Using Vonage Contact Center's omni-channel solution, agents can work on work items—cases, chats, leads, and so on—that have arrived through Salesforce and on phone calls received through Vonage Contact Center (VCC).
To be able to use VCC's omni-channel features, you must have integrated VCC into Salesforce and correctly configured the Salesforce Omni-Channel feature. For information about configuring Salesforce Omni-Channel, see Salesforce help. In addition, VCC's omni-channel solution must be enabled for your VCC account.
You can then configure omni-channel for VCC in two different ways:
Interactions in Salesforce and VCCInteraction types
VCC makes different routing decisions based on the interaction type. Agents can perform different tasks on an interaction based on its type. Salesforce objects, work items, and interactionsSalesforce uses different terminology for the items known in VCC as interactions:
The Salesforce record may be a web chat or a case that arrive in Salesforce through Live Agent or email respectively. Defining a service channel in Salesforce for a Salesforce object enables Salesforce to route records of that type and makes such records into work items. |
| Salesforce Omni-Channel presence integration is available in both Salesforce Classic and Salesforce Lightning Experience. |
When you have configured Salesforce Omni-Channel, both Salesforce and VCC can route work to your agents at the same time. Salesforce Omni-Channel routes work items—cases, chats, and so on—to agents using routing settings configured in Salesforce, while VCC routes phone calls to agents using configured interaction plans. Because the two systems route different types of interactions independently, VCC may route interactions to agents who are already busy in Salesforce; Salesforce may route work items to agents who are already busy in VCC. This situation causes a problem for the agent in knowing how to prioritize their incoming work.
To deal with such conflicts, if enabled for your account, you can use Salesforce Omni-Channel presence integration. With Salesforce Omni-Channel presence integration, you can create mappings between VCC's major states and Salesforce's presence statuses so each system knows the status of the agent in the other. If the agent is busy in VCC, the agent appears busy in Salesforce. The converse is also true.
For information about configuring Salesforce Omni-Channel presence integration, see Integrating with Salesforce Omni-Channel presence.
When you create your mappings, you can configure the following events:
When Salesforce assigns a chat to an agent, and auto-acceptance is enabled, the agent's state in ContactPad automatically changes to Busy Inbound. If auto-acceptance is not enabled, the chat shows as Alerting in ContactPad until the agent accepts it in the Omni-Channel widget. You can optionally configure changing the agent's state in ContactPad to Busy Inbound whenever the agent's presence status in the Omni-Channel widget is updated to a busy status. For more information, see Integrating with Salesforce Omni-Channel presence. |
An alternative approach to Salesforce Omni-Channel presence integration involves integrating with Salesforce external routing.
With external routing, VCC can route all types of interactions—live (such as phone calls), semi-live (such as web chats) and non-live (such as emails). For more information about interaction types, see Interaction types. External routing can also route custom objects. Custom objects are routed in the same way as cases and are treated as non-live interactions.
When Salesforce external routing is enabled, configured and integrated with your VCC account, when a record of a configured type of Salesforce object arrives in or is created in Salesforce, Salesforce routes the corresponding work item to the configured named route in VCC.
VCC routes the resulting interaction according to the settings in the named route's interaction plan. When VCC routes the interaction to a queue or to an agent, the exact events depend on which optional features are available for your account, and the type of interaction.
VCC makes routing decisions for the different interactions using logic configured in one place; you no longer need to configure the logic for routing phone calls within VCC, and the logic for routing other types of interactions in Salesforce. You can also report on all types of interaction activity—real-time and historical statistics for your agents and their interactions—within VCC.
For information about integrating with Salesforce external routing, see Configuring Salesforce external routing for Vonage Contact Center.
When you have configured omni-channel for VCC, VCC can route multiple interactions to an agent. The agent can work with those interactions at the same time. The number of interactions that an individual agent can work on depends on the available capacity of the agent.
When multi-interaction routing is available in your account, agents will notice some changes in ContactPad. For information about ContactPad, see Overview of ContactPad. With multi-interaction routing, agents can work on multiple interactions—of different interaction types—at the same time.
Queue information panel
|
The interactions list in the Information panel shows the interactions that an agent is currently handling. To see the interactions list, click All in the Information panel. Each interaction the agent is currently handling is presented as a separate item in the All tab. If, for example, an agent is handling two chats, both will be listed as separate interactions in ContactPad.
In the first example, the agent has no active interactions. In the second example, the agent is handling one live interaction—a phone call. In the third example, the agent is handling two non-live interactions—two cases. In the final example, the agent is handling one semi-live interaction—a chat—and two non-live interactions—two cases.
|
VCC sizes interactions according to their type. An interaction's size determines the percentage of an agent's capacity each interaction uses. You can configure capacity at an account level or, if enabled for your account, for individual agents.
