BCS Contact. Version 5.1. Platform technical description

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1 BCS Contact Version 5.1 Platform technical description For Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 2008, Windows 2008 R2, Windows 2012, Windows 2012 R2 Operating systems Rev. 1 (June 2016) Alceo Servizi di telematica Santa Croce, Venezia Tel Fax

2 Index 1. FOREWORDS 3 2. BCS INTEGRATION AND SERVER INFRASTRUCTURE 4 BCS Dialer and BCSBar plugin 4 Infovox 4 UniStatWeb 4 Centralized server infrastructure 4 Microsoft SQL Server 4 Outbound cache server 4 Modules interactions 4 Inbound calls 5 Power outbound calls 5 Progressive/predictive outbound calls 5 3. ADMINISTRATION TOOLS 6 Outbound Wizard 6 Companies management 6 Address books management 6 Campaigns management 6 Activities management 8 Import Wizard 8 Export Wizard 8 Appointment wizard 9 Interview Editor 9 4. BCS CONTACT OUTBOUND PLUGIN 11 Alceo 2 Progetto BCS

3 1. FOREWORDS BCS Contact is a telemarketing campaign management suite. The system can handle many concurrent multifunctional multimedia (telephone, fax, SMS, ), each with its own configuration parameters. It si also possible to use BCS Contact for and advanced profiling (CRM-style) of the colled contacts. For both inbound and outbound calls, the following functionalities are available: 1. Pop-up with advanced address book management; 2. CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview) management; 3. Appointments management; 4. FAQ management; 5. Information documents management and fax/ sending; 6. Callback management; 7. Call history of the current contact; 8. Call cataloging; 9. Quota management (only for outbound campaign). BCS Contact puts the contact (the informations about a potential customer) at the center of its activities. It is possible to build address books of contacts to use on outbound multimedia campaigns: telephone, fax, SMS, . All informations acquired on the customer can be used on the campaigns: for example the messages sent to the customer can show details of the customer to make the message more pleasant and custom. The contact address books can also be created starting from inbound call center campaigns. The agent can choose to create a new contact for each caller and fill it with the informations acquired during the conversation with the customer. This contact could also be used for new telemarketing campaigns or to display the caller name if the customer should call again.. As shown in the previous picture, BCS Contact is made by the following modules: An integration with the telephony services provided by BCS A server infrastructure Administration tools A client used by the agents during the telemarketing campaigns In the following chapters these modules will be described in details. Alceo 3 Progetto BCS

4 2. BCS INTEGRATION AND SERVER INFRASTRUCTURE BCS DIALER AND BCSBAR PLUGIN BCS Contact relies on the BCS platform to automate the outbound call and identify the caller on inbound calls. Particularly is talks to the Dialer application, through an integration DLL and with the BcsBar application though a plug-in. To get more details on this, please refer to the BCS Server technical presentation document, particularly the paragraphs relating to the Dialer and the BCSBar plugin. INFOVOX Infovox is the IVR engine of the BCS platform, and is used by BCS Contact for performing certain activities. Particularly: Inbound calls welcome and management , SMS and fax send for the outbound multimedia campaigns Outbound calls for voice prompt campaigns (see more details in the following chapters) UNISTATWEB The BCS Contact statistics are available through the UniStatWeb web applications. The available statistics are: Campaign answers classification Campaign results classification Campaign activities result classification Quota performance CENTRALIZED SERVER INFRASTRUCTURE The BCS Contact server infrastructure is made of 2 elements: Microsoft SQL Server; Server Outbound Cache. MICROSOFT SQL SERVER A Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or newer is required to run the BCS Contact system. The SQL Server provides the database where the system configuration and client application logic is stored. OUTBOUND CACHE SERVER Works as a proxy between the database and the applications (client and server) requesting new outbound activities stored in the database. Outbound Cache periodically queries the database to get the activities to provide when requested by the clients, minimizing the answer times and accesses to the SQL Server. MODULES INTERACTIONS In this chapter the interactions between BCS and BCS Contact modules during inbound and outbound activites will be described. Alceo 4 Progetto BCS

