Managing Your Contact Center

With TeleVantage, creating a powerful and full-featured contact center has never been easier. The intuitive interface lets you define individual parameters for each queue. Choose whether calls are distributed to agents by top-down, round-robin or performance-based algorithms. Prepare for heavy-volume periods by defining multiple tiers of overflow agents who are called when all lower tiers are busy for a period you define. Keep waiting customers online with hold messages that can play once, repeat or change based on wait time or other queue conditions. Hold music is variable by queue. Offer callers the option to transfer out of hold to leave voicemail, cutting down on abandoned calls. Prompt waiting callers to enter information such as an advertising ID number that alters their hold experience and gets passed to agents. Use call priority to identify important callers and promote them to a higher place in the queue. When the call is answered, improve quality with automatically-activated call recording that you can set up for a particular agent and/or the queue as a whole.

Advanced Agent Management
Adding and deleting agents from a queue is as easy as clicking a mouse. For each queue, you can define normal agents, overflow agents and supervisors with individual permission levels. An agent can be a supervisor in one queue and an overflow agent in another, for example; versatility between queues is unlimited. You control whether agents receive calls or function as "silent observers," how much wrap-up time they have after a call and whether they have permission to sign themselves in and out of the queue, monitor other agents or see themselves being monitored. Apply permissions in bulk to similar agents for ease of entry, then fine-tune for individuals. With TeleVantage, managing your manpower is a snap.

Intelligent Call Distribution
Send calls to agents based on longest idle time, fewest calls answered, least talk time, a round-robin distribution for equality or a top-down distribution that favors your best agents. Or, choose "simultaneous ring" in which all phones ring and the first agent to answer takes the call. If agents leave their phones without signing out, the queue can detect it and automatically put them on break, reducing caller hold times. During off-hours, a single click can take the queue off-line and send all its calls directly to voicemail.

Full TeleVantage Integration
Because your contact center is part of your regular TeleVantage system, there's never a conflict between the two. Queues can have extensions so that any user can easily transfer a call to them — no more telling the caller to call back. Agents use the ViewPoints's familiar Call Monitor for their queue calls and personal calls, divided into tabs for easy and complete separation. To mark themselves available and unavailable for a queue, they use TeleVantage's standard personal status menu, enhanced for agents with extra statuses such as "Available Queue Only," which sends personal calls to voicemail while letting queue calls through. Administrators can integrate their TeleVantage contact center with IVR Plug-in applications to customize and supercharge performance.

Queue Maintenance

• Single-point definition and maintenance for all aspects of a queue — makes contact center administration easy.
• Create as many queues as you want (for example Sales, Customer Support, etc.), each with a different customized setup.
• Click to take a queue off-line and send all its calls directly to voicemail, for example after hours.
• Automatically record a queue's calls on a periodic basis that you define.
• Define the queue's voice mailbox just like a user's, with greetings and e-mail or pager notification of new voice messages. Restrict access to the queue's voice mailbox by agent permission.
• Define the statistics update period for real-time display of queue stats.
• Automate scheduling of queue hours.
• Assign flexible task-oriented permissions for agents at once.
• Change permissions for several agents at once.
• Access queue by extension, DID number, auto attendant and dial-by-name.
• Choose between forced or optional account codes, with or without verification.

Agent Management

• Easily add and delete agents to handle turnover.
• Choose whether an agent is "signed in," meaning they receive calls when available, or "signed out," meaning they function purely as a supervisor or observer. Choose whether agents have permission to sign themselves in and out.
• Define agents as "silent observers," so they can't be seen by other agents in the Queue Monitor.
• Automatically record an agent's calls on a periodic basis that you define.
• Define certain agents as supervisors by giving them supervisor permissions, such as the ability to monitor or coach other agents, view queue statistics, access the queue's voice mailbox, and more.
• Apply and change permissions in bulk for multiple agents, or fine-tune permissions for individuals.
• Set wrap-up time (the time after a call to complete paperwork) individually per agent.
• Versatile agent use: an agent can belong to multiple queues, and be a normal agent in one, a supervisor in another and an overflow agent in a third.

Advanced Call Distribution

• Choose from six distribution algorithms to maximize your use of agents.
• Automatically set agents on break if they fail to answer queue calls, cutting down on caller hold time.
• Set caller priority based on caller input, so important callers are bumped to a higher position in the queue—how much higher is up to you.
• Handle heavy-volume times with multiple tiers of overflow agents. Each tier is only called when all normal agents and all overflow tiers are continuously busy for a period of time that you define. Add as many agents to each tier as you want.
• Set multiple overflow agent tiers for high volume times.
• Allow agents to manually take waiting VIP callers out of queue as needed.

Callers' Hold Experience

• Record or import welcome messages that customers hear when they first reach the queue.
• Record or import hold prompts that play once, repeat, or play based on queue conditions like caller priority or estimated wait time.
• Use automatically-updated system messages that tell the caller their position in the queue or their estimated wait time.
• Set variable hold music per queue.
• Prompt callers to enter data, such as an advertising ID number, with or without validation checking. Caller data is passed to agents and can alter the caller's hold experience by affecting their priority or the prompts they hear. Play special messages only to callers who enter specific advertising codes.
• Offer callers special-key options to transfer out of hold to an extension you define or to leave voicemail.

Integration With TeleVantage

• Queues can have extensions, making it easy for any user to transfer calls to them.
• Queues can be listed in the dial-by-name directory, so callers to the main number can enter "SAL" to reach the Sales queue.