Outbound Queue Process

What is the Queue

The queue is the most complex part of the system and determines which customers to call next when an agent becomes free to make an outbound call.  Each agent has their own queue and what's added to their queue depends on many factors which this document will explain.

Example of an Agent Queue

Types of Customer Calls to Add to the Queue

We'll refer to these a lot so let's get a description of what we add to the queue.  There are two priorities of calls added to the queue which are High Priority or Standard Priority.  Pending High Priority calls are checked for every time an agent completes a call so the High Priority customer can be called without delay even if an agent still has other customers in their queue.  

This design also prevents situations where e.g. you may have 10 hot leads to call so it's better for each agent to fetch one at a time instead of 1 agent adding all 10 to their queue and calling them one by one (e.g. 10 agents can call each customer and process them all in a couple of minutes compared to 1 agent taking 20 minutes to reach the tenth customer).

Type of Call	Priority	Icon	Description
Live Chat	High		An agent has completed a Live Chat (external) which causes a lead to be sent via an API and the customer is automatically added to the agent's queue.
Bot Chat	High		A customer has responded via the Bot after completing a booking and has further questions.
Voicemail	High		A customer has left a Voicemail.
Manual Reschedule	High		A customer has arranged a call back at a specific date and time.
Hot Lead	High		A customer has responded to a message (SMS / Email).
Warm Lead	High		A customer has interacted with a message in a less direct way (e.g. clicking a link to view more information).
New	Standard		A customer has been uploaded from a file or arrived via an API.
Auto Rescheduled	Standard		A customer has not answered a call and has another attempt in the campaign journey.
Parked	Standard	(No Icon)	An agent has parked a customer during washup (probably because an inbound call arrived) and it will come back later to be finished off.  The delay is controlled by the system setting 'Parked Call Queue Minutes'.

Customer Journey and Next Action Date

All customers are part of a campaign and the Campaign's Journey determines when a customer should be called.  The Next Action Date is calculated using the Journey Attempts e.g. Attempt 1 might be 'Call Immediately' or Attempt 2 might be 'Call After 3 Days and 4 hours'.

The Next Action Date is calculated and stored for each customer activity at the following points:

• When a campaign file is uploaded.
• When a lead arrives via an API.
• When a call is ended.
• When a customer responds to a message (e.g. a Hot Text).
• When a customer reaches the end of their journey.

The Next Action Date is the primary driver for when a customer is next added to an agent's queue. For a simple example, if a customer has an activity with a next action date of 'Tomorrow at 10am' then that customer will be added to an agent's queue tomorrow at 10am and then called shortly after.  

Working Hours

The working hours are taken into account for the relevant dealer when calculating the Next Attempt Date.  If for example the dealership is open from 8am till 5pm, then a calculation for 3 hours after 4pm will give a result of 10am the next day.

Multiple Journeys

If a customer has live activities in more than one campaign each activity follows the journey of its campaign.  However, the Next Attempt Date is the primary driver so the activity with the earliest Next Attempt Date decides the journey that's actually followed.  Note that this means the journey followed can change over time and the customer may not follow a single journey.

Example

A brochure request sales lead arrives at 10am with a journey of:

• Attempt 1 after 3 hours
• Attempt 2 after 1 day

Then at 3pm a new Reserve Online sales lead arrives with a journey of:

• Attempt 1 call immediately
  
• Attempt 2 call after 1 hour
• Attempt 3 call after 1 day

The call attempts would then be as follows (assuming no answer to any calls):

* Note the Journey has changed from Brochure Request to Reserve Online.

* The maximum attempts have been reached for this journey ends.  

Specific details for sales leads that reach max attempts can be found here.

Example of a Campaign Journey

Agent Type

For queueing purposes Agents are configured to be either Sales or Retention and as such will only have customers from either Sales Campaigns or Retention Campaigns added to their queue.  Note that if a customer is due a Service and is interested in buying a new car then they will be called twice by the different teams. 

Agent Skills & Assignments

An agent is configured to have certain skills by Brand and Product where Brands relate to Dealers and Products relate to Campaigns.  If an agent does not have a skill for e.g. '1st Service' then they cannot have calls added to their queue for any 1st Service campaigns.  

Agent Skills Matrix Screenshot

If an agent has a skill, then they have must also have that skill assigned to one or more dealers in order to have customer calls added to their queue.

Agent Assignment Screenshot

Additional Considerations for Agent Skills 

Sometimes the status of a campaign is ignored for some types of customer calls due to their high priority or to avoid unexpectedly digging up old customers who have somehow slipped through the net.  In addition an agent can be directly assigned certain skill types that do not relate directly to Brand or Product.  These considerations are shown in the table below.

Type of Call	Campaign Status	Additional Agent Skill
Live Chat	Any	None
Bot Chat	Any	Bot Chat Trained
Voicemail	Any	Voicemail Trained
Manual Reschedule	Campaign must have been created in the last 12 months	Voice Trained
Hot Lead	Any	Voice & Hot Text Trained
Warm Lead	Campaign must be Running and not Paused	Voice & Hot Text Trained
New	Campaign must be Running and not Paused	Voice Trained
Auto rescheduled	Campaign must be Running and not Paused	Voice Trained
Parked	Campaign must be Running and not Paused	None

Populating the Queue

When an agent becomes free to take an outbound call the system will fetch their next customer to call from their queue (or populate their queue if it is empty).  There are a number of conditions to be met to begin this process and to decide which customer is the next one to call.

Minimum Agents Available

The System Setting 'Number Of Available Agents' determines how many agents must be left free to receive inbound calls before an outbound call will be fetched e.g. if set to 2 then an outbound call will be fetched only when 3 or more agents are available.

Standard Checks for All Call Types

The following rules are applied to all Call Types in order for a customer to be added to an Agent's queue:

• The Next Action Date must not be in the future.
• The Agent must have the appropriate skills assigned for the Campaign, Dealer & Additional Skills.
• The Customer must not already be in another agent's queue of the same type (i.e. Sales or Retention).
• The Customer still owns the Vehicle the activity relates to.
• The Customer must not be unsubscribed for Voice Calls (this is not relevant for call types where the customer has initiated the call i.e. any of the High Priority Call Types.

Adding the Next 'High Priority' Customer to the Queue

Each Type of Call is checked in order starting from Live Chat all the way through to Parked.  If a customer is found that is High Priority, the process stops and that customer is added to the Agent's queue as the next call.

Note that more than a single Bot Chat customer can be added to the Agent's Queue in order to allow an agent process multiple chats at the same time.  This is controlled by the 'Bot Chat Customers Per Queue' system setting.

Adding the Next 'Regular Priority' Customer to the Queue

If no High Priority customer calls were found then we move on to the standard queue processing where the next customer from the Agent's queue is fetched.  If the queue is empty then it is re-populated up to a maximum of 10 customers where:

• A customer has at least one activity with no outcome,
• The customer's activity created date is greater than the 'Recent Activity Cut Off Weeks' system setting.
• The customer's activity ranking is greater than the Campaign Minimum Ranking setting (set per Campaign on the Edit popup).
• Customers with the oldest Next Action Date are added to the queue first.

Boosts Are Checked First in the following order:

• First for customers where both the Campaign & Dealer are boosted.
• Then for customers where just the Campaign is boosted.
• Then for customers where just the Dealer is boosted.

Then Regular / Deferred Customer Calls are added to the queue if there is still space.

Parked

Finally up to 3 Customers who have been parked by this agent are added to the queue to ensure agents get through their parked customers and not have any outstanding at the end of their shift.

Diagram of Queue Population Process

Note agent skills & assignments are not shown on the diagram.