Avaya 3.1 manual Agent selection, Overload thresholds and service objectives

Business Advocate solution examples

Agent selection

UCD-LOA is used for agent selection so that the least occupied agent is selected for the call. This spreads work time evenly among the primary or focus agents for each customer segment and eliminates any hot seats, that is, a situation in which some agents receive more calls than others. Since agents are encouraged to process each order completely during the call, After Call Work (ACW) is not considered as work time in the calculation of agent occupancy.

Call selection

Greatest Need is administered for call selection and Predicted Wait Time (PWT) is activated for call selection measurement. Greatest Need, when used with Service Objective, selects a call for an agent according to the ratio of PWT and the administered service objective (PWT/SO) for the agent’s assigned skills. The highest priority call with the highest PWT/SO is selected. The use of PWT and Service Objective is important for the agents who have focus assignments in two or more skills.

Automated agent staffing

Service Level Supervisor is used to activate reserve agents when overload thresholds for a skill are exceeded. Service Level Supervisor Call Selection Override is off, because call selection should never ignore calls that are waiting for an agent’s focus skill. Dynamic Threshold Adjustment is not activated because the company prefers to set and monitor its thresholds. If thresholds drop merely to help the center make its percentage in service level numbers, the number of focus calls each agent takes also drops. This results in loss of revenue and transaction costs that are higher than necessary.

Overload thresholds and service objectives

Given the way skill assignments are set, service objectives play a role when either Tier 2 or Tier 3 agents become available, because these types of agents have two primary skills. Service objectives are implemented for all skills, however, and Service Objective is activated for call handling on each agent’s Agent LoginID form. Therefore, if any of an agent’s reserve skills go into overload, the agent’s call selection is properly governed. Since each skill has two levels of reserves, two overload thresholds are administered for each skill and the settings reflect the business interest to back up higher-revenue calls more readily.

62 Avaya Business Advocate User Guide February 2006