Lucent Technologies Lucent Call Centers Little Instruction Book For Advanced Administration

							Lucent Call Center’s Little Instruction Book for advanced 
administration  585-210-936  Issue 1
December 1999
Multi-site applications 
109 Performing daily maintenance 
Performing daily 
maintenance
You can display the following reports from your DEFINITY ECS to help you 
monitor the effectiveness of your BSR multi-site application and determine 
the cause of problems. 
nRegularly use the Display Events form and execute a display 
events command for the appropriate vectors.  Vector events will 
identify and indicate the source of common malfunctions and 
administration errors.
Tip:
If it appears that tie-trunks are frequently exhausted, review the design 
of the BSR application.  The user adjustments on consider location 
steps may be set too low.  
nUse a list trace vdn or list trace vec command to observe 
processing of an individual call to verify that your BSR vectors are 
operating as intended.  
nUse a Trunk Group Summary report for traffic measurements for 
trunk groups.  Review such information as trunk usage, calls queued, 
queue overflows, queue abandons, and percentage all trunks busy (% 
ATB).  To display a Trunk Group Summary report, type list 
measurements trunk-group summary  and press Return.  
nUse a Trunk Group Performance Report to view a graphical and 
numerical display of the peak hour blocking for each trunk group.  
This allows you to see the percentage of calls that arrive when all 
trunks are busy, for  the previous or current day.  To display a Trunk 
Group Performance Report, type list measurements trunk-
group  and press Return.  
For additional tips and methods for tracking unexpected vector events, 
please refer to the “Troubleshooting” chapter of the 
DEFINITY Enterprise 
Communications Server Call Vectoring/Expert Agent Selection guide.   
						

							Multi-site applications 
110 Interpreting performance 
Lucent Call Center’s Little Instruction Book for advanced 
administration  585-210-936  Issue 1
December 1999
Interpreting performance
The following types of standard reports will help you analyze the 
effectiveness of your individual sites.    
Tip:
If you have CentreVu Network Reporting software, it can be used to 
view real time key call center performance statistics from as many as 
64 call center sites within your Lucent DEFINITY network.
For more detailed information about reports, please refer to the CentreVu 
Supervisor Version 8 Reports guide. 
Table 9: CentreVu Supervisor Reports
Report What it measures What it tells you
CMS Split/Skill or VDN 
reportsAverage speed of 
answerIf ASAs have improved 
and become fairly equal 
among BSR-eligible 
sites
CMS Split/Skill or VDN 
reportsCalls handled If throughput has 
increased
CMS Split/Skill or VDN 
ReportsAbandonment rates If abandonment rates 
have decreased 
CMS Agent Group 
ReportAgent occupancy 
distributionIf agent utilization has 
improved as a result of 
interflowed calls 
						

							Lucent Call Center’s Little Instruction Book for advanced 
administration  585-210-936  Issue 1
December 1999
Multi-site applications 
111 Using BSR and CentreVu Advocate 
Using BSR and CentreVu 
Advocate 
BSR can be paired with CentreVu Advocate to make your multi-site routing 
even more precise and effective.  Once BSR delivers a call to the right call 
center or split/skill, CentreVu Advocate can determine the best agent to 
handle the call based on your callers’ needs and their value to your business.  
CentreVu Advocate can prevent a large skill from being overserved to the 
detriment of smaller skills.  It can also prevent a multi-skilled agent from 
being overworked beyond the workload of single-skilled agents, and can 
regulate how reserve agents are activated.  More detailed information on 
CentreVu Advocate can be found in the Managing Call and Agent Selection 
section of this book.
NOTE:
For help using these features together, contact Lucent’s Call Center 
Professional Services. 
						

