Expert Agent Selection
10-2 Issue 4 September 1995

Logical Agent

implies that voice terminals are no longer preassigne d to hunt
groups; only when the agent logs in does the terminal become associated with
all of the skill hunt groups assigned to the Agent Log in ID.
With EAS optioned and enabled, ACD calls can also be directed to a particular
agent, instead of to the skill hunt group, by using the Direct Agent Calling feature.
The Direct Agent call is treated like an ACD call, bu t it waits in queue for a
specific agent to become available. Direct Agent calls have a higher priority
than skill hunt group calls.
This chapter describes EAS, and it explains, via a numb er of examples, how EAS
is implemented. The chapter also discusses EAS upgrades. However, before
you start with this chapter, you should take note of the following:
■With EAS, skill hunt groups replace splits. Skill hunt groups and splits
cannot be administered simultaneously on a switch. This implies that all
ACD hunt groups must be administered as either splits or skills. If EAS is
optioned, all AC D hunt groups must be skill hunt groups.
■With EAS, all skill hunt groups must be vector-controlled.
■With EAS, non-ACD hunt groups are allowed, but they cannot be vector-
controlled.
■Agent Login IDs are extensions in the dial plan, and they decrease the
total number of stations that c an b e a dministered.
■With EAS, agents have a new login procedure and a single set of work
mode buttons, regardless of the number of skills assigne d to the agents.
■Skill hunt groups can distribute a call to the most -idle agent or to the most-
idle-primary agent. Direct Department Call (DDC) di stribution is not
allowed for skill hunt groups.
For informat ion on converting a Call Center to EAS, refer to Appendix K.
Identifying Caller Needs
Caller needs for a particular call can be identified by any of the following
methods:
■Interpreting inf ormat ion (in the form of DNIS digits or ISDN messages)
passed from the network
■Processing Call Prompt i n g d i g its o r d i gits entered at a Voice Response
Unit (VRU)
■Using ASAI or a VRU (such as CONVERSANT) in a host data base lookup
To illustrate how a Call Center manager might match caller needs and agent
skills (which can be viewed as ca pabilities needed from the caller’s perspective),
let’s assume that a Call Center receives inbound calls from aut o c l u b members