Set Up Proactive Agent Voice Dialing

Agent-managed Personal Connection (PC) voice dialing uses one of two dialing modes per ACD skillClosed Used to automate delivery of interactions based on agent skills, abilities, and knowledge: progressive or predictive. Progressive dialing places one call per agent at a time to guarantee PC won't abandon any calls. Predictive dialing places a higher ratio of calls per agent at a time for a higher rate of productivity. With predictive dialing, PC begins by dialing one call per agent and gradually increases the number of call attempts per agent. The gradual increase in calls helps to prevent the abandon rate from spiking. When the agent assigned to a call attempt is busy on a connected call, PC "hops" any extra calls to free agents.

For both dialing modes, you can optionally enable preview dialing, which requires agents to accept calls before PC delivers them.

If you want to enable predictive dialing and you previously had your account manager restrict dialing to 1:1 at the tenantClosed High-level organizational grouping used to manage technical support, billing, and global settings for your CXone environment level, contact your account manager to remove the restriction.

Complete each of these tasks in the order given.

Customize Your Global Dialing Settings

Before you configure your dialing ACD skillsClosed Used to automate delivery of interactions based on agent skills, abilities, and knowledge and their custom settings, configure the global PC settings for your tenant.

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to ACD ConfigurationBusiness Units.

  3. In the Details tab, click Edit.

  4. Scroll down to the Outbound Strategy section.
  5. If you want to cancel all call suppression scripts and allow dialing in the areas where the scripts are suppressing calls, select Suspend All Call Suppression.
  6. If you want to change the do not call group that's assigned to all ACD skills on creation unless manually changed, select the group you want from the Default Do Not Call Group drop-down.
  7. If you want to enable priority blending, which switches your agents to inbound ACD skills from Personal Connection ACD skills when inbound contact priority hits a certain threshold, select Enable Priority-Based Blending of Outbound Skills with Inbound Queues.

    Priority blending and Omnichannel Session Handling (OSH) are mutually exclusive. You cannot enable priority-based blending in an OSH environment.

  8. If you want to change the default calling list global settings, update the Enable Filtering, Configurable Callback Cancellation on Reupload, Default Contact Expiration, and Days until list source is flagged for deletion settings as needed.

  9. If you want to change the default abandon rate global settings, you can change the Abandon Rate Calculation Scope, which specifies whether the abandon rate applies to today Since Midnight or the Last 30 Days. You can also select Enable Skill Abandon Rate to customize the abandon rate on the ACD skill level.
  10. If you want to enable consideration of agent proficiency in delivery of Personal Connection calls, select Enable Dialing by Proficiency. Agents with higher proficiency levels receive higher priority as CXone delivers proactive calls.
  11. If you want to use preview dialing for any of your Personal Connection ACD skills, enable the preview modes you want available to select in the ACD skills. Slect a Default Confirmation Required Delivery Mode. Specify whether you want the Show Preview Timeout setting enabled.

  12. If you want to customize the experience for calls that require compliance for any of your PC ACD skills, enable compliance modes you want available to select in the ACD skills. Select a Default Compliance Required Delivery Mode. Specify whether you want the Show Compliance Timeout setting enabled.

  13. If you want to receive notifications whenever a PC ACD skill is manually stopped, enter the email address in the Force Stop Skills Notify Email field.
  14. Click Done.

Create a Campaign

If you already created a campaignClosed A grouping of skills used to run reports. that you want to use for PC dialing, you can skip this step. For example, you may have a campaign that you intend to use across several channels.

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.
  2. Go to Contact SettingsCampaigns.
  3. Click Create New.
  4. Enter a value in the Campaign Name field.
  5. Click Create Campaign.

Create a Personal Connection ACD Skill

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to Contact SettingsACD Skills.

  3. Click Create New and select Single Skill.
  4. Set the Media Type to Phone Call, give the ACD skill a descriptive Name, and set Inbound/Outbound to Outbound. Select a Campaign for the ACD skill and set Outbound Strategy to Personal Connection.
  5. Fill in any of the optional fields that you want.

