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Contact Times: Schedules and Zone Blocking

It is important to manage when campaigns run and when contacts are dialed. These are not the same! Campaigns have unique requirements; agent availability may vary throughout the day, and no one wants to dial contacts at inopportune times.  Fortunately, Interaction Dialer can evaluate each contact's time zone to dial at appropriate times only. This feature is called time zone blocking. Each time zone is defined in a Zone Set that tells Dialer when the zone should be called. Time zone blocking is configured by assigning a Zone Set to a campaign.

If the contact list does not contain each contact's time zone, time zone mapping can be performed by comparing the initial digits of each phone number with a database of numbers and time zones. This database is called a timezone map. Timezone maps are configured using the Timezone Map Data view.

By assigning a schedule object to a campaign, you can control when a campaign is on or off. When a campaign is turned on, agents are able to logon.  See Scheduled execution of Campaigns.

Calling only at appropriate times

Few call centers want to disturb customers who are sleeping. Calling contacts at any inappropriate time is inefficient and wastes money.  Each outbound campaign can be configured to dial contacts at appropriate times, based on the time zone information. This feature is called Time Zone Blocking.

Time Zone Blocking lets the Central Campaign server decide whether to select a record for outbound calling, based upon the contact's time of day.  Time zone blocking also prevents auto-scheduled calls and agent-owned callbacks from being placed at inappropriate times.

How Dialer obtains a Contact's time-of-day

Each contact's time-of-day is inferred from time zone information that Interaction Dialer obtains by reading the zone column of the contact list for the time zone associated with the contact, or by looking up initial digits of a telephone number in a time zone map database to obtain the time zone corresponding to an individual telephone number.

This latter process, called Time Zone Mapping, is useful when the zones column in a contact list is not fully populated, or has no time zone data at all. It is especially useful when contacts have multiple telephone numbers that may be in different time zones.  

Time Zone Mapping obtains the time zone of each contact number, by looking up initial digits of the number in a database, instead of relying on the contact record to provide a time zone for the contact as a whole. The time zone map data set can be purchased from a third-party, or it may be a database table managed by the customer.

To set up time zone mapping, configure a data source that translates a phone number's area code and exchange into a time zone. These data sets are called "time zone map data sets". Once a time zone map data set has been defined, time zone mapping can be enabled on a campaign-by-campaign basis. When enabled, automatic mapping is performed for contact numbers that do not have an associated time zone.

Zone Sets define when calls can be placed to a time zone

Time Zone Blocking and Time Zone Mapping both use Zone Sets to indicate when a time zone can be dialed. Each entry in a zone set identifies one time zone, and when that zone can be dialed—on which days of the week at specific times of day.  A zone set can contain any number of zone entries.  A zone set can be used by multiple campaigns.

The information in a zone set (when each zone can be dialed), combined with the contact's time zone (read from the contact list or looked up from a database), gives Dialer the information it needs to select records to dial.

How to implement Time Zone Blocking

To ensure that calls are placed only at appropriate times:

  1. Create a zone set with entries for each time zone used by contacts.

  2. Assign that zone set to a campaign.

  3. Optionally configure a time zone map data set.

  4. Enable Time Zone Mapping for the campaign, and set options that define how broadly automatic mapping should be applied.