Category: Contact Center

ToolBar Options for ShoreTel Call Managers

Posted on by DrVoIP

The Personal or Professional Call Manager has long been a key element in the success of the ShoreTel solution. This desktop call control application enables you to easily manage your phone calls. “Point and Click” to take action, or “right click” on an active call to immediately list all of your options. (You will find that there is always more than one way to do things in the ShoreTel Call Manager). The Call Manager can be customized by the system administrator. Each user can have up to 6 toolbars each supporting up to 24 buttons! You can dock or move these toolbars around and they can be hidden from the View menu in the Call Manager user interface. The System Administrator can create “Global Toolbars” and push them out to users as part of a class of service options.

Global and Personal Toolbar

You can create buttons that monitor other members of your team, launch applications, transfer live calls to remote cell phones! If you are using the Integrated toolbar (see previous post) as part of the ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center, the list of options for your toolbar can include call center specific functions. These functions might include Release with Code and Wrap Up with Code, both generally used in a contact center environment. ShoreTel Toolbars are easy to create, push out to users and offer a wide range of customization options that enable you to create a true “air traffic control system” for manipulating your phone system!   The graphic shows three rows of buttons that are a combination of user-specific, and “Global” that were pushed out to Call Center agents via a COS option.   If the PCM looks strange to you,  it is because you are on a version before 8+ which changed to this new look and feel.

ShoreTel Enteprise Contact Center Tool Bar Setup Options

Posted on by DrVoIP

As noted in a previous post, there are reasons that you might want to consider using the standard Agent tool bar. The Standard Agent tool bar enables the manipulation of an call center contacts (voice, email and chat) with an unobtrusive GUI. The toolbar can be standardized for each agent or a supervisor can allow agents to create there own tool bars. There is a setup icon that enables the ability to add or remove icons associated with different contact center functions. Again, the system administrator can “lock” this function and push out a standard Agent tool bar to assure system uniformity. In a “shift” based contact center in which different people sit at the same desk and extension at different times (e.g. Day, Night, Weekend) you can create an Agent tool bar icon that will prompt the Agent to enter their Agent ID and Extension number. In this way, the ShoreTel PBX can be setup with non-specific users, as the ShoreTel Contact Center can track usage by Agent ID.

Signing into the Agent tool bar prompts you to enter three items of information: Agent ID, Agent Extension and Email Address. The Agent Email address is only used when your ShoreTel Enteprise Contact Center is setup to route incoming email messages to the next available Agent, in a manner similar voice calls. Once logged in, there is an icon for Agent tool bar setup. There are four basic areas of tool bar setup: Telephony, ACD, Window and Other. The Telephony setup enables you to add icons for common phone features like transfer, hang-up, conference and Divert incoming call! The ACD setup enables wrap up, release and other common functions including the ability to request Supervisor Intervention. There is a Call Window, Queue monitor, Telephone manager and Desktop Wall Board in the Window setup section and currently the “other” option enable you to create an icon for launching an external application. There are also tabs for setting Preferences, Contact Information, Ring and Queue Alerts.

At the bottom of the tool bar there is a “status” line that displays information. Idle, Ringing, Connected and Held are common staus indicators, but you can also “write” to the status line. This is another advantage of this tool bar over the integrated tool bar. Similarly you can change the information that is displayed on the Queue Monitor or Agent Wall Board which are pushed out or available to the Agents. Some of this information is contained in the system defined Call Profiles, while other information is contained in the user defined Call Profiles. (Call profiles are described in detail on the www.drvoip.com instant online video training library). These options work together to create a very powerful desktop call management center, in a compact GUI. The silent video demonstrates the various configuration options and shows the easy with a customized tool bar can be created. The actual tool bar in this example, is a Supervisor tool bar in ECC 5.0 but it looks the same as an Agent tool bar!

