SpitFire Help Desk :: Setting Up A Blended Campaign in SpitFire Predictive

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Setting Up A Blended Campaign in SpitFire Predictive

The SpitFire Predictive software can be configured to handle inbound calls as well as outbound calls. For inbound calls, the customer can be placed on hold until there is an available agent, rather than dropping the call (as would be handled for outbound calls that connect to a live person when no agent is available).
If the Dialer is using PRI/T1 lines, the customer's caller ID can also be passed to the Agent software for the inbound call.

Prerequisites for Call Blending Feature

There are some important considerations that need to be understood when deciding to configure the Predictive Dialer to handle inbound calls:

1. You must have lines plugged into the Dialer that can be accessed via a single phone number that your customers can call.
So, if the Dialer has analog lines, your Phone Company will need to have a DID (Direct Inward Dialing) phone number pointing to however many lines you want to take the inbound calls.

2. If the Dialer is using PRI lines connected to a T1 card, you must dedicate only specific lines to handle the inbound calls. This can be done by having a dedicated T1 for the inbound calls or by having your carrier "channelize" the lines and specify that only certain lines will take inbound calls. It is not a good idea to have lines that are dialing out also be able to receive inbound calls because this will occasionally lock up the lines in SpitFire.

3. If you want to dedicate certain Agents to handle the inbound calls, you must run a separate Campaign that is only inbound and have those agents log into that Campaign. There is no way to specify only certain Agents to take inbound calls from a Campaign that is doing both inbound and outbound calls.

4. Blended Campaigns are NOT possible with SIP trunks.

Predictive Dialing Script for Call Blending

The Predictive Dialer uses a Predictive Dialing Script (PD) that controls some of the main parameters regarding how a call is handled when a live person answers or when an answering machine is detected. The default PD1 script is designed to hang up the call when a live person is detected but there is no Agent available. This is known as a Dropped Call. However, when taking inbound calls, this is not how you will want to handle a situation where there is no Agent available to take the call. So, a different type of PD script needs to be created and used that will put inbound calls on hold and then transfer to an Agent when he is available.

Here is what the template looks like:

See THIS article for instructions on how to create this type Predictive Dialing Script.

Setting Up A Blended Campaign

Once you have your inbound lines in place and you have set up a Predictive Dialing Script that can handle inbound calls, we can set up the actual Campaign software itself to enable the Blended feature.

1. Open the Campaign software, in this case we will use Instance 1. Open the window and go to Options-->Preferences.

2. Click on the General tab.

3. Click on the check-box for the Call Blending option.

4. Now we need to select the new Blended script that was set up for this Campaign. Click the box to the right of Script Filename.

5. Now click the drop-down menu next to Look in to go to the C:\SPD\Scripts\ folder.

6. Double-click on the Blended script folder and then on the script .vbs file.

7. Here you can see the new PD script has been selected:

8. Click OK at the bottom of the screen. Close and then re-open the Campaign window.

9. Next we need to configure the line(s) that will be used for the inbound calls. Click on the Lines tab to see your lines.

10. To configure a line (in this case line 1 will be used), right click on the line to go into the Line configuration window.

11. Here we need to select the Inbound only option and click OK at the bottom.

12. Now you will start the Campaign as normal by selecting your list and clicking Dial. When you look at the Line Activity window, you will see that line 1 is in a Waiting for Call state instead of Waiting to Dial.

13. When an inbound call comes in and there is no Agent available or logged in, it will put the customer on hold, as you can see below:

14. In this example, there is no Agent logged in. Now, when the Agent logs in, it will immediately transfer the call to the Agent.

15. In this example, the line being used is a standard, analog line and thus there is no callerid associated with the call. That is why the phone number shows all 9's.
The same will be the case for the Agent software. If this was a PRI T1 line, it would pass the callerid to the SpitFire software.

Note the information under the LogOff button, InBound Public. This also indicates the call was from an inbound caller.

16. When the Agent is ready to end the call, he will click a disposition button as he would normally do to end a call. Once that is done, the Agent can now take calls from the outbound or inbound lines as they come in.