Does anyone out there have any experience of Aspect's Network Interqueue product? Interested in your feedback about the product and any technical glitches you may have experienced or "clevers" you may have used for call routing

many thanks

Hi Adelle.

Interqueue does more or less what it says on the box and will simultaneously queue calls on Aspect callcentres, and does it adequately.
A good portion of my current and previous clients use interqueue very successfully as a methodof 'post delivery' call balancing.


A few of quirks to be aware of are:

- if interqueuing to multiple ACDs, the original version of interqueue (i.e. the DPNSS D-channel version) cannot hit all the Callcentre at the same time.
Itneeds to set up the interqueue on the first callcentre, then the CCT moves onto the next step to interqueue on the second, then third . . etc. until 'simultaneous' queuing is achieved.
(N.B using IP Interqueue on REL.8+ will eliminate this quirk as calls can hit all callcentres at the same time)

- be wary of the way CCTS are built and applications allocated as it is very easy to double count calls or SEE them as lost or abandoned - (emphasis on 'see' - as they are handled correctly) - if you make a mistake here.

- Agents on the 'receiving' ACD may be allocated for a interqueue call then the call is 'snatched back' by the originating ACD as an agent has become available there at exactly the same time - this may be manifest by an agent seeing 'selected for call' (or similar) on the teleset, then the call not being delivered. This may happen more if you are using CTI.
(No calls are lost because of this and the agent becomes available again to take the next call)

- The priority of a call will be lost when interqueued so the CCT on the receiving ACD must contain a new priority step.

- Although (I believe) it's recommended by Aspect, it is not neccessary to have dedicated links for IQ. The IQ links can be established via your VPN and calls sent across the same. This will result in a significant cost beneift over dedicated links.


As for 'clevers', it really does depend what you are using it for.


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If you need further help/info, my work comes highly recommmended by major bluechips and at half the price of . . . erm . . . 'bigger companies' ;o)
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Hope this helps,

Richard

nt

Hi Richard,

Don't worry about the typos, etc. Like they say in Jazz, if you play a bum note, play it again and again 'til it works :-)

Have a great weekend,

John

Hey there Richard

thx for your response, maybe I should have mentioned i've implemented it and maintained it too! but was looking for some feedback from you guys about how effective really is it, and you seemed to have answered that!!

Like you say, you think you are getting simultaneous queuing but in the earlier versions you're actually not (which i believe is where some clients expectations have not been set correctly!). As you also mention about calls being snatched back, I wonder what percentage of calls this might happen to, and how much productive time is lost through this, any ideas?

i'm not sure what you are up to at the moment, but I may be interested in talking to you further or contacting you, as there may be some Aspect work available, but this depends on your experience; would you like me to contact you? and if so how might I do this?

Speak to you soon.

Richard,

a specific question for you regarding NIQ, I've experienced problems where agents have been selected and the call dropped as it has been snatched back like you mention, and this was remedied by inserting a wait step after Interflowing and before selecting local agents. If an agent got stuck in the "selected for Network Call" status and their teleset has to be physically reset would this be down to the same issue, and how could you prevent this from happening? Would it be true to say that this issue is only NIQ related, or might it happen on an ACD which wasnt using NIQ?

How long a agent is selected for a Interqueue can be set in System Administrator.
We have used Interqueue for many years and agents are aware of this feature this feature is used so that during the time the ACD is cutting over the voice path to the instrument the agent does not get selected for another call. As for the call being selected by the original ACD when it has selected a Interqueue agent I have never seen this happen. I don't think it can because once the call has selected a agent it is not longer in queue or in the selection state.

Also check your logs for tube errors. I have seen the lock up happen with very heavy call volumes and tube error show up in log by deactivating the link and activating this has cleared the issue up.

Do you have to use NIQ or could you queue the calls in the network cloud before delivery?

This could also alleviate any problems with different technology or software releases at each location.

Just a thought

Paul

Thanks guys for your replies, we actually fixed this in the end. This particular client did not have network routing as part of their setup, so the routing was done at ACD level via the network interqueue feature - an old, reliable, cheaper version of network routing I guess!!