Retry Options

From V10.6.725 - Control of when it is permissible to call a contact has been improved, specifically to ensure that numbers already in cache are included in the control mechanism, but also updating the behaviour in other areas.

There are 4 places in Softdial Contact Center™ where 'earliest and latest time to call' can be configured:

1. Overall Retry Options
   This is only taken into consideration for retries, not fresh records or callbacks. This setting means that no retries can be scheduled before or after this time. This setting also acts as a call expiry time for retries, if a retry is sitting in Softdial Campaign Manager™ or Softdial CallGem™ cache and the latest time to call is reached, those retries will be flushed back to the database and rescheduled for the earliest time to call the next day.
2. Multiple Telephone Numbers
   This is taken into consideration for all fresh records, retries and callbacks, and applies to a particular index/ column in the database. Again, this setting means that no calls at all can be scheduled before or after this time for that particular index. This setting also acts as a call expiry time for calls to that index, if a call is sitting in Softdial Campaign Manager™ or Softdial CallGem™ cache and the latest time to call is reached for that index, those calls will be flushed back to the database and rescheduled for the earliest time to call the next day.
3. Time Zone Bounding
   Same as Multiple Telephone Numbers - taken into consideration for all fresh records, retries and callbacks. