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How Skills-Based Dialing Works

This topic provides a technical walkthrough of the skills-based dialing feature. The Skill Sets container maps skill values in a custom contact list column to CIC skills. Skill Sets also establish minimum required Agent skill proficiency, and a dialing ratio for controlling the relative amount of each skill to dial. In general, Interaction Dialer will dynamically determine how many calls to place of each skill requirements according to the skill assignments of logged on agents.

The dialing ratio may be thought of as a "multiplier" to affect the number of certain records (based on skill requirements) to cached. Since Dialer updates the cache dynamically, leaving the dialing ratio at "1" will generally give the best results.

Dialer maintains an Active Agent Skill Table, an internal table of agents who are logged on and active for each skill combination. Skill combinations that have 0 agents logged on and active have no entry in the table.

The table below shows an example Active Agent Skill Table for 10 total agents and 6 skill combinations. The number of fractional agents for each skill combination is on the right with the total number of agents with the skill in parentheses.

Total Agents: 10

Active Agent Skill Table

AZ, Home

2.5 (4)

IN, Home

1.5 (4)

IN, Life

1.5 (4)

TX, Auto

1 (2)

TX, Home

1.5 (4)

TX, Life

2 (5)

Dialer uses the Active Agent Skill Table to determine how many calls to cache for each skill combination. Dialer tailors its call list queries based on the current cache level and the desired cache level. The table below shows how many records Dialer will maintain in its cache for each skill combination, assuming 400 records are needed in the cache. The total number of records in the cache will be allowed to exceed 400 to ensure that there are always plenty of callable records for each skill combination.

Calls in Cache: 400

Contact Cache Totals

AZ, Home

100

IN, Home

60

IN, Life

60

TX, Auto

40

TX, Home

60

TX, Life

80

The contact cache is only cleared when the campaign is turned off or restarted. If there are contacts in the cache that can no longer be dialed because the agents that could accept those calls have gone on break or logged out, then these calls will remain in cache until agents become available for them or the campaign is turned off or restarted.

Dialer also keeps a table of how many agents are idle for each skill combination. Skill combinations that have 0 agents logged on and active will have no entry in the table. The graphic below shows an example table for 3 idle agents and 4 skill combinations. The number of fractional idle agents for each skill combination is on the right with the total number of idle agents with the skill in parentheses.

Idle Agents: 3

Idle Agent Skill Table

IN, Home

0.25 (1)

IN, Life

1.25 (3)

TX, Home

0.25 (1)

TX, Life

1.25 (3)

Dialer will then use the Active Agent Skill Table to determine how many calls should be proceeding for each skill combination. When an agent becomes idle (or has a prediction) Dialer will use the agent's skills and the number of proceeding calls for the agent's skill combinations to determine how many calls to place. The figure below shows how many records Dialer will have proceeding for each skill combination based on the Idle Agent Skill Table, assuming 4 calls per agent.

Proceeding Calls: 12

Calls per Agent: 4

IN, Home

1

IN, Life

5

TX, Home

1

TX, Life

5

The Dialer Overview view in Interaction Supervisor will display the number of remaining records for each skill.