							Multi-site applications 
112 Using BSR and CentreVu Advocate 
Lucent Call Center’s Little Instruction Book for advanced 
administration  585-210-936  Issue 1
December 1999 
						

							Lucent Call Center’s Little Instruction Book for advanced 
administration  585-210-936  Issue 1
December 1999
Call and agent selection methods 
113  
Call and agent selection methods
This section explains how to manage call and agent selection methods using 
CentreVu Advocate.  Specifically, the section is designed to help you 
understand the various call and agent selection features that are available for 
your call center and help you select the CentreVu Advocate features that best 
match your company’s business needs.  
For more detailed information about CentreVu Advocate features and 
administration, please see the CentreVu Advocate User Guide.   
						

							Call and agent selection methods 
114 What is CentreVu Advocate? 
Lucent Call Center’s Little Instruction Book for advanced 
administration  585-210-936  Issue 1
December 1999
What is CentreVu Advocate?
CentreVu Advocate is a set of advanced features that provides you with 
flexibility for routing calls:  through call selection methods or through agent 
selection methods, as determined by queue status and agent availability.  
When one or more queues contain calls when an agent becomes available, 
CentreVu Advocate employs the call selection methods you have 
administered.  When no calls are in queue and one or more agents become 
available to accept the incoming call, CentreVu Advocate activates the agent 
selection methods you have administered.  Based on your call center’s 
needs, you determine which combination of call and agent selection will 
give you the best results and administer those methods.  (Administration is 
covered later in this section.)  It is important to note that the capabilities of 
CentreVu Advocate often replace the need to use earlier techniques such as 
queue priorities or multiqueuing to get the results you want.  
NOTE:
CentreVu Advocate requires Expert Agent Selection (EAS) on the 
DEFINITY Enterprise Communications Server (ECS) Release 6 and 
later.   
						

							Lucent Call Center’s Little Instruction Book for advanced 
administration  585-210-936  Issue 1
December 1999
Call and agent selection methods 
115 How call selection works 
How call selection works
When calls are in queue and an agent becomes available, the DEFINITY 
ECS considers the call selection method administered for the agent for each 
of the queues they support in order to determine which skill to serve.  Once a 
skill is selected, the selected call will be the call at the head of the queue for 
that skill.  The options for call selection include handling preferences, 
reserve skills, and an option to include Service Objectives in call selection 
and reserve skill assignments.  Each of these options is described in this 
section. 
Call selection measurements
When administering call selection methods for agents, you must choose 
from one of two call selection measurements for wait time:  
nCurrent Wait Time (CWT) is a measurement that only considers how 
long a call has already waited when using the call selection 
algorithm.  This is commonly referred to as Oldest Call Waiting.
nPredicted Wait Time (PWT) is a call selection measurement  
designed to predict the total wait of incoming calls.  It uses an 
estimation of the time until another agent will become available, in 
addition to the current time in queue, to determine which call to 
select when an agent becomes available.  
Call handling preferences
Three call handling preferences are available to assist you with call 
selection: Greatest Need, Skill Level, and Percent Allocation.  You must 
administer one of these preferences for each agent.  These preferences 
determine which skill is selected for an agent when calls are in queue for 
their skill(s) and they become available to serve a call.     
						

							Call and agent selection methods 
116 How call selection works 
Lucent Call Center’s Little Instruction Book for advanced 
administration  585-210-936  Issue 1
December 1999
Greatest Need
Greatest Need is an EAS-based call selection method.  It selects a skill for an 
agent based on the call at the highest priority whose PWT or CWT for a skill 
is the longest or whose PWT or CWT is the furthest over the Service 
Objective of the skill, on a percentage basis.  This method allows you to 
improve efficiency by lowering the average speed of answer for calls and 
lowering the maximum delay. 
Skill Level
Skill Level is an EAS-based call handling preference based on the agent’s 
expertise in one or more skills.  Skill Level selects a call for an agent based 
on highest skill level, highest priority, and greatest need.  You assign a 
preference level of 1 to16, with level 1 as the highest preference, to 
determine how you want each agent’s time to be spent serving your 
customers.  You may determine, for example, that an agent who is especially 
good at generating sales should be at a level 1 for the Sales skill, but at a 
level 4 for handling calls on the Complaints skill.  This method can help you 
improve your customer service by delivering calls to the most qualified 
agents.  
Tip:
Skill Level is most effective when only a few levels are used, with as 
many skills at each level as possible.  We recommend defining only 
two or three levels per agent, if possible.
Percent Allocation
Percent Allocation allows you to assign a percentage of an agent’s time to 
each of his or her assigned skills, to total 100% of their staffed time.  Using 
this method, calls are selected according to the agent’s preassigned 
Percentage Allocation plan.  Percentage Allocation is designed to assist with 
agent scheduling so that a percentage of an agent’s time can be dedicated to 
each of his or her skills.  If you have an agent that is equally qualified to  
						

