Outbound Campaigns

CX Campaigns is a solution for outbound contact centers to run campaigns across various channels (digital and voice) via Expertflow Contact Center or third-party outbound dialers such as Cisco.

Expertflow Conversation Studio defines handling for one particular scheduled activity, using any channel, the dialing mode, and the sequence of retries across different channels. It also allows you to define a multi-step campaign in which a sequence of activities is defined depending on the customer’s responses. Expertflow Scheduler maintains and triggers a list of Conversations that need to be initiated or pursued at a certain moment. Such conversations are linked to Customer Profiles in EFCX.

The state/progress of each conversation and the campaign appearance are maintained and published through Conversation Data or Scheduled Activities.

Campaigns with Expertflow Contact Center

Outbound Campaigns implemented in Expertflow Conversation Studio closely imitate what happens in a Cisco Dialer scenario, with the difference that the Scheduler is the Cisco Campaign Manager. The request/ route request/ route response/ agent reserved flow is the routing node within Expertflow Conversation Studio.

Scheduler and Outbound Formulas

Campaign Administrators can define two functions for each campaign. These are executed each time an agent of an outbound skill group becomes available, or enters into a certain stage (i.e., call will be finished soon).

The “INIT” function defines how many conversations should be initiated.
“SEIZE” function defining whether or not this agent should be seized/ reserved for outbound conversations (and noy be assigned to inbound calls). This should happen if the priority is the same or higher than inbound conversations (based for example, on average waiting time, total available agents, agents already seized). This avoids starvation between inbound and outbound and puts agents into a “seized” agent state.

Dialing modes

Dialing modes are determined by the “INIT” function:

Preview: Agent is shown one contact and initiates call - “INIT = 1”
Progressive: System initiates one call when an agent becomes available- “INIT= 1”
Power: System dials a preset ratio of calls per available agent (that is, two calls per available agent) - “INIT = x calls”
Predictive: System uses algorithm to initiate outbound calls. So the INIT function can be more complex.

Multichannel Campaigns

Other channels are OB-initiated bot events that can be initiated from a campaign workflow in Expertflow Conversation Studio.

Campaign flow for digital channels,

Campaign Manager schedules an activity by calling exposed scheduler APIs
Scheduler pushes the scheduled activity to CX Activity to be part of customer history.
Scheduler Queues the activity and pushes it to CCM when the scheduled date time reaches.
CCM acts as a proxy and forwards the scheduled message to the relevant connector.
When the message is delivered, CCM sends back a delivery notification to the Scheduler that it received from the relevant connectors
Scheduler updates the delivery notification to CX Activities
Scheduler also pushes it to the Campaign Manager via registered webhooks.
When the customer reads the message or replies back to the scheduled message, CCM sends the delivery notification as READ. In addition, it also sends back the customer response received from connectors to Scheduler.
Scheduler pushes the READ delivery notification as well as the customer responses of the scheduled activity to CX Activities.
Scheduler also publishes the delivery notifications and customer

Campaigns with Cisco Contact Center - CCX/ CCE

When calls should be initiated through the Cisco Dialer, the Cisco Dialer node is selected in the Conversation studio, and a Cisco campaign is selected. In the initial phase, this happens via the Expertflow ECM API. The effect is that one call is then appended to that Cisco campaign’s Contact list.
The call attempt result is fed back to the Conversation Studio flow, which can update either Scheduled Activities or Conversation Data. The Conversation flow remains at that state until the Cisco Dialer sends a result that the call has been completed/ failed.
Cisco components (Cisco Dialer, CVP, IP-IVR, agent,…) can exchange conversation data with the Conversation layer.
The Conversation studio then pursues the conversation flow such as sending an SMS or Email in case the Cisco OB dialer did not reach the customer as part of the retry strategy.
The campaign results are updated as conversation data or Scheduled Activities in the Customer Profile in EFCX.
We can flush Cisco Campaign contacts when the campaign is unpublished.

Use Cases of Campaigns

Agent reservation/ OB call based on agent calendars

Customers can schedule an activity, such as a callback directly with an agent using the agent’s calendar showing his availability. Conversations are then queued to that agent at that time.

EFCX also offers a customer calendar and a company calendar API/ Widget, so that any customer can reserve an appointment and the company from a website or mobile app. Callback requests can, therefore, be personal or by a skill group.

Future considerations

Expertflow is currently considering integration with Cisco WebEx Contact Center.