Capabilities
With Agent Greeting, you can play a configurable, automated greeting to callers. Every caller receives a clear, well-paced, language-appropriate, and enthusiastic introduction from the answering agent. Agent Greeting relieves your agents from speaking opening scripts. Instead, your agents can spends the time reviewing the desktop screen pop-ups while the greeting plays.
Recording a greeting is much the same as recording a message for voice mail. Depending on how you set up the call center, agents record different greetings that play for different types of callers (for example, an English greeting for English speakers or an Italian greeting for Italian speakers).
Agent Greeting is available to agents and supervisors who use IP Phones with Built-in-Bridge (BiB) that are controlled by the Unified CCE and Unified CM.
Agent Greeting Phone Requirements for Local Agents
Agent Greeting is available to agents and supervisors who use IP Phones with Built-In Bridge (BIB). These agents are typically located within a contact center. Phones used with Agent Greeting must meet these requirements:
-
The phones must have the BIB feature.
Note
If you disable BIB, the system attempts to use a conference bridge for agent greeting call flow and raises a warning event.
-
Ensure that the phone's firmware is up to date. (Usually, phone firmware upgrades automatically when you upgrade your Unified CM installation.)
-
For a list of supported phones for contact center enterprise solutions, see the Compatibility Matrix for your solution at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-enterprise/products-device-support-tables-list.html.
Agent Greeting Call Flows
-
The incoming call arrives from CUBE or a TDM gateway at CVP.
-
CVP sends the incoming call to Unified CCE.
-
Unified CCE instructs CVP to queue the call.
-
CVP sends the call to the Voice Browser for VRU treatment.
-
When an agent is available, Unified CCE sends the agent number to CVP.
-
CVP sends the call to Unified CM.
-
Unified CM establishes the connection to the agent phone.
-
The caller connects to the agent phone and stops hearing the ringback.
-
Unified CCE determines which CVP to invoke, and instructs Unified CM to tell the phone BIB to open a stream to CVP.
-
Unified CCE and CVP shake hands to set the trigger for CVP to let it know which greeting to play.
-
CVP instructs the Voice Browser to have the Media Server play the greeting.
-
The phone's BIB mixes the greeting. After the greeting plays, CVP disconnects and the agent speaks with the caller.
Agent Greeting Considerations
Consider these points when you add Agent Greeting to your solution:
-
Agent Greeting does not support outbound calls made by an agent. The announcement plays for inbound calls only.
-
Only one Agent Greeting file plays per call.
-
Supervisors cannot listen to agent recorded greetings.
-
Agent Greetings do not play when the router selects the agent through a label node.
-
Agent Greeting supports Unified CM-based Silent Monitoring with this exception: Supervisors cannot hear the greetings themselves. If a supervisor starts a silent monitoring session while a greeting plays, a message appears that a greeting is playing and to try again shortly.
-
Use either G.711 a-law or mu-law for the VRU leg on the Voice Browser dial-peer. Do not use the voice-class codec.
-
In general, Agent Greeting feature requires shorter latency across the system. For example, the public network has a maximum round-trip latency of 100 ms to support Agent Greeting feature as designed.
Agent Greeting requires the following:
-
The phones have the BIB feature.
-
The phones must run the latest firmware version delivered with Unified Communications Manager.
-
The phones must be have BIB enabled in Unified Communications Manager.
Agent Greeting with Whisper Announcement
You can use Agent Greeting with the Whisper Announcement feature. Consider these points when using them together:
-
The Whisper Announcement always plays first.
-
To shorten your call-handling time, use shorter Whisper Announcements and Agent Greetings than if you were using either feature by itself. A long Whisper Announcement followed by a long Agent Greeting equals a long wait before an agent actively handles a call.
-
If you use a Whisper Announcement, your agents probably handle different types of calls: for example, "English-Gold Member-Activate Card," "English-Gold Member-Report Lost Card," "English-Platinum Member-Account Inquiry." Ensure that greetings your agents record are generic enough to cover the range of call types.