  6. Click Create.

Assign Users to the ACD Skill

  1. In the ACD skill settings, click the Users tab.

  2. Select the checkbox for each user you want to assign to the skill. Click Add Users.
  3. Set the Proficiency for each user in this ACD skill to a number between 1 (highest) and 20 (lowest). Click Save Proficiencies.

    If you don't click Save Proficiencies before leaving the page, all users you added to the skill profile will be removed.

Create a Do Not Call Group

You can skip this step if you already have a do not call (DNC) group you want the ACD skill to use, or if you want the ACD skill to use the default tenant DNC group.

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to ListsDNC.

  3. Click Create New.

  4. Give the group a DNC Group Name and, if you want, a Description.

  5. Click Save.

Assign the ACD Skill to Do Not Call (DNC) Groups

You can skip this step if you want the ACD skill to use the default tenant do not call (DNC) group. When you link an ACD skill to DNC groups, you do so in two ways: as scrubbedClosed Skills listed under the Scrubbed tab of a DNC group honor the DNC list of that group. Before you or Personal Connection place a call for that skill, CXone checks that DNC group for conflicts and does not dial records that are on that list. or contributingClosed Skills listed under the Contributing tab of a DNC group help to generate the DNC list of that group. When the dialer places a call for that skill and the contact requests to be added to the DNC list, the record is added to that DNC group. Any skills in the Scrubbed tab of that DNC group cannot place calls to that record.. This allows you to have the ACD skill contribute to the creation of some DNC groups and be restricted by others.

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to Contact SettingsACD Skills.

  3. Click the ACD skill to open it.
  4. Click the Do Not Call tab.
  5. For Default Contributing DNC Group, select Select Do Not Call Group. From the drop-down, select the DNC group you want this ACD skill to contribute to.
  6. In the Add Scrubbed DNC Groups table, select the DNC groups you want the ACD skill to be restricted by. Click Add.
  7. Click Save.

Set the Maximum Dialing Ratio

  1. In the ACD skill settings, click the Parameters tab.

  2. Click Edit or Configure for the General Settings parameters.

  3. Under General Pacing Settings, change the Maximum Ratio to the number of calls you want PC to dial per agent.

    • For progressive dialing, set the value to 1.
    • For predictive dialing, set the value to a number greater than 1. Higher ratios settings are available (4-6 per agent) if you've had have your account manager enable those settings for you. The actual dialing ratio when the ACD skill is active changes depending on various parameters. For information about throttling, see Diagnose Call Throttling.

    The dialing ratio affects the number of ports required. For example, if 10 agents are logged in to a skillClosed Used to automate delivery of interactions based on agent skills, abilities, and knowledge with a 3:1 dialing ratio, you must have 30 available ports.

  4. If you're configuring progressive dialing, select Block Multiple Calls under Pacing Safety Controls.
  5. If you're configuring predictive dialing, set Percentage of Agents Before Overdial under Pacing Safety Controls to the percentage of agents who must be available before PC will dial more than one call per agent at a time. This setting protects the abandon rate by preventing PC from launching multiple calls until sufficient agents are available to receive "hopped" calls.
  6. Click Done.

Set Up Calling Lists

Calling lists can be created, uploaded, and maintained manually by using the following instructions. You can also manage your calling list using proactive XS scripts, which integrate with your CRM to pull contacts in, modify them according to what has occurred, and return them.

Follow these instructions in order if you want to manage your calling list manually. To manage your calling list automatically by integrating with your CRM, contact your NICE CXone account manager.

Create Calling List

Calling list files can't exceed 256 MB in size. Smaller calling lists result in faster upload and fresher records. Each individual record in a calling list cannot exceed a length of 512 Unicode characters. Calling list uploads support Unicode UTF-8 encoding, which includes Chinese characters and all other languages. If you're creating or editing calling lists in Microsoft Excel, take care to preserve the UTF-8 encoding format.

