ServicePattern 3.6
What’s New in Version 3.6
Revision SP36-NEW36-41792
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ServicePattern 3.6 Page 3 of 9
What’s New in Version 3.6
Feature Description
General Features
The following table provides description of the general features and enhancements added in version
3.6.
Feature Description
Mobile voice contact This function offers customers a convenient way to request a voice call with your services via a mobile application and get connected to live agent without waiting on the line. In addition to convenience to your customers, eliminating toll-free traffic and queue wait times results in significant telecom savings. Any information needed to route calls to the most qualified agents could be supplied via the application, eliminating the need for IVR. For the calling customers, voice contacts requested in this manner may appear as regular mobile calls.
Mobile chat This function enables customers to request and carry on chat sessions with your contact center via their smartphones which can be convenient, for example, when requesting service from non-private locations, such as public transport. For the agents of your contact center, mobile chat sessions will appear as regular web chat interactions.
Mobile multi-media sessions This enables simultaneous use of voice and chat channels within the same communication session. You could have calls within your chat session, to quickly clarify some point during a long-running transaction, or chats during a call, to pass addresses or numerical information clearly.
Mobile send-a-picture function
Picture is worth a thousand words – increase communication throughput by offering your customers the capability to send pictures from their mobile phones to agents during a voice call or chat. This capability may be useful in a variety of applications where pictures can help agents understand and manage reported problems, such as auto insurance or tech support. Pictures can be sent both at the time when a contact is requested and during the conversation with an agent.
Mobile API This is the API that enables the mobile functionality discussed above. The API is supported for the iOS and Android mobile operating systems. The API is accompanied with a library and sample code implementing the above functions, which can be used as a reference for in-house application
development or embedded directly into customer-facing mobile applications of your organization.
Feature Description
SMS channel ServicePattern 3.6 also introduces SMS as a new communication channel between your contact center and your customers. The outbound SMS messaging available in this version can be used by the agents to send some text information to their mobile customers, such as a confirmation numbers, addresses, or web links. Possible customer responses will be associated with the original message and presented to the agent in the form of a chat session.
Telemarketing compliance: calling record expiration
To support the maximum grace period during which phone numbers added to a National/State Do-Not-Call list can still be dialed, calling records imported into the system for dialing can now be configured to expire in a specified number of days. Processing of expired records will stop with a corresponding disposition. Metrics for expired records can be monitored in real time at the campaign and at the list levels.
Telemarketing compliance: national and state calling curfew hours
ServicePattern 3.6 provides a way to configure permitted calling windows at the national level and for each state separately, and observe such calling restrictions during outbound campaigns. The default calling hours are configured according to the most recent state laws and can be modified to keep up with possible future changes. States that do not have their own calling curfew laws default to the national curfew hours.
Telemarketing compliance: processing of unattended calls
To help outbound call centers comply with the requirement for processing of answered autodialed calls that are not connected to agents within the compliance time, the following functions have been introduced:
- a scenario template with transfer to IVR and the opt-out option - real-time metric for percentage of unattended calls (equivalent to the
FCC’s abandonment rate) reset daily and the related alarm
- historical metrics for the number and percentage of unattended calls Based on analysis of the real-time and historical metrics for unattended calls, the campaign calling rate can be adjusted, if necessary, using the existing Target Occupancy parameter.
Voice signature Have your customers sign legally-binding documents over the phone using their voice while meeting compliance requirements such as the E-Sign Act and, in case of healthcare industry, the HIPAA/CMS guidelines. Two different modes of voice collection are supported: the agent can either play pre-recorded voice prompts directly from their desktop or conference in an IVR application for the same purpose. For the latter, a scenario template is provided.
Recordings containing voice signature are marked with a special flag and can be automatically exported for retention. Voice signature is supported for both inbound and outbound services.
ServicePattern 3.6 Page 5 of 9
What’s New in Version 3.6
Feature Description
Enhancements in periodic export of call recordings
Automated export of recordings is now supported for all types of services: outbound, inbound, and blended. Export of recordings is accompanied by a csv file with interaction details simplifying possible subsequent search of specific recordings. The voice signature flag (see above) can be used as a criterion for recordings to be exported.
Recording file name format The recording file names have been extended to include the call start time, customer’s phone number, and username of the last agent who handled the corresponding call.
Service-level pre-recorded messages
The pre-recorded messages that agents can play to customers can now be defined at the service level and made available to agents when they handle calls associated with corresponding services. This can be useful in various compliance or voice signature scenarios where consistency and precision of a communicated message is important.
Integration with Aspect Workforce Management
Customers who use the Aspect Workforce Management application for optimization of their workforce can now have this application integrated with their ServicePattern contact center solution for both automated workforce scheduling based on the historical contact center data and real-time monitoring of agents’ adherence to work schedules.
Campaign Reports The following historical reports are now available for outbound campaigns: - Campaign in Time Report showing changes in the general campaign
performance metrics over time
- Telemarketing Compliance Report showing percentage of answered calls that were not connected to agents within the compliance time (abandonment rate in FCC’s terminology)
- Disposition Report showing the breakdown of call attempts by disposition
Metric for immediately dialable records
In addition to the existing rea-time metric for total remaining calling records to be processed within a campaign, Agent Desktop can now display the number of records that are available for dialing at the moment. This metric is available at the campaign and at the list level.