An agent's capacity is based on the number and type of interactions they are working on at any time. If an agent isn't working on any interactions, their capacity is 100%. VCC considers an agent's capacity and the capacity required by an interaction in determining the agent's availability to handle an interaction. If the agent doesn't have capacity to handle it, VCC will not route the interaction to them.
The following values are the default sizes of interactions of different types:
For information about about configuring interaction capacities, see Configuring multi-interaction routing.
When using external routing, the following information relating to capacity applies:
|
Agent capacity is also used in Dashboards to show the availability of agents to handle different types of interactions in queues. |
An agent's optimum load is the ideal capacity that their assigned interactions should consume. When the optimum load feature is enabled, VCC preferentially routes interactions to agents whose assigned interactions consume closest to but less than their configured optimum loads. VCC routes interactions to these agents rather than agents who are idle, that is, not working on any interactions.
The purpose of the optimum load feature is to assign new semi- and non-live interactions to agents already working on semi- or non-live interactions, while freeing up other agents for handling live interactions such as phone calls; live interactions use up 100% of an agent's capacity. Optimum load aims to avoid a scenario where all agents are working on a small number or semi- or non-live interactions, using up a small amount of the agents' capacity. In this scenario, no agents would be available for handling live interactions.
VCC avoids routing interactions to agents whose assigned interactions consume more than their optimum load.
If enabled, you can configure optimum load settings for your account. For information about configuring optimum load for your account, see Configuring multi-interaction routing.
The optimum load feature does not work if either of the two interrupt toggles have been enabled: |
Interrupt and resume are only available if you are using Salesforce external routing. |
By default, VCC cannot route an interaction to an agent if the agent does not have the capacity to handle it. When the interrupt feature is enabled, VCC can temporarily stop the agent working on non-live interactions to increase the agent's available capacity. Increasing the agent's capacity enables VCC to route live, semi-live, or both types of interactions to the agent within their available capacity.
The interrupt feature can be enabled for live interactions, semi-live interactions, or both types of interactions. The interruption time is not included in the interaction handle time. |
For example, an agent is working on three non-live interactions and the interrupt feature is enabled for both live and semi-live interactions:
|
|
When the agent releases the live or semi-live interaction that interrupted the non-live interaction or interactions, the interrupted interaction is resumed. The agent can continue working with the resumed non-live interaction.
The toggles should not be enabled if the optimum load feature is being used. |
If cross-media consult is enabled for your account, an agent can consult with a third party while they are handling a semi- or non-live interaction. The third party could be another agent or someone on another phone number. The agent always performs the consult using a phone call.
For information about using cross-media consult, see Using multi-interaction routing.
While working on an interaction, agents can transfer the interaction to another agent, number, queue or service depending on the type of interaction:
Agents can transfer a non-live interaction to another agent or service. For information about transferring a non-live interaction to another agent or service, see Using multi-interaction routing.
| If cross-media consult is enabled for your account, agents might also be able to consult with another agent, number, queue or service before transferring. |
An agent can transfer cases and custom objects to another VCC agent or a VCC interaction plan using ContactPad, or to VCC agents or Salesforce queues by changing the Case Owner field in the case record or Owner field in the custom object record. Changing the case or custom object owner to a Salesforce queue that is configured to use external routing triggers Salesforce to reroute the case using external routing. For more information, see Transferring a case or a custom object.
Currently agents can transfer only cases and custom objects; no other object types can be transferred. |
This API provides information on the availability of a customer's agents. The suggested use includes a customer using this API on their website to only show the live chat button when an agent is available. For more information on the Agent Availability API see the the API documentation site.
The implementation of the API relies on the customer having the development skills available their side. |
If auto-acceptance is enabled in your Salesforce org, when VCC routes a semi-live interaction to an agent—as long as the agent has capacity to handle the interaction—the agent automatically accepts the interaction. (If the agent doesn't have capacity, the interaction remains in the queue until the agent does have capacity.)
If the declining of semi-live interactions is enabled in your Salesforce org, when VCC routes an interaction to an agent, the agent can choose to manually accept or decline the interaction in the Omni-Channel widget.
The default is for the agent to manually accept interactions and be unable to decline interactions. For information about configuring auto-acceptance or declining of interactions in the Omni-Channel widget, see Salesforce help.
If an agent declines an interaction, the interaction returns to the queue until another agent accepts the interaction.
You can also configure timeouts for semi-live interactions in the Omni-Channel widget. If an interaction has been waiting in an agent's Omni-Channel widget for the configured period of time, Salesforce automatically declines the interaction on the agent's behalf and the interaction returns to the queue. VCC routes the interaction to another suitable agent when such an agent becomes available.
When VCC routes an interaction to an agent, notifications received by the agent depend on the interaction type. For information about what happens when VCC routes a new interaction to an agent, see Examples.
