Call Routing

This section explains how calls are routed.

Inbound

An Agent available for the longest duration without taking a call, and currently available, is offered the next call that comes in. If an agent misses or declines a call, the call is not re-served. The call is then routed to the next Available Agent that meets the criteria for call Routing. The wait time before a call is routed from one agent to the next is 30 seconds - this configurable in Amazon Connect.

Additionally, if a caller exceeds the maximum wait time set in Amazon Connect, the call may get routed to Voicemail before being offered to all agents.

When a softphone receives a call, the call does not route to all agents at the same time but follows the routing rules outlined above. This is the case for all routing options including IVR.

Outbound

Outbound calls are supported in the softphone via integration with Campaign Manager. Outbound campaigns contact a list of people based on the contact strategies set in Campaign Manager. Every campaign has a dialing mode setting, configured in Campaign Manager, that determines when and how the campaign delivers contacts to the dialer to place calls. The dialing mode lets the agent see the end user information before dialing or patches an agent to a call after the call connects to a live party.

The agent can handle the outbound calls only after a tethered connection is established. When you change the state to Available, the state change request is sent to Campaign Manager which initiates the tethered connection. The tethered call is auto-answered in the softphone. After a tethered call connection is established, the agent’s state automatically changes to Busy, and only then can an agent handle outbound calls. The status of the tethered call connection is indicated by an icon with different colors, each of which defines a different status.

• A green button indicates that the agent is connected to a tethered call and available to handle outbound calls.

• A grey button indicates that the agent is connected to outbound but the tethered call is not mapped.

• A red button indicates that the agent failed to connect to outbound.

For the Preview pacing mode, an agent is presented with details of the customer before dialing. The agent can choose to Accept / Reject / Close the contact.

The agent is allowed a configured time to preview the contact presented. This is configurable in Campaign Manager. The application performs one of the following actions if the agent does not preview the contact within the configured time - that is, if the preview times out:

• Accept

• Reject

• Reject and Close Contact

• Reject and Reschedule Contact

For other pacing modes like Predictive and Progressive, the dialer first places the call to the customer and patches to the agent on customer answer.

Blended Calls

Blended calls help you to manage inbound and outbound calls and allow agents to move between inbound and outbound calling activities.

Agents, known as blended agents, are moved between inbound calls and outbound calls based on configured business priorities and agent availability. If there are no more inbound calls available in the Queue, an agent automatically moves to outbound calls.

• Blending to inbound - When an end user waits in the inbound queue for a duration as configured in Campaign Manager, one of the agents who is idle for a longer time is disconnected from the tethered call and moves to inbound blending to handle inbound calls.

• Blending to outbound - When the agents are idle for the duration as configured in Campaign Manager in the Inbound blending state, they are moved to outbound blending to take the outbound calls, and a tethered call is initiated.

Softphone acquires or releases agents based on the number of calls available in a queue on a specific campaign handled in Campaign Manager. When the number of calls is high or low or as indicated by queue or agent’s idle time, softphone re-acquires agents or releases agents from outbound campaigns.