ShoreTel ECC Integrated Tool Bar

Posted on by DrVoIP

The ShoreTel Contact Center or Enterprise Contact Center product development effort has and continues to be a “process” not an “event”.     That is what characterizes software development efforts in general.   You have to know where to draw the line and make a supportable release.     New features are always being added to any evolving product, but knowing when to package up what we have in the process, document it and be able to support it, is what characterizes a new release.    ShoreTel 4.66.07 and Version 8.1 of the ShoreTel IPBX enabled the stable, sustainable release of an integrated Agent tool bar.  (The current Release of ShoreTel ECC is Version 5 is more fully matured)   In prior releases, you had the ShoreTel Personal Call Manager (e.g. PCM)  for your PBX requirements and a separate “Agent” tool bar for your Contact Center requirements.   Today, you can implement a Contact Center with an “Integrated Agent Tool Bar” that combines both interfaces into a single GUI.  

 For those of you familiar with the ShoreTel Workgroup Call Manager will see an immediate resemblance between the new ShoreTel Integrated Tool Bar and the old workgroup toolbar.    Where it might have said Workgroup on the PCM, it now says Contact Center.   You can program tool bar options for “Wrap of Codes” and “Release with Codes”.   Under the Contact Center, supervisors get a range of options that include all of the individual components that make up the various ECC modules.   The only disadvantage that I can find at this time, is that with the standalone Agent Tool Bar, you are able to “write” to the status line of the Agent Tool Bar.  I have not yet been able to do that with the Integrated toolbar, but that is a small price to pay for having a single GUI to manage at the agent desktop.   Using the Agent toolbar alone also enable you to create an environment in which you can have a day shift and a night shift using the same telephone extension.   Changing the log in of a ShoreTel PCM is not a straight forward “user” type process and for that reason, you might elect not to use the integrated toolbar.   Otherwise, take a look, it is an amazing technology and a significant step forward for the product line.  As I said, “development is a process not an event”, so we should expect continue incremental improvements from the ShoreTel ECC team!

 

 

ShoreTel Enterprice Contact Center Skills Based Routing!

Posted on by DrVoIP

The ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center provides for “Skills Based Routing” an often confusing and misunderstood feature. It is important to note that this function might not achieve the desired result as it is only effective when there is more than one Agent available to accept a call. Lets take an obvious skill, like a Language requirement and assume that our call center needs both English and French speaking customer service representatives. We can assign a skill level to French, but we might not achieve the desired result. If we want to make sure that French callers get connected to French speaking Customer Service Agents, we might consider some other selection options.

For example we could use an Automated Attendant to select English or French and then route to the correct Agent Group. We might also use an IVR application to do a database dip, if they are an existing client, to determine their language preference. Finally, you might have separate DNIS numbers for each language required. These options will achieve the desired result, where “skills based” routing may not.

If we choose to use “skills base routing” as our best fit strategy, first we need to activate skills based routing. This is a system level option and you will find it as the SKILLS tab in entities under system. Each skill gets a value that indicates the minimum level of skill required to process the call. This means that a fluent native language speaker might get a FRENCH SKILL value of 100%. Another agent might get a 75% rating meaning that they have a language proficiency but equal to that of a native speaker. The “skill’ has a minimum value requirement of 75%.

Agents in turn are assigned two values. The first value defines the ability with respect to the requirement. In this example, someone would have to have between 100-75% as a French speaking skill. The second value would be a “preference” value. In this case the expression “preference” is an indication of how much the Agent likes to work with this skill and not your preference for selecting that Agent. This is a very important factor.

Lets assume we have Agent A and Agent B. The selection process is based on the product of the Agents value and preference subtracted from the required skill. The lower the value is most likely to be selected. Agent A has a 50% skill value and a 100% preference; Agent B has a 75% value and a 75% preference. Remembering that we have set 75% as the minimum skill required to handle this call, the arithmetic works like this: Agent A would be (75%- (50X100/100) = 25. Agent B would be (75% – (75×75/100) = 18.75 and as a result Agent B would be selected to handle this call. Again remember that the best fit is only applied when there is more than one Agent to select from! Thus skill based routing ensures that higher skilled Agents in a Group get calls before lower skilled Agents. Under heavy call volume, the skills have less of an effect, so keep this in your thinking when planning to achieve the desired result.