CXone strips the formatting from phone numbers in calling lists and stores the phone numbers in a universal format. This allows phone numbers to pass between calling lists and do not call (DNC) lists without conflict.

  1. Open a spreadsheet editor or plain text editor.
  2. If you're using a text editor, decide whether to separate the values with commas or tabs.
  3. If you want to create headers for your columns, which can help with automatic field mapping when you upload the calling list, enter the column names in the top row. Include columns for at least an external identifier and a phone number for a Proactive Voice or Proactive SMS calling list and an external identifier and an email address for a Proactive Email calling list.

  4. Enter the data for each record in its own row.

  5. Save the file with the file extension XLSX, XLS, CSV, or TXT.

Create Custom Fields

If you have columns in your calling list that don't corresponding to hard-coded system fields, create a custom field for each one. System fields include address, agent, call request date/time, call request stale minutes, caller ID, city, compliance required, confirmation required, customer field 1 and 2, expiration date, external ID, first name, last name, notes, override final statuses, phone number, priority, score, state, time zone, and zip.

For instructions, see Create Custom Fields.

Create Custom Phone and Email Fields

If you're including an email address or more than one phone number for each record in the calling list, you must create custom fields for the email address and each additional phone number.

For instructions, see Create Custom Phone Number or Email Address Fields.

Upload Calling List

If you're re-uploading a calling list after making critical updates, stop the associated ACD skill. Restart the ACD skill when you're done uploading calling lists.

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to ListsCalling.

  3. Read the compliance agreement and click Accept to continue.

  4. Enter a List Name. Select the PC ACD skill that you want to dial these contacts from the Skill drop-down. In Select File, browse files to find and select the calling list you want to upload or use. Configure any optional fields as needed.

  5. Click Next.
  6. If you used the first row of your calling list to label the columns, select the Header checkbox. Use No time zone found? to specify whether you want records without a time zone to be rejected or have a certain time zone applied to them. If you want to set a record expiration date for all records in the calling list, set the date in Batch expiration date.

  7. Click Next.

  8. If it's not already done for you, map your phone numbers and email addresses in Map Destinations. Add and remove destinations as needed.

    If you map a phone field to a specific ACD skill, it appears under the cadence options for that skill. If you don't want to include a specific phone number in the Maximum Attempts or cadence calling order, don't map those phone number to fields. Once you map the field, you can't remove it from the cadence settings.

  9. Verify the fields in Map Data Fields are correctly mapped to your calling list. Correct any errors.

  10. If you're using custom fields, verify the fields in Map Custom Data are correctly mapped to calling list and correct any errors.

  11. When the file upload begins, the calling list upload wizard displays the progress and the number of records that loaded successfully and unsuccessfully. You can leave this page and check the progress later in the Process Queue page in CXone. When processing is complete, you receive an email detailing the result of the upload.
  12. If you want to upload additional calling lists, click Upload New and repeat the steps in this process. If you are finished uploading calling lists, click Done.
  13.  If the calling list contains invalid records, resolve the errors:
    1. Click Download Link in the warning box that appears.

    2. Open the file to view the problems with the upload.

    3. Fix the problem in the calling list and save it.
    4. Upload the updated file.

Configure General PC ACD Skill Settings

  1. In the ACD skill, click the Parameters tab.

  2. Click Edit or Configure for the General Settings parameters.

  3. Under General Settings, modify the default settings for your ACD skill as needed.

  4. Modify the default Notification Settings as needed.

  5. Click Done.

Start the ACD Skill

If you're creating an automatic dialing schedule for this ACD skill, you can skip this step. If you want to manually turn your PC ACD skill off and on, do the following steps when you're ready.

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to Contact SettingsACD Skills.

  3. Select the ACD skillClosed Used to automate delivery of interactions based on agent skills, abilities, and knowledge you want to start.

  4. Click Start.

  5. When you're done using the skill, click Stop.

Customization Tasks

Depending on how your organization uses Personal Connection (PC), you might also want to: