Campaigns
In this section, you will find an explanation of the basic concepts about campaigns and their functioning in uContact.
What is a campaign?
A campaign is a central concept that allows you to manage customer interactions across different channels. You need to configure at least one channel to start receiving and creating interactions. Additionally, each campaign has members, meaning agents who will be responsible for managing these interactions and interacting with customers through them.
Campaigns are designed to centralize specific business strategies, such as a support campaign that handles customer support requests or a sales campaign that manages customer opportunities. Campaigns can also include automations to improve response times and service efficiency, such as bots for answering questions and collecting information, automatic dialers to remind customers of payment dates, and more.
By centralizing all these elements within a campaign, it becomes easier to analyze Contact Center metrics, agent performance, and customer satisfaction.
What is a channel?
Channels are those configured in campaigns to receive interactions. Basically, it is the medium through which customer interactions will be received and through which agents can create interactions. In uContact, you have different channels such as Telephony, SMS, WhatsApp, Email, WebChat, and Messenger, allowing you to communicate with your customers in an omnichannel manner.
What is an interaction?
An interaction refers to the contact established between the customer and the Contact Center. Interactions can be inbound or outbound, meaning either the customer or the agent can initiate the interaction. In each interaction, all messages are unified, both from the agent and the customer. Once an interaction starts, the messages sent by the customer through the same channel will be part of the same interaction and will not create multiple interactions.
Interactions can also be transferred between agents or campaigns to direct specific inquiries to agents or campaigns that can resolve them. For example, a customer contacts via WhatsApp requesting information about the price of a specific product; the agent could transfer this interaction to the Sales campaign for better customer assistance. When the agent receives the interaction, they will have the complete message history as well as the customer information.
For Telephony and WebChat, both the agent and the customer can end the interactions. For other channels, only agents can end the interactions. Once an interaction is ended, no more messages can be sent or received through that specific interaction. The system will automatically create a new interaction if the agent or customer communicates again.
What is a waiting queue?
Once an interaction reaches uContact, if no agents are available to handle it, it enters a waiting queue where there may be other interactions waiting to be attended to. Interactions are placed one after another as they arrive and are then assigned as agents become available.
The average time that interactions remain in the queue can be measured, known as the Average Wait Time, and the goal of any inbound Contact Center is to minimize this time as much as possible.
Contact Centers can set objectives to attend to interactions within a certain amount of time. For example, if we want to attend to all incoming calls within 20 seconds, and we manage to do so for half of the calls during the day, this means we have a Service Level of 50%. If all calls were attended to within that time, we would have a Service Level of 100%.
Both the Average Wait Time and the Service Level are key factors in a Contact Center to improve the end-user experience.
What is a strategy?
When a new customer interaction reaches the waiting queue, uContact uses different distribution strategies to determine which available agent will handle the interaction. Each strategy has a different behavior and objective.
Some strategies take into account the penalty indicated by the Administrator in the campaign configuration. The penalty is a value between 0 and 100 assigned to each campaign member to regulate the number of interactions they receive. The higher the value, the fewer interactions they will be assigned.
Telephony strategies
linear: In this strategy, agents have the order defined by the Administrator in the campaign. The call is delivered to the first agent on the list. If the agent is unavailable, it is delivered to the next agent on the list, and so on. When assigning a new interaction, if the first agent is available, it will be assigned to them.
rrmemory: The system remembers the agent who received the last call and assigns the next one to the next agent on the list.
random: Calls are distributed randomly among available agents.
ringall: Calls ring simultaneously on all available agents until one answers.
wrandom: Calls are distributed randomly among available agents, with those having higher penalties being less likely to receive them.
least recent: Interactions are assigned to the agent who has handled the fewest interactions recently.
fewest calls: Interactions are assigned to the agent who has handled the fewest interactions in total.
Omnichannel strategies
rrmemorynocall: The system remembers the agent who received the last interaction and assigns the next one to the next agent on the list. Assigns interactions to the agent even if they have other active interactions from any channel.
rrmemoryincall: The system remembers the agent who received the last interaction and assigns the next one to the next agent on the list. Does not assign a new interaction if the agent has other active interactions.
rrmemoryinteraction: The system remembers the agent who received the last interaction and assigns the next one to the next agent on the list. Only assigns new interactions if the agent has no other interactions or has an active call.
wrandomnocall: Random distribution that takes into account the penalty, with agents having higher penalties being less likely to receive new interactions. Assigns interactions to the agent even if they have other active interactions from any channel.
wrandomincall: Takes into account the penalty, with agents having higher penalties being less likely to receive new interactions. Allows agents to respond to interactions only if they are not on a call or paused. Does not assign a new interaction if the agent has other active interactions.
wrandominteraction: Random distribution that takes into account the penalty, with agents having higher penalties being less likely to receive new interactions. Only assigns new interactions if the agent has no other interactions or has an active call.
ringall: The first interaction in the waiting queue rings simultaneously on all available agents until one answers.
ringallmultiple: All interactions in the waiting queue ring simultaneously on all available agents until one answers.
What is a disposition?
Dispositions are used to categorize the final outcome of customer interactions. This is an example of dispositions that could be used: general inquiry, complaint, service cancellation, but these will depend on the client's business.
When an agent ends an interaction, they are asked to select a disposition that describes the interaction's outcome. This allows supervisors and administrators to measure Contact Center performance, identify areas for improvement, and assess the effectiveness of different agents.
Dispositions can also be used to trigger specific actions within the Contact Center. For example, if an agent selects "resolved" as the disposition, the customer's account can be marked as "closed," and the agent can be prompted to schedule a follow-up call.
In the uContact platform, a multi-level disposition structure can be used, allowing for more detailed and precise tracking of customer interactions. Each level of disposition provides more detailed information about the interaction. For example, a level 1 disposition might be "Sale," and within that level, different level 2 dispositions might be "Computer," "Cellphone," and "Tablet." If we wanted to know how many sales we have, it would be enough to count how many level 1 dispositions with the result "Sale" we have.
What is a state?
States are different types of pauses that prevent agents from being assigned any interactions. They can be used for various purposes such as Lunch, Bathroom, Training, etc. These can be monitored through campaign dashboards and also in the agent profile dashboard with detailed times indicating how long the agent was in each state.
Additionally, there are default states that all agents will see, and customized states can also be created for each campaign for agents to use, such as a customized state for "English class."
What is the blacklist?
The blacklist is used to add phone numbers or email addresses from which spam interactions, customers who do not want to be contacted, or similar are received. Once added, these interactions will not enter any campaign. The blacklist can be both outbound and inbound, meaning if an agent wants to initiate an interaction with a number that is on the blacklist, they will not be able to. Each campaign has its own separate blacklist.