Blending

Interaction Dialer supports call blending—the coordinated delivery of both inbound and outbound calls to the same set of agents. 

• Dialer monitors inbound load and adjusts outbound accordingly

• Agents can receive calls from multiple inbound queues while handling outbound calls

• Blending is supported in all agent-based dialing modes

Feature Overview

Whether following up on a conversation with an agent or responding to a message left on an answering machine, called parties sometimes call back—outbound operations by nature generate inbound calls. Interaction Dialer provides blended inbound and outbound centers with a flexible platform for managing a variety of outbound applications.

Outbound agents are often the best skilled resources to handle the resulting inbound calls.  This need to efficiently handle inbound calls in outbound operations illustrates a great strength of the PureConnect platform upon which CIC and Interaction Dialer exist.  

Since Interaction Dialer is an add-on to CIC, it can take advantage of key functionality within CIC including CIC's feature-rich, inbound automatic call distribution (ACD) capabilities.  When a live person is detected by Interaction Dialer, CIC's ACD is used to route that call to the most appropriate agent using the same routing functionality as is used with an inbound call. 

The system knows about both inbound and outbound calls and delivers both calls as appropriate to the same agent using the same phone and screen pop/call control capabilities. Because agents can belong to multiple inbound workgroup queues in CIC, agents can seamlessly move between inbound only, outbound only, or blended.  Agents can receive outbound calls from one outbound campaign at a time along with inbound calls from any number of inbound workgroup queues.

Typically, inbound calls take priority over outbound calls. However, this bias toward inbound calls can be modified for an outbound campaign. In addition, the Disable Non-Dialer statistics campaign setting can be enabled to allow more time between outbound calls for agents to process inbound interactions.

When a blended agent completes a call (inbound or outbound), the agent becomes available for waiting ACD calls – either inbound or outbound.  If no waiting ACD calls are appropriate for that agent, the agent is idle and the agent is added to the pool of agents needing another outbound call.

Interaction Dialer's pacing algorithm dynamically reserves a percentage of agents for inbound calls based on the recent history of inbound calls for that outbound campaign.  As inbound increases, outbound decreases and vice versa.