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Vonage Contact Center omni-channel solution

Vonage Contact Center omni-channel solution

Oct 21, 2024
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What is Vonage Contact Center's Omni-Channel Solution?

Using Vonage Contact Center's omni-channel solution, agents can work on work items—cases, chats, leads, and so on—that have arrived through Salesforce and on phone calls received through Vonage Contact Center (VCC).

To be able to use VCC's omni-channel features, you must have integrated VCC into Salesforce and correctly configured the Salesforce Omni-Channel feature. For information about configuring Salesforce Omni-Channel, see Salesforce help. In addition, VCC's omni-channel solution must be enabled for your VCC account.

You can then configure omni-channel for VCC in two different ways:

  • Integration with Salesforce Omni-Channel presence

  • Integration with Salesforce external routing

Interactions in Salesforce and VCC

Interaction types

  • Live

    An interaction that, by default, requires an agent's full attention. Live interactions include phone calls. If enabled for your account, you can configure the capacity for a live interaction to a lower value, so that agents can simultaneously work on semi-live or non-live interactions. 

  • Semi-live

    An interaction that is live with a customer but does not require an agent's full attention. Semi-live interactions include web chats, for example, Live Agent chats.

  • Non-live

    An interaction that is not live and does not require an agent's full attention. Non-live interactions include emails, and Salesforce cases, leads, and custom objects.

VCC makes different routing decisions based on the interaction type. Agents can perform different tasks on an interaction based on its type.

Salesforce objects, work items, and interactions

Salesforce uses different terminology for the items known in VCC as interactions:

  • Salesforce object

    A Salesforce object allows you to store information in your Salesforce organization. The object is the overall definition of the type of information you are storing.

  • Salesforce record

    A record in Salesforce is a specific definition of a Salesforce object. A record contains data in fields as required by the object type.

  • Work items

    A work item is a Salesforce record that Salesforce can route to agents or a third-party. When Salesforce routes the work item to VCC, the work item becomes what is known in VCC as an interaction.

The Salesforce record may be a web chat or a case that arrive in Salesforce through Live Agent or email respectively. Defining a service channel in Salesforce for a Salesforce object enables Salesforce to route records of that type and makes such records into work items.

Integration with Salesforce Omni-Channel presence

Salesforce Omni-Channel presence integration is available in both Salesforce Classic and Salesforce Lightning Experience.

When you have configured Salesforce Omni-Channel, both Salesforce and VCC can route work to your agents at the same time. Salesforce Omni-Channel routes work items—cases, chats, and so on—to agents using routing settings configured in Salesforce, while VCC routes phone calls to agents using configured interaction plans. Because the two systems route different types of interactions independently, VCC may route interactions to agents who are already busy in Salesforce; Salesforce may route work items to agents who are already busy in VCC. This situation causes a problem for the agent in knowing how to prioritize their incoming work.

To deal with such conflicts, if enabled for your account, you can use Salesforce Omni-Channel presence integration. With Salesforce Omni-Channel presence integration, you can create mappings between VCC's major states and Salesforce's presence statuses so each system knows the status of the agent in the other. If the agent is busy in VCC, the agent appears busy in Salesforce. The converse is also true.

For information about configuring Salesforce Omni-Channel presence integration, see Integrating with Salesforce Omni-Channel presence.

When you create your mappings, you can configure the following events:

  • When the agent changes their state in ContactPad, their presence status updates in the Salesforce Omni-Channel widget

  • When the agent changes their presence status in their Omni-Channel widget, their state updates in ContactPad

  • When the agent logs in to ContactPad, the agent goes into an online presence status in the Salesforce Omni-Channel widget

  • When the agent logs out of ContactPad, the agent goes offline in the Salesforce Omni-Channel widget

  • When the agent goes offline in Salesforce Omni-Channel, the agent logs out of ContactPad

When Salesforce assigns a chat to an agent, and auto-acceptance is enabled, the agent's state in ContactPad automatically changes to Busy Inbound. If auto-acceptance is not enabled, the chat shows as Alerting in ContactPad until the agent accepts it in the Omni-Channel widget. You can optionally configure changing the agent's state in ContactPad to Busy Inbound whenever the agent's presence status in the Omni-Channel widget is updated to a busy status. For more information, see Integrating with Salesforce Omni-Channel presence.

Integration with Salesforce external routing

An alternative approach to Salesforce Omni-Channel presence integration involves integrating with Salesforce external routing. 

With external routing, VCC can route all types of interactions—live (such as phone calls), semi-live (such as web chats) and non-live (such as emails). For more information about interaction types, see Interaction types. External routing can also route custom objects. Custom objects are routed in the same way as cases and are treated as non-live interactions.

VCC supports external routing for the following types of work items:

  • Cases

  • Chats

  • Messaging

  • Messaging for In-App and Web

  • Custom objects

When Salesforce external routing is enabled, configured and integrated with your VCC account, when a record of a configured type of Salesforce object arrives in or is created in Salesforce, Salesforce routes the corresponding work item to the configured named route in VCC.

VCC routes the resulting interaction according to the settings in the named route's interaction plan. When VCC routes the interaction to a queue or to an agent, the exact events depend on which optional features are available for your account, and the type of interaction.

VCC makes routing decisions for the different interactions using logic configured in one place; you no longer need to configure the logic for routing phone calls within VCC, and the logic for routing other types of interactions in Salesforce. You can also report on all types of interaction activity—real-time and historical statistics for your agents and their interactions—within VCC.

For information about integrating with Salesforce external routing, see Configuring Salesforce external routing for Vonage Contact Center.

Limitations

Multi-interaction routing

When you have configured omni-channel for VCC, VCC can route multiple interactions to an agent. The agent can work with those interactions at the same time. The number of interactions that an individual agent can work on depends on the available capacity of the agent.

ContactPad with multi-interaction routing

When multi-interaction routing is available in your account, agents will notice some changes in ContactPad. For information about ContactPad, see Overview of ContactPad. With multi-interaction routing, agents can work on multiple interactions—of different interaction types—at the same time.

Information panel

The interactions list in the Information panel shows the interactions that an agent is currently handling. To see the interactions list, click All in the Information panel. Each interaction the agent is currently handling is presented as a separate item in the All tab. If, for example, an agent is handling two chats, both will be listed as separate interactions in ContactPad.

In the first example, the agent has no active interactions. In the second example, the agent is handling one live interaction—a phone call. In the third example, the agent is handling two non-live interactions—two cases. In the final example, the agent is handling one semi-live interaction—a chat—and two non-live interactions—two cases.

Capacity and optimum load

Capacity

VCC sizes interactions according to their type. An interaction's size determines the percentage of an agent's capacity each interaction uses. You can configure capacity at an account level or, if enabled for your account, for individual agents.

An agent's capacity is based on the number and type of interactions they are working on at any time. If an agent isn't working on any interactions, their capacity is 100%. VCC considers an agent's capacity and the capacity required by an interaction in determining the agent's availability to handle an interaction. If the agent doesn't have capacity to handle it, VCC will not route the interaction to them.

The following values are the default sizes of interactions of different types:

Support and documentation feedback

For general assistance, please contact Customer Support.

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