Sorting messages 

---

Introduction

The design of your messaging software depends on the types of messages you expect, your service expectations for handling each type of message, and the agent skills required to handle them. This means that you want to sort messages according to a number of different factors.

Factors in determining how to sort messages

Consider the following factors when you are determining how you will sort messages:

• Queue limits�vector programming in DEFINITY ECS can restrict the number of message calls that may be queued for a specific agent skill set. This ensures that a single mailbox cannot use all purchased resources and restrict delivery from other mailboxes.

• Skill type�the following factors are valuable in determining the skills required to handle a message (for example, sales or support group skills):

  • The product or service for which the customer wants information

  • Whether the customer already has the product or is considering purchasing the product

  • Whether the customer's question is technical or general

  • The urgency of the customer's question

• Auto-acknowledgment�the auto-acknowledgment can reassure a customer and thus reduce future inquiries about the progress of email queries.

• The following factors should influence your decision about whether to have the messaging software send an auto-acknowledgment to the customer before launching a message call:

  • The promptness with which you want the customer to hear back from you

  • Whether you want to assure the customer that the message did not get lost in the Internet

  If you decide to use an auto-acknowledgment for a specific mailbox, consider the language of the customer to which you will be delivering the auto-acknowledgment.

Example using sorting factors

Skills, queue limits, and message call priority are illustrated in the following example:

If a center supports four mailboxes: 1, 2, 3, and 4 and the total messaging capacity purchased is 100, using vectors, the Internet contact center can limit the number of message calls going to a message skill to 25 and assign a unique skill to each mailbox. Therefore, at any time, only 25 message calls can be queued in DEFINITY ECS for each mailbox.

Note that when a message call is active at an agent, this threshold does not apply. Therefore, there may be 25 message calls queued and an additional 25 message calls active at agents. If Mailbox 1 and 2 each receive 50 messages, but no messages arrive in 3 and 4, and fewer than 50 agents are active on message calls, the messaging software will have sufficient resources to launch message calls.

However, DEFINITY ECS vectors will drop the messages calls once 25 have been queued. Just like voice call design, the queue limit applies only to calls queued. Once a mesage call is active at an agent, the queue slot is available for another message call.