ShoreTel Contact Center Call Select or Agent Select

Posted on by DrVoIP

Agent Call Select OptionsConfiguring a ShoreTel ECC is better understood if we start from the Agent and work back to the caller. In the ShoreTel Enterpriser Contact Center we first define Agents whom we then assign to Groups which are generally the “destination” of a Services. Services are reached through entry points referred to as an IRN or Internal Routing Numbers. The IRN is connected through the PBX via TAPI to the DNIS dialed by the caller. Services can also have Destinations of Scripts which might be an IVR application or database dip to obtain additional customer or routing information.

Agents have both a Call Answer Strategy and a Call Select Strategy. We can search for an Agent based on which Agent has been idle the longest; Terminal, Circular or Best Skill Fit. This is defined at the Service level as “Agent Search Criteria”. What happens, however, if an Agent is a member of multiple Groups and an opportunity exists to have a called present to that Agent from all the Groups that the Agent is a member of? How do we determine which call from which Group should be presented to the Agent? This is where the “Call Select” strategy kicks in. We can assign a primary rule and a secondary rule. The rule can then define if the Call should be selected by the Longest Wait Time; by the Priority of the Call (set as the result of a previous Script or as assigned by the IRN when the call entered the system); and lastly by the “Best Skill Fit”.

Skills-based routing will be discussed in a later blog, but suffice it to say that the Enterprise Contact Center has a superior feature set at a price point that puts this contact center in its own product space. Knowing how to implemented the Call Center should not be left to OJT personnel! Get an implementation team that knows the difference between a ‘dress rehearsal’ and a ‘take’.

ShoreTel ECC Abandoned Call – Call Back and Dial List applications!

Posted on by DrVoIP

The ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center has several features that are often confused: Abandoned Call, Call Back and Dial Lists. Thought the features are somewhat similar, they work in different applications and not all for these features are available in the basic Contact Center. The ShoreTel ECC uses the concept of a service to encapsulate the handling of an incoming phone call. Generally the Service includes Groups, which include Agents, but groups can encompass other call actions. For example, a Service can contain a “script” that prompts the caller for DTMF input or calls on a SQL query to search an external database The Service also provides instructions for how queue messages are to be played to the caller.

Abandoned Call back enables the system to recognize that a caller was in queue but hung up before being serviced. The ShoreTel ECC can capture the Caller ID and then return the call! Typically an Agent is “reserved” before the outbound call is placed, the call is dialed and then transferred to the agent. It is also possible to play a pre-recorded message to the called party before the call is transferred to the agent, but there are reasons that you might not want to do this.

Let’s make a modification to our queue service to hold the caller and after a period of time, offer the caller an option to bail out. This is where the “Call Back” feature comes in. ShoreTel enables you to create a “script” that can not only prompt the caller to enter a return telephone, but also offer the caller the option to schedule a particular date and time for the call back. This is a very useful option for callers that have a “help me, teach me, show me” request but not at a level of urgency that would inspire them to sit on hold for an extended period of time.

The “dial list” feature of the ShoreTel ECC usually works in conjunction with a database dip. Lets take a typical credit and collection application. The ShoreTel ECC can access a database of delinquent clients, obtain the phone number of the client, dial the client and pass that call to an Agent that has been reserved by the system to handle this type of call. The system also provides for the option of updating the client record with a completion status for further database processing.

The ShoreTel ECC is an exciting application that can be used in the small to medium sized “contact center” environment to enhance functionality, increase productivity dramatically scale the functionality of an already powerful VoIP solution. (Note ShoreTel ECC and Contact Center have been used interchangeably in this blog! The ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center is a superset of the ShoreTel Contact Center and feature content may vary between the two versions).