Making an outbound call using ContactPad occurs in two stages:
To make an outbound call, perform the following steps:
A new dialog box with the address book appears. For information about the address book and what it contains, see ContactPad address book.
Press Return or click Dial.
Your telephone rings, and when you answer you hear ringing until you are connected to the target number.
When you make an outbound call, you might see receive error messages in the ContactPad message panel. These messages help you understand why calls have failed, so you can try another number, or arrange a later callback.
You can receive one of these three error messages:
Unable to place call to agent. Please try again This error occurs if your line is already in use, your line has a fault, or your telephone number is incorrect.
Your supervisor should be able to identify any causes. If the above error messages persist you may have a problem with your phone and you should contact your supervisor to diagnose. |
If messages persist, report a fault on your phone line to your Supervisor.
When you receive a call through the ContactPad you can make use of Vonage Contact Center's call control features; you can put the call on hold, consult with someone else, transfer the caller elsewhere or even control the call recordings.
When you receive an inbound call, the following things happen:
Details of the inbound call appear in the information panel
By default, if the inbound call is an internal call from another agent in your account, the agent's name will appear in the information panel. |
If enabled for your account and in your browser, a web notification also appears. For more information, see Call notifications.
If you answer your phone, you are connected to the caller. If you cannot accept the call right now, you can reject it. For information about rejecting a call, see the How do I reject an incoming call? section later in this page.
You can now perform one of the following tasks:
Before you are connected to a call, you can reject it. To reject a call when you receive an inbound call, click Release in ContactPad. The inbound call is then returned to the queue and routed to the next available agent.
After rejecting an inbound call your state automatically goes into No Answer.
While on a call, you can consult with another agent, short code, external number, interaction plan, or queue about the call.
Warm and cold transfersA transfer can be one of two types:
The type of a transfer used depends on which features are enabled for your account. For more information, see Warm and cold transfers. |
To consult with a third party about your current call, start by clicking Consult. A new dialog box with the address book appears. For information about the address book and what it contains, see ContactPad address book.
What happens next depends on which features are available for your account:
By default, consulting with an agent, short code, or external number will connect you to that third party. Consulting with an interaction plan or queue will cold transfer the call immediately to that interaction plan or queue.
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If warm transfers are enabled for your account, consulting with any third party will initially connect you to that third party. You can then warm transfer to them if desired. You cannot cold transfer the call. To continue, press Return or click Dial.
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If a choice of warm or cold transfers are enabled for your account, you can choose to consult with and optionally warm transfer, or cold transfer, to a third party.
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If you are connected to the third party, the active call control buttons change.
Release, Alternate, and Transfer—become active.
To alternate between the caller and the consulted agent or number, click Alternate. You can alternate as many times as you require.
If you hang up your telephone without releasing the consult connection, your caller is transferred to the consulted number. |
While on a call, if enabled for your account, you can add another participant to the call, for example another agent.
To add a third party to an existing call, perform the following steps:
Click Consult to call the person you want to add to the conference (the consulted agent).
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Disconnect the consulted agent and return to a two-way call with your customer. Click Release.
The same occurs if the consulted agent clicks Release in their ContactPad or hangs up their phone. |
Connect the consulted agent and the customer, and leave the call. Click Transfer or hang up your phone. The consulted agent now controls the call as described.
If the customer hangs up, you and the consulted agent remain in a two-way call. |
When you are in a conference call, DTMF call control is unavailable. If enabled for your account, you and your customer can, however, use DTMF tones while in a conference call. The tones will play to all parties on the call. If you need to use DTMF tones in conference calls, contact your account manager. |
At the end of a call, you can end the call in one of three ways:
Best practice is to click Release. If either you or the caller is using an analogue telephone line, the modern digital telephone network might not detect the disconnect signal when you or the caller replace the handset. |
Following each call, your state is automatically changed to the Wrap up (Auto) state. This state takes you offline allowing you time to complete any activities for the call before your next call arrives.
The amount of time you have in the Wrap Up (Auto) state is automatically set by your supervisor, but, for inbound calls, the wrap time can be different for each call type you receive. In all cases, ContactPad shows the wrap time counting down. If you set yourself to Wrap Up (Manual) you will remain in this state until you manually change your state again. |
Following Wrap up (Auto) — when the timer has counted down to 0 seconds — your state changes to Ready, Ready for Outbound, or the state configured in State after wrap in an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) applet, automatically. Whether you change to Ready or Ready for Outbound is determined by your supervisor. If your call center generally receives more inbound calls than makes outbound calls, the default ready state is likely to be Ready. If your call center makes more outbound calls than receives inbound calls, the default ready state is likely to be Ready for Outbound.
Click Ready at any time while in the Wrap Up state, ideally as soon as you are ready to take another call. Changing your state back to Ready as soon as possible helps your call center to answer more calls, and helps you to reduce your overall wrap up statistics.
Occasionally, when you end a call, ContactPad becomes unresponsive. You might not be able to use the call control buttons or change your state—you might remain in a Busy state. You cannot receive any new calls.
In case of such problems, you should abandon the call.
Abandoning a call may affect statistics, recordings, and customer experience. You must only abandon a call if ending it in the correct way has not worked. |
To abandon a call, click the no entry icon on the information tab. A message appears to inform you that you must only abandon the call if releasing it has not worked. To proceed, click Abandon.
After abandoning a call in ContactPad, sometimes the call will continue at a telephony level. This is to ensure that you are not suddenly disconnected from the customer even if your intention was to end the call. You can continue to communicate with your customer, but, because the call will be disconnected from ContactPad so you can no longer use it to control the call. You, the caller, or both, must hang up to end the call at a telephony level. |