dropped calls & pause

[callcrazy]

If ratio dialing 1-1 agents to calls, dropped calls occur when an agent pauses using the main vicidial buttons. I'm using the goautodial version of agc, but assume the functionality is the same across the board.

As soon as the call is given a status/disposition on the pop-up page if they do not click the check box to pause them a dial will be made. If the agent then selects to pause by clicking the button in the upper left the call will be dropped if running on a campaign requiring few agents.

It seems the pause button should be disabled until the call has been answered or timed out so after the agent hits pause they have to wait until it actually goes on pause as they may be getting one last call. Pause should be more a pause requested button and after a set amount of time and no calls allocated to that agent the pause should take effect.

Is this what the "Agent Pause After Each Call:" setting is trying to do? This seems like it would prevent the dropped calls, but slows the flow since it gives the agent control over the dial speed.

The pause check box on the status/disposition window should maintain its current function.

[mflorell]

You want to set "Available only Tally" to "Y" in the campaign Detail screen.

[callcrazy]

This setting is set to Y.

The issue is that once the agent would go available after setting a status for a lead the next record would start to dial. If it the agent hangs up after 10 seconds of waiting the call will be dropped. While allowing the agent to goto break.

It seems more appropriate to force the agent onto the next record and force a pause after that record in the event it answers. If the call times out the agent goes on pause.

[mflorell]

It seems like MANUAL dial method might be more appropriate for the kind of campaign you describe.

As for a "requested-pause" feature, this would be rather complicated to implement on blended and multi-agent campaigns and still preserve all other related features.

[callcrazy]

If an agent pauses themselves from the AGC buttons in the top left corner this will almost always produce a dropped call when in ratio dialing even with 'Available only Tally'=Y.

So in my view this is a bug since dropped calls should not occur when clicking pause.

[mflorell]

That is not a bug, it is a configuration issue and a user issue.

You cannot halt a dial once it has started, and if you are in RATIO and the agent is READY then a call will be placed. The proper action if an agent wants to pause is for them to click on the pause checkbox in the disposition screen.

If you want behavior like you describe you should use MANUAL dial method where the agent hears the ringing and the agent has to initiate the calls.

[callcrazy]

I agree with you..

"The proper action if an agent wants to pause is for them to click on the pause checkbox in the disposition screen. "

However, the proper action and what the software allows sometimes can be two different things. I believe software should prevent errors from occurring even though training could fix this agents are still going to click a pause button when they wish to pause. It means nothing to them that a record gets dropped as they have no concept of what what is going on behind the scenes.

Also in your quote you state that the proper action is to do this...if that is the case why isn't the pause button suppressed 100% on the main AGC screen since in that case and under these configuration settings there should never be a reason for an agent to press pause since the proper action is to use the check box?

I still feel this is a bug even though it could be worked around with configurations or by beating the agents with sticks until they get it right.

[mflorell]

The pause button is quite useful for many of our inbound call center clients that do no outbound at all.

Maybe a feature to completely disable the pause button would be a good idea, but then you would just see a lot of logouts/logins instead because if the behavior doesn't change, the agents will just keep doing it, just in a slightly different way, by logging out or just closing their web browser.

[callcrazy]

I've actually put together a collection of firefox add-ons for these very cases. One will nag the user when they attempt to close the page to prevent the main window from closing. It has a preferences window that allows a filter list of domains and the nag will only occur on a domain that matches.

*.domain.com/agc/*

Thanks for the info!

[mflorell]

I don't suppose you would want to contribute those plugins to the project would you?

Then we could possibly add that functionality to our existing select-to-dial Firefox plugin.

[callcrazy]

Do you have a link to the current vici addon? I was unaware anything already existed. We are in a very tight time line on getting this setup and going so some things have been just created so we can get it done. Hope we aren't duplicating something that already exists. But, giving this up to the community shouldn't be a problem.

[mflorell]

It's in SVN/trunk/extras/firefox_plugin/

We don't have it up for a web plugin at this time.

[williamconley]

Solution one:

remove pause capability unless the agent is dispositioning a call.

Solution two:

"delay" pausing THE LAST AVAILABLE AGENT until the call queue has cleared out? (and popping up a "pause initiated, please stand by for clearing" or something similar). This would require some training for "old users", but new ones could be initiated in the "that message means you can't leave yet, wait for the calls to clear out, it will tell you when they have". Of course, if another agent becomes available, they get released and when all the calls are gone they get released.

Now all we need is a client to pay for "coding" of this