5 INBOUND CALLS 1. A call comes to the IVR service which will query the BCS Contact database to identify the caller, the called campaign and to gather the information required by the campaign, especially the unique identifier of thecaller and the campaign involved. 2. The IVR will queue a request for an agent to the BCS system. 3. When an agent is found, the IVR will transfer the call to the selected agent, along with all the informations acquired. 4. The BCS Contact Plugin reads the call data and display a pop-up on the agent workstation. If the caller is unknown a search/new contact page will be shown. POWER OUTBOUND CALLS 1. When BCS Dialer can make a new call for a campaign, it requests to BCS Contact server through the Outbound Cache a new telephone number to dial. 2. The Dialer application, once obtained the ID of the contact to call, sends the contact to the BcsBar of the selected agent. 3. The BCS Contact Plugin receives via COM the request from the Dialer, opens a pop-up on the agent s workstation and starts an outbound call from BcsBar. 4. BCS Contact Plugin notifies through SQL Server to BCS Contact the outcome of the call. PROGRESSIVE/PREDICTIVE OUTBOUND CALLS 1. The Dialer requests to BCS Contact, through the Outbound Cache a list of the contacts IDs to call. 2. Using its predictive pacing algorithm the Dialer make the outbound calls. 3. If a call gets connected, a request for an agent is queued to the BCS server for the campaign. 4. If no agents are available the call is terminated, otherwise the call is transferred to the selected agent along with the call data. 5. The BCS Contact Plugin receives via COM the called ID and make a pop-up on the agent s workstation. 6. The Dialer notifies to BCS Contact the outcome of the call through SQL Server. To get more details on the interactions between Dialer, and BCS Contact and between BcsBar and the BCS Contact Plugin, please refer to the BCS Server technical presentation document. Alceo 5 Progetto BCS

6 3. ADMINISTRATION TOOLS OUTBOUND WIZARD Outbound Wizard is the BCS Contact application which allows to create, configure and manage multimedia inbound/outbound campaigns. From its interface the administrator can define and plan every details of the inbound/outbound contact center activities: Companies management Address books management Campaign management Activities management COMPANIES MANAGEMENT The first operation required before starting a new campaign is the creation of at least a company to which the campaign will be assigned. Every inbound/outbound activity (telephone calls, fax, sms, ) require a company to be assigned. This also implies that BCS Contact can be used to execute campaign in outsourcing. ADDRESS BOOKS MANAGEMENT BCS Contact address books are containers of customer addresses. Each contact contains the registry of a person as well as the various addresses at which this can be reached. An address book can be used by many campaigns concurrently. Every address book can be modified with custom fields, which will be added to the default fields (first name, last name, address, etc.). Every custom field is made of a label and a type. The label identifies the name of the field, while the type specifies the data the field can contain and can be chosen between: integer, string, boolean, date and floating point. CAMPAIGNS MANAGEMENT Campaigns are the main object of the inbound and outbound activities of BCS Contact. They contain parameters and system operating mode, and are used by the system administrator to model the operating procedures for the telephone and fax calls and to handle fax, SMS and messages. A campaign can have more than one address book assigned and BCS Contact keeps a list of the activities for every assigned address book. Activity summarizes the state of progress of the system relatively to the medium used and to the contact to be achieved. Different activity types can be defined: telephone, vocal prompt, fax, sms, . Each campaign includes a set of parameters that can be grouped into the following groups: Activties settings; Address book settings; Information documents settings; FAQ settings; Quota settings. Activities settings Every activity allows for a different set of settings. Telephone activities Telephony activities are carried out by operators and can be of thrre different type: private; are owned by the agent and are assigned by the administrator. They can only be carried out on its own initiative, when they want; power with or without acceptance;the system send the contact to the agent and the call will start from his BcsBar. Progressive/predictive,; the call will be placed by the IVR system and only if it gets an answer, sent to an agent. Calls can be placed using the predictive mechanism thanks to the Dialer module. Alceo 6 Progetto BCS

7 BCS Contact provides that for each activity you can set a maximum number of attempts and for every type of telephone result code it is possible to define the system behavior. It is possible to choose if and when reschedule the call fro the following result: busy, no answer, call rejected, unavailable, fax, automatic attendant, channel problems. For every result code it is possible to choose if the call must be repeated and the schedule interval, in minutes or days. The agents, during a call can schedule a recall, that it can assign to itself or to any available agent working for the campaign. Each phone activity involves an application outcome, allowing to catalog the call on criteria different from the telephony outcome. For every campaign it is possible to define distinct application outcomes. Voice prompt activities These activities are telephony activities carried on by IVR systems, allo scopo di riprodurre un avviso vocale o raccogliere delle informazioni. Non prevedono un trasferimento ad operatore. Fax activities Fax activities are fax sending activities. Every campaign can be associated to the following document types: A fax cover TIFF logo; A fax cover text; One or more TIFF fax documents; One or more text fax documents. The fax document to send is built linking the cover page (text or logo) to the TIFF document body. The cover page can be built dinamically using the XML language and the text can be customized using recipient s contact details. SMS activities Are SMS related activities. The text to send can be customized with using recipient s contact details. activities subject and body can be customized using recipient s contact details. It is possible to build campaigns following the permission marketing rules. This way of working, according to european and italian rules assumes to have previously obtained the consent from the customer to receive marketing s, to avoid unsolicited s and to improve the success rate of the campaign. BCS Contact is also configurable to handle mailinig list subscription confrmations (double opt in) and unsubscriptions. These informations con than be used in the following campaigns. Address book settings Every BCS Contact campaign can be associated to more than one address book and a priority can be set on every address book. It is also possible to associate two or more related address books. Two address books are related if a field, specified by the administrator, is equal in the two address books at import time. Related entities (for example companies with more than one location) are grouped and handled as single entities by the system, this means a single outbound activity will be placed for the company and the result code will apply to every address book entry. Information documents settings This campaign type can be associated to information documents the agent can use during the voice interaction with the customer. Information documents can be of any type. The only requirement is the document viewer must be installed on the agent s workstation. The agent could also send, if allowed by the administrator, the document to the customer as an attachment or as a fax using a support campaign. FAQ settings It is possible to associate to a campaign a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). This feature can be used during a campaign configuration to help the agent to answer recurrent questions by the customers.. Alceo 7 Progetto BCS

