Short Call Surcharge

[Baylink]

Qwest, our major carrier, is about to impose a penny per call surcharge for each completed call which is less than 6 seconds long.

You wouldn't think that would be a problem (unless, apparently, you run a call center :-) It's going to cost us $2500 a month.

Extending those calls to make them 8 second long, on the other hand, will cost us about $400 a month. Is there any way to convince either Asterisk 1.2 or Vicidial 2.05 to stretch those calls to a minimum of 8 seconds, easy, mediocre, or miserably difficult?

[mflorell]

Not really a matter of convincing anything to extend them, when the carrier hangs up you can't do much to change how it bills. As for calls like Answering Machines that agents hang up very quickly, there is really no easy way to do what you want without some significant changes to how VICIDIAL works, because you have to keep track of those channels and it will lock them up so you can't dial out over them until your artificial timeout is done.

[Baylink]

I know we can't do much if the customer hangs up on *us*, but I suspect most of the <6 second calls aren't in that category.

I believe I heard you say that recent SVNs log hangup detail; would they have duration as well? Where's that at, if so?

On the other front; it would seem to me that whatever in VD tells manager to hangup a call could just look at a timer, and delay a couple seconds before sending out the command... no?

[mflorell]

I'm not really sure what you are referring to in that first part.

As for the second part, yes you could delay EVERY hangup, but are you really sure you want to do that?

[williamconley]

not to sound like a simpleton ... but couldn't you change your hangup to either add 7 seconds or first check the time of the call and THEN add enough to make it 8 seconds ... and THEN hang up?

certainly not for calls hung up by the client, but i see no reason why that couldn't be written for the agent hanging up.

but would that actually "fool" the carrier?

[Baylink]

Gee whiz, I thought I'd already said that. :-)

Yes, you should be able to, I would think, and apparently Matt does not, and sure it will "fool" the carrier.

There's no "fooling" going on; the call is either longer than 6 seconds before disconnect, or it's not. The only question is: does the code that has to delay the outbound disconnect *know* accurately enough how long the particular timeslot has been off-hook?

If that code thinks it's been 2 seconds, and it's actually been 7, then it will delay when it needn't.

[Baylink]

I believe I heard you say that recent SVNs log hangup detail; would they have duration as well? Where's that at, if so?

I believe this is what you were asking about.

We had a conversation, a couple months back, about catching PRI call completion codes, and I believe you told me that recent SNV (for some value of recent) logged more data about the actual hard PRI transactions.

If I remembered it correctly, where would that data be in VD's DB?

[williamconley]

the agi script has access to the sip channel and CAN check the off-hook time. so that may not be as difficult as all that.

[Baylink]

I was hoping that might be the case, but I'm not an internals guy... yet.

[mxtreme311]

Well honestly this is going to cost you $2500 per month and it's gonna cost me around $4000 per month, maybe there is someone out there that code this? I'm willing to pay for this feature!!! I looked at my logs and a very small fraction of the short duration calls have the hangup initiated by the remote end, most are hung up on our end (Answering Machines, etc.), so there has to be a way that we can convince the dialer to hold these calls for a few seconds... in the infinite knowledge out there someone can't figure this out?

[williamconley]

so post a bounty ("I'll pay someone $XX for this feature) and wait for someone to "take you up on it".

[mxtreme311]

Well honestly I'd like to get an idea of how much work this would take so I don't post a dollar amount that is too low. Anyone interested in this?

[williamconley]

honestly if you don't post a dollar amount you are not likely to get more than a lot of PM's with people trying to "sell" you. but if you post a dollar amount that is too low, you might get a response from a "hungry kid". Or you might post one that "fits your budget" and get a real response.

But I'm just guessing. I know everyone wants everything and NOW, but noone wants to pay for it. If you are one of the guys willing to pay for it, you can begin with an offer and wait for counters ... or you can wait for a "salesperson" to proactively try to separate you from your money (offline, of course).

Who do YOU want to be in charge?

[mflorell]

Just adding 6 seconds to every hangup is very easy, but do you really want to do that? Imagine an agent clicking hangup, then saying something like "F'ing Ahole!"(although not quite as nice) while the customer is still on the line

Adding an optional feature that would look at the call duration on only outbound calls and add enough delay time to equal 7 seconds(making that number configurable as well) before hanging up the call would be ideal I am guessing. Also, it might be nice to take the call and immediatly send it to a Local/ extension that plays silence so it is no longer in the agent's session. Doing something like this properly, with options in the admin interface, documenting the feature and proper testing, I would quote out at 10 hours to do properly, which would be $2000 for a non-customer, and with our current development workload could be done in about 2 weeks.

Something else to consider is that you would need to make sure your campaign drop time is over 6 seconds, since DROP calls don't always go through the Hangup procedure through VICIDIAL.

[williamconley]

Well spoken.

[karaoketpa]

This has got to be affecting many call centers that use T1's and would make a great addiition to VICIDIAL suite.

Would anyone be interested in splitting the cost of having this programmed?

10 contributers @ $200 each.

[mflorell]

We have had offers, but at this point I would actually suggest going with a provider like Verizon Business(formerly MCI) that does not have these restrictions, and are in fact courting call center business. I would suggest this because there is a lot of baggage with just adding more time before hangup that can lead to other issues with Vicidial and loss of productivity.

We have recently moved two clients from Qwest to Verizon Business T1s and not only did their long distance bills go down, but they stopped worrying about their answer rate affecting their bill.

Another thing to remember is that even if this delayed hangup feature is added, it would not stop these offending carriers from just changing the penalty, then you have to figure a way around that one.

[williamconley]

Valid Point. I've worked with QWEST several times for several clients and it's amazing at the things they come up with. They have superior quality and equipment, but there is just NO WAY to get out of paying them extra fees.

Yes, I have written specific scripts to "get past" their system's silly requirements, but they always find a way to invoice regardless.

No matter what that salesman implied about $800/mo, you will be paying $2k/month MINIMUM as your contract says (in an awkward, roundabout, but technically precise manner), even if you DON'T use the minutes.