Customizable help screens Provide your agents, supervisors, and other personnel with links to training and procedure information, as well as important e-mail addresses and phone numbers right from their user interfaces. You can now define the content of the Help screens that the various ServicePattern user-facing applications will display when users click their help icons. Help screens can contain multiple help items and can be customized to provide different content for each contact center role. A help item is usually a link to a web resource that provides information relevant to the application and to the person in the given role. For example, a link can point to a published user guide, a knowledge base article, or a documented customer service procedure. Contact information, such as phone numbers and email addresses, can also be defined as help items.
Feature Description
Service selector for outgoing calls
Agents now can manually associate the calls they make with specific
services. This provides a more flexible alternative to the existing capability to configure service association via prefixes dialed for outbound calls (aka Dial-out Entries). In case of possible conflicts, such manually selected services will override the pre-configured prefix-based service associations.
Minimized Agent Desktop Agents now can select between regular and minimized Agent Desktop views. Set out in a separate narrow browser window, the minimized view leaves out the context information area used for activity forms and external web content, but still provides access to all standard call handling functions.
G.729 codec This version of ServicePattern supports G.729 audio data compression algorithm.
Reporting call quality problems via Agent Desktop
Agents now can report call quality problems, such as noise or silence, directly from their desktops while still on the call or during after-call work. This information is stored in the Call Details table of the Reporting Database and can help the IT personnel analyze root cause of call quality issues.
Date expressions The expression language of the Scenario Builder has been extended to include two new functions that return the current date/time or a specified date/time in the Unix format (number of seconds elapsed since 1/1/1970, 00:00:00 UTC). These function can be used in various scenarios involving date comparison (e.g., calculation of past due dates) and to support human readable input for the DateTime voice prompt segments.
Matching caller ID to directory entries
Recognize frequently calling or called numbers by providing a name for them in the static directory. A new scenario block allows to update caller ID with the result of search in the static directory.
Date range filter for detailed campaign results
The date range filter for download of campaign results, previously available only for simple results, is now available for detailed results as well.
Customizable signal tones The audio treatments menu has been extended to include three signal tones that the agents hear when using an external phone: incoming call, call waiting, line idle. The tone volume can be adjusted via downloading, editing, and uploading of the corresponding audio files. The tones can also be replaced altogether.
Separate dispositions for network and IVR
announcements
A new disposition, called Network Announcement, has been added to separate speech received before connection (e.g., network message your
call cannot be connected at this time) from speech received after connection
to the contact center (e.g., IVR message our office is now closed).
Consequently, the existing disposition Announcement no longer includes network messages.
ServicePattern 3.6 Page 7 of 9
What’s New in Version 3.6
Feature Description
Easier skill level configuration
The static columns of the Skill Level table view of the Contact Center
Administrator application no longer scroll horizontally when editing skill levels of individual agents.
A selection of Not Ready reason icons
When configuring custom reasons for the Not Ready agent’s state, you can now select a different icon for each reason.
Default metrics views After customizing any of the real-time metrics views in Agent Desktop, supervisors now have the option to restore the original view with the default metrics set.
Simplified Salesforce.com integration
The process of obtaining the Salesforce.com refresh token has been simplified. For details, please consult the updated ServicePattern
Salesforce.com Integration Guide. The new process does not affect existing integration accounts.
Partner Features
The following table provides description of the partner-specific features and enhancements added in
version 3.6. These features are primarily of interest to service providers who use ServicePattern as
their contact center technology platform.
Feature Description
Disaster recovery guide This version of ServicePattern has been tested for support of disaster recovery (DR) scenarios. Bright Patterns’ approach to DR for a Service Pattern cluster is based on failover of public IP subnet using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). The approach itself, as well as detailed
instructions for preparing the DR site, testing the DR cluster, and performing the failover, are documented in the ServicePattern Disaster Recovery Guide published on the partner site.
Java 7 upgrade This version of ServicePattern has been upgraded to Java 7 framework that addresses a number of stability issues found in the previous Java versions. This upgrade is transparent to partners who use the Windows
ServicePattern version. Partners using installation on Linux OS, should consult the corresponding Oracle documentation for specific installation steps: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/webnotes/install/linux/linux-jdk.html
Tenant API: access number assignment
Tenant API now supports assignment of access numbers when creating a tenant from a template. This enables a fully functional tenant immediately upon creation. For more information, see the updated ServicePattern Tenant Management API Specification.
Limit for maximum concurrent dialer calls
Service providers can now limit the number of tenant’s campaign calls (for all active campaigns of this tenant combined) that can be simultaneously in progress, including all call attempts.
Historical DB password The password for tenant’s historical database, which is initially set at the service provider level, is no longer displayed in clear text.
CSRF protection ServicePattern software is no longer vulnerable to possible cross-site request forgeries (CSRF)
Default country code This new parameter in the advanced trunk settings can be used to specify a country code that will be added to the Caller ID / ANI number and/or DNIS number for calls coming in via the given trunk in case the received number does not contain any country code.
ServicePattern 3.6 Page 9 of 9
What’s New in Version 3.6