8 Quota settings A quota is a limit on the maximum number of customers to contact during a campaign, using some criteria set by the administrator. For ecample a campaign could be set to call 100 male people from city of Milan. Two kind of quota are available: 1. Quota on address book additional fields; 2. Quota on answers collected from interviews associated to the campaign. ACTIVITIES MANAGEMENT When a campaign is running, it is possible to take action on ongoing activities. The following actions are available: Reset an activity status as the activity was never executed; Terminate and activity; Modify the execution date; Modify the result code; Modify the owner of the call and set the call private; Restart an terminated activity; Modify the interviews associated to the campaign. IMPORT WIZARD The Import Wizard module allows to fill the address books defined through the Outbound Wizard. The available actions are: New address book data import; Existing address book update. BCS Contact address books are reusable containers of logically similar elements. An address book can for example represents all residents from a city or a list of customers interested in a certain product. For this reason an address book can be associated to more than one campaign. Each campaing is a container of multimedia activities and for this reason the Import wizard asks to specify for every campaign the new activities to create for every address book entry. The selectable activity are all activities associated to the campaign during the import. Import Wizard can use the following data sources: LDAP directories Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Microsoft Excel Microsoft Access EXPORT WIZARD This module allows to export data from the BCS Contact database. Two kinds of export are available: Campaign: export every activity made during the campaing execution; Address book: export the address book entries. For the activities export, three modes are available: Total: every activity will be exported; Time: only the activities in the selected period will be exported; Incremental: only activities completed after the previous export and satisfying the export conditions set. An activity export also involves the address book entry related to the activity, including all additional fields and the last interview answers. The export procedure will create an Excel file. Alceo 8 Progetto BCS

9 APPOINTMENT WIZARD Appointment Wizard is the BCS Contact application which allows for an advanced agents and appointments management. It allows to model different appointments taking: 1. outsourcing for external companies; 2. for zone; 3. directly for an agent. For every appointment, the following summary information are available: company, campaign and addrees book the appointment has been set assigned agent, if exists customer involved appointment status start date and time appointment creation date agent who created the appointment An appointment can be in one of the following statuses: Taken: the appointment is scheduled but not confirmed. If no confirm callback is required the appointment is to be considered as scheduled; Confirm callback: the customer must be called back for the appointment confirmation; Confirmed: the appointment is confirmed either after a confirm callback or as set by the administrator; Cancelled: after a confirm callback or as an administrator action. The scheduled appointments can be exported in PDF, HTML and text formats. INTERVIEW EDITOR Interview Editor is an integrated development system for the interview creation and execution. Application interface allows to model graphically the interview. The question-answer flow between agent and customer can be displayed as a graph, simplifying the application use by users without software development skills. Alceo 9 Progetto BCS

Interview Editor can also be used in market research, statistical surveys and opinion polls. Questions can be of three different types: Affirmation: questions without an answer.

10 Interview Editor can also be used in market research, statistical surveys and opinion polls. Questions can be of three different types: Affirmation: questions without an answer. Can be used to define sentences inside an interview, for example: thank you for answering our interview. Exclusive answers: the answers to the question are mutually exclusive. An answer must be provided. Multiple answers: more than one answer is allowed for the question. A maximum and a minimum number of answers can be set. Open answer questions are also allowed. The interview flow can change on the previous answers using Boolean compare nodes. The interview test phase can be run easily thenks to the simulation environment, allowing the administrator to test the interview and to make the necessary corrections. Alceo 10 Progetto BCS

11 4. BCS CONTACT OUTBOUND PLUGIN This is the agent user interface. It is a BcsBar plugin and allows to interact with BCS Contact without additional applications installation. Every time the BCS system assigns an inbound or outbound call to the agent, the plugin will show all information about the customer. In particular there will be named tabs from which the agent will get the following funcionalities: 1. Address book administration; 2. Callback administration; 3. Appointment administration; 4. Interview administration; 5. History administration; 6. Document administration; 7. FAQ administration; 8. Call cataloging administration. Alceo 11 Progetto BCS

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