							Lucent Call Center’s Little Instruction Book for advanced 
administration  585-210-936  Issue 1
December 1999
Call and agent selection methods 
117 How call selection works 
serve two skills, for example, you could allocate 50% of that agent’s time for 
each skill.  It is best used with very targeted applications, for example, 
helping ensure agents on commission receive a fair portion of calls.
NOTE:
The results of Percent Allocation for each agent are  affected by the 
type and volume of incoming calls.  For example, consider an agent 
whose allocation is set at 50% for skill 1 and 50% for skill 2.  Assume 
that on a given day she has spent 70% of her time serving calls from 
skill 2, which is especially busy.  As long as there are no calls queued 
in skill 1 and the agent is available, she will continue to receive calls 
from skill 2, even though she has exceeded her percentage allocation 
for that skill.  
Service Objective
Service Objective can be used in conjunction with the Greatest Need and 
Skill Level call handling preferences.  It allows you to assign different levels 
of service to different skills.  With this feature, you can assign a lower 
Service Objective for a skill that is more important to your call center.  For 
example, you could assign a service level of 20 seconds for a priority 
customer skill and 45 seconds for a regular customer skill.  This ensures that 
priority calls receive a higher level of service.  For each skill level assigned 
to an agent, the DEFINITY ECS compares the PWT of the call at the head of 
the queue to the skill’s acceptable service level or Service Objective.  The 
skill with a call whose PWT is the highest percentage of the acceptable 
service level is selected.  The ratio used to determine the highest percentage 
of acceptable service level is Predicted Wait Time/Service Objective (PWT/
SO).
Tip:
If all skills are equally important, set all of the Service Objectives the 
same and set all agents to use Service Objective in call selection.  
Later, if you want to make adjustments for faster or slower service, 
you can easily change just the one Service Objective.     
						

							Call and agent selection methods 
118 How call selection works 
Lucent Call Center’s Little Instruction Book for advanced 
administration  585-210-936  Issue 1
December 1999
Service Level Supervisor
Service Level Supervisor is a feature that can automatically override normal 
agent call handling preferences when pre-set thresholds are exceeded.  
Using this feature, you can administer one or two overload thresholds for a 
skill that will be supported by reserve agents.  When the EWT for an 
arriving call exceeds the threshold, the skill goes into an overload state.  
When the appropriate overload state exists, agents who have been 
preassigned to assist during overload periods will be eligible to receive 
subsequent calls from the overloaded skill.  Service Level Supervisor is 
designed to alleviate the need to move agents from skill to skill during 
emergencies or unanticipated peaks in call volume.  Two key elements of 
Service Level Supervisor are discussed next:  reserve skills and overload 
thresholds.  
Reserve skills  
You can assign reserve skills to individual agents so they can assist with 
skills that might become overloaded during peak times.  You can assign 
these skills in addition to an agent’s standard skills or you can assign them to 
an agent who would not handle any calls unless contingency operations 
were in effect. Reserve skills are not mandatory, but they are a convenient 
method for automatically triggering contingency operations for your call 
center.  Two reserve levels can be administered:   
nReserve Level 1 agents:  Are eligible to receive calls from the 
overloaded skill when the first or second administered threshold is 
exceeded   
nReserve Level 2 agents:  Are eligible to receive calls from the 
overloaded skill when the second administered threshold is 
exceeded.