information and lists the different types of sample Unified CVP Post-Routed call flows discussed previously, the sites that are eligible to handle them, and their treatment by the contact center system.
