Understanding outcomes. Actions in Outcomes. Global and project outcomes. Unanswered calls.
Understanding outcomes
Whenever an Outbound call is placed, there are several potential Outcomes. The type of outcome depends on whether the call is answered or not.
If the call is answered:
- The agent must select an outcome that records what happened in the call.
- The outcome might reflect that the agent made a sale, or the contact requested a callback, or to be added to a blacklist.
- This type of outcome might be available to all your projects (Global outcomes), or an Admin can define outcomes that are only available to a particular project (Project specific outcomes).
If the call is unanswered:
- An Unanswered or Busy outcome will be assigned automatically by the application. Unanswered calls include those that fail, for example because the number was invalid.
- You can define different behaviour for different amounts of unanswered calls to a particular number.
Actions in outcomes
Depending on the type of outcome you are creating, it may be able to perform the following actions:
- Add to blacklist. The contact is removed from the current contact list and put onto a blacklist, which will prevent automatic calls to the contact in the future.
- Finalize contact. The contact remains on the contact list but is marked as finalised, meaning the contact is complete and will not be automatically called again.
- Send email/SMS. Sends the message template of your choice to the contact, if possible. Normally, the message must be confirmed by the agent when selecting the outcome, but you can choose to have the message sent automatically.
- Set outbound number. Choose the outbound number that will be used the next time you call this contact. You can opt to use the same outbound number as the current call, a specific other number, or to follow the default project settings for outbound numbers.
- Set waiting period. Specify the minimum amount of time before this contact can be called again.
- Set calling time restriction. Specify the time of day for the next call to this contact, for example, only between 11:00 and 14:00.
- Create order. This creates an empty order for the contact.
- Move contact. Moves the contact to a different contact list.
Global- and project-based outcomes
You can create outcomes which are available in all your projects, or which are tied to specific projects.
- Global outcomes. Created and managed on the General settings page of your Admin account. These outcomes are available to all projects.
- Project specific outcomes. Created and managed within the project they will be used in. They are only available to agents working on a specific project.
If you have an outcome which you intend to use for multiple projects, it is better to create it as a global outcome, then hide it from the projects that don’t use it. This reduces the chances that you create multiple outcomes that all do the same thing, which can result in confusing reports.
Before creating a new outcome, double-check that you do not have a duplicate already.