As a contact center manager, one of your main priorities is to have a clear understanding of what is happening in the contact center at all times. The alarms in Contact Center Client empower you to be aware of and act upon critical situations immediately.

Not all users have the luxury of two desktop monitors, so that leaves you with little choice about how you view the real-time goings on out on the floor. You either have the application opened constantly on your screen or you minimize it and open it occasionally to see what is happening—not very convenient. However, by using Contact Center Client’s alarm functionality you can have the best of both worlds: desktop real estate and a watchful eye on your queues. 

By right clicking an open monitor you can easily set alarms to be triggered for specific events in your contact center. For instance, if you need to know when there are more than two calls waiting in a queue. There are alarms for most of the report performance variables on which you can run reports. Depending on the type of monitor you are viewing, you can alarm on agents, queues, and extensions. You can even configure a marquee alarm, so that everyone viewing a wall mounted display is aware of events as they happen. There are multiple ways that alarms can notify you that an event has taken place. The font or background of the monitor cells can change colors, a small notification window can pop up on the desktop, or you can receive notification by email.

My preferred way of setting up Contact Center Client is to create alarms in the monitors I use the most. For example, I set one alarm to tell me when there are more than 2 calls waiting, another to notify me when the longest call waiting reaches the 2 minute mark, and a final alarm that tells me when there are less than 2 agents available in a queue. I also like to keep Contact Center Client minimized so that I can work in other applications. I set each alarm with a specific pop up message that tells me what is happening. For example, “More than 2 calls waiting in the CS Queue” or “Less than 2 agents available in the Sales Queue.” This way I immediately know what is happening when I receive an alarm, even before I maximize Contact Center Client. I also like to set the alarms to change the background color of a cell when using agent related alarms. This way when I see the pop up and I maximize Contact Center Client I am immediately drawn to the device that triggered the alarm.

These are just a few ways of using the alarm functions within Contact Center Client. Take some time to experiment and I am sure you will find many more great uses for this tool!

As always, if you would like more details on this topic or any of our training courses please contact the prairieFyre Training team at training@prairiefyre.com.

James Recoskie
Technical Trainer, prairieFyre Software

Ah, the abandoned call. It may be the one statistic that you feel you have little to no control over. Not enough staff, unexpected surges in call volume, poor scheduling, all of these things and more can contribute to abandoned calls.

The first step in addressing the number of abandons is to understand when and why your clients are hanging up. To do this you need to analyze your past abandoned statistics by utilizing the Abandoned Spectrum reports in Contact Center Management. The spectrum reports provide valuable information on how calls are dispersed in your contact center, as well as the greatest duration a caller waited before hanging up, and the average time a caller waited in queue before dropping a call. The Average Delay To Abandon statistic can tell you if callers hung up because they were impatient, waited a long time in queue, or whether there were longer than normal talk times causing agents to be unable to answer calls more quickly. Let’s have a closer look at a couple of these reports.

The Queue or Queue Group Abandon Spectrum by Period report provides a frequency distribution of calls abandoned on a queue or queue group across 15-, 30-, or 60-minute intervals for the shift duration and day(s) you specify. The fields of the reports provide a frequency distribution of call patterns based on a defined time scale. For each time period, the Count < x sec field reflects the total number of calls for that interval and all preceding intervals. The % of Calls abandoned field reflects the percentage of calls for that interval and all preceding intervals

The Queue or Queue Group Abandon Spectrum by Day of the Week report provides a frequency distribution of calls abandoned on a queue across 15-, 30-, or 60- minute intervals over the days of the week. When these reports are run for more than one week, the data is summed for each day of the week. For example, if the report is run for two weeks, the data found under Monday is the summed total of the two Mondays and the data found under Tuesday is the summed totals of the two Tuesdays, etc. The same display pattern used in Queue or Queue Group Abandon Spectrum by Period reports is used in these reports and the fields of the reports provide a frequency distribution of call patterns based on a defined time scale. The % of Calls abandoned field displays the percentage of calls for that interval and all preceding intervals. It is important to remember that in both report types mentioned, the Calls abandoned column contains the total number of both short and long abandoned calls. If you need to view a report that clearly separates long and short abandoned calls you should use the Voice Employee and Employee Group Internal/External Call Counts by Period report.

All of the reports have a Chart Sheet tab that allows you to look at the data in an easy to read chart. This can be found in the bottom left of the report output. When analyzing your abandoned call data, pay special attention to the steepest spike on the chart. This may be where you set your new service level, answer target, or perhaps you decide to adjust interflow or overflow times to handle the call in a timelier manner.

These are only two of the reports available to you. Take some time and review the Contact Center Solutions Reports Guide for more reporting options to help you run a more efficient contact center.

If you would like more details on this topic or any of our training courses please contact the prairieFyre Training Team.

Until next time,
James Recoskie
Technical Trainer, prairieFyre Software