CallCenter Outbound Behaviour
We are using CDH in Pega 8.6 to look for NBAs through CallCenter + Outbound channel. As far as I see, Container REST Service is retrieving the NBA, but not using the channel mapped to ContainerPayload page when Direction is Outbound. I mean, if Direction = Outbound it does not matter the value for Channel, as it is not being used.
This means that even if we are triggering the Container for CallCenter Outbound offers, we could receive propositions with only one treatment for Email, for instance. Is this behavior correct and expected?
Thanks.
Accepted Solution
Updated: 10 Jan 2022 1:59 EST
Pegasystems Inc.
US
@Ramond65What you describe here is in like with what I outlined, except that the initial segmentation (or decision to call the customer) is not generated by CDH. This is fine, but does create a situation where there are 2 brains, which is not a good practice, but it is understandable that this can arise. I'd suggest digging into why it maybe that another system is doing the initial segmentation, but that's beyond your question, so I leave that to you to progress separately.
You understood me correctly that the outbound call to container will return all outbound channels and your Outbound Call Center channel application can ignore any row that is not Outbound Call Center. Some outbound application may find that information useful and do something with it, but it's fine to ignore in use cases like yours.
Pegasystems Inc.
US
@Ramond65 it’s not clear to me what you are attempting to accomplish given you are referring to container calls. Container API is typically used for inbound decision invocation and not outbound. For outbound call center I would expect you to run a regular schedule and one of the channels that will be configured with treatments will be outbound call center, likely with a file or database output. This queues us outbound calling list for agents to refer to to make outbound calls, with no call to a container. Now sometimes, for this scenario, when the call center agent decides to call a customer form the queued up list, you might additionally want to validate that the queued up customer’s NBA is still the best action and you would call a constrainer for that customer, with the direction of outbound and call center as channel. This will give you the latest NBA for outbound call center that the agent can communicate to the customer.
ensure you have outbound call center treatments defined.
EY
ES
@Saleem_A We are using a real-tIme container from a Pega portal to get the NBA and show it to agents when they make an outbound call. The real-time container calls Container and CaptureResponse REST services.
What I see is that Container REST service is not using the channel coming in the request when direction is Outbound, so it is not filtering CallCenter treatments but offering all. I am not sure if this is correct or not.
In other words, if I run the Container REST service for CallCenter Inbound, I check only CallCenter treatments are offered.
If I run the Container REST service for CallCenter Outbound, I receiver any treatment instead of CallCenter only.
Thanks in advance,
Ramón
Pegasystems Inc.
US
@Ramond65 So I think what you are doing is the later part of my approach above, which is to call NBA via container to validate that the queued up action is still valid, is that correct? If not, then how does an agent know which customer to call in the first place in an outbound context? If this is not really outbound, but in the context of a customer already being on the call then this is considered an inbound call center container call,
If this is the about validating an already queued up outbound customer's NBA, then you should call the container with Channel and direction set appropriately. The response may include actions for other channel, but your call center application can ignore those. In outbound, any applicable channel will get a response by design and the outbound channel application should only facilitate its own channels actions. This is to allow multiple channels to be communicated to via a single NBA request.
EY
ES
@Saleem_A We are not using regular schedules for outbound interactions. I will try to explain... When an agent is calling a customer, we consider it an outbound calling. The segmentation is not done by Pega: there are different reasons why an agent needs to call a customer. What we do with CDH is to make the customer a marketing proposition once we main reason for the calling was finished. So we know the client and we look using CDH for the best NBA. For us, from a customer perspective this is a Call Center Outbound interaction. Please, let me know if this is not a correct use of the CDH. I mean, if we should consider these interactions as Inbound.
When you say: "The response may include actions for other channel, but your call center application can ignore those", I understand that the behaviour I see for Container responses is right (it won´t filter by channel in outbound mood), and we should filter the proper treatment after having all offers for all channels.
Thanks,
Ramón
Accepted Solution
Updated: 10 Jan 2022 1:59 EST
Pegasystems Inc.
US
@Ramond65What you describe here is in like with what I outlined, except that the initial segmentation (or decision to call the customer) is not generated by CDH. This is fine, but does create a situation where there are 2 brains, which is not a good practice, but it is understandable that this can arise. I'd suggest digging into why it maybe that another system is doing the initial segmentation, but that's beyond your question, so I leave that to you to progress separately.
You understood me correctly that the outbound call to container will return all outbound channels and your Outbound Call Center channel application can ignore any row that is not Outbound Call Center. Some outbound application may find that information useful and do something with it, but it's fine to ignore in use cases like yours.