Introduction

This section provides an overview of the OUTBOUND product, what it does, and how OUTBOUND campaigns are built.

OUTBOUND is a highly configurable service builder that automates the process of contacting target customers. It is designed to support outbound campaigns of two types:

• Live-voice campaigns, where the aim of the campaign is for agents in the contact centre to speak to target customers
• Agent-free campaigns, where targets are played a recorded message, or contacted by email or SMS; no agents are involved.

Both types of campaign have as their basic elements:

• One or more contact lists, which include a record of each contact to be targeted by the campaign
• An underlying FLOW script, which tells the system how to route calls for each record in the contact list in turn.

Live-voice campaigns have, in addition, a list of agent groups whose members will handle the calls.

Note: there is a limit on the number of campaigns your organisation can run concurrently. Your support representative will be able to advise you what the limit is for your organisation.

Live-Voice Campaigns

For live-voice campaigns, a predefined set of agents are tasked with handling outbound calls generated by the FLOW script, using customer telephone numbers provided by the contact list. Predictive dialling features may be applied through the use of pacing profiles. The campaign terminates when all targets have been contacted, or the campaign end date has been passed.

Different types of live-voice campaigns can be configured:

• Preview Campaigns: agent-driven, in that agents are presented with customer records, and are then expected to make a decision as to whether a call to the customer should be initiated. The time window in which this decision must be made is usually restricted, and often agents will not be provided with the option to reject the record.
• Progressive Campaigns: driven entirely by agent availability, where a new outbound call is initiated each time an agent becomes available.
• Predictive Campaigns: attempts to predict how many outbound calls to initiate, based roughly speaking on the number of agents it expects to be free shortly, and the proportion of calls which connect successfully (the success rate).

The contact lists for a live-voice campaign will typically be created from a customer relationship management (CRM) database to target customers meeting specific demographic criteria. They can be amended as the campaign progresses to reflect the results of the campaign so far.

Predictive Dialler Campaigns

The algorithm used by predictive dialler campaigns draws on the following historical statistics, gathered across OUTBOUND campaign calls:

• The number of calls made to customer numbers where the call connected successfully.
• The number of calls where the call connected successfully to the customer number, but where the call was abandoned due to lack of agent availability.
• The mean average of total call handling time for calls that were connected successfully to an agent (where the call handling time includes time spent in wrap).

Statistics are aggregated and the results stored for use by the algorithm on a regular basis, each time a threshold (for example, every 100 calls) is exceeded. This threshold is configured for you by Content Guru.

Predictive dial campaigns can be configured to place agents into a 'Reserved' state when the next contact has been selected for them. The agent will be unable to change their availability, receive incoming calls from elsewhere, or log out until the call has been handled. This prevents a situation where there is no agent available to handle the call. This configuration is carried out for you by Content Guru. Contact your support representative for more information.

Agent-Free Campaigns

Agent-free campaigns are of two types:

• One-off campaigns, where all the customers on a contact list are sent the same email, text or SMS message or played the same automated message. These campaigns may be used where an organisation maintains a list of customers who request to be informed when, for example, a power cut is impending or when a special offer is due to begin. The contact list can be created for a specific campaign from a CRM database in the usual way; or it can be maintained on an ongoing basis.
• Ongoing campaigns, where an external trigger causes an entry to be created in that campaign's contact list. The FLOW script can be set to poll the contact list on a regular basis; when it detects a new entry it sends, or plays, a message to the customer. Ongoing services are used, for example, to inform customers when a parcel is ready to be collected or is about to be delivered.

Time Zones

storm supports organisation-level time zones for STUDIO. Content Guru can set a partition-level time zone that is different from the one used by the storm platform.

• The partition-level time zone is used when displaying and setting times in STUDIO using time/date pickers and during processing (for example, when starting and ending OUTBOUND campaigns and when scheduling calls and callbacks).
• The time zone of the platform on which storm runs continues to be used when writing records to the storm database.

Microsoft settings allow you to see which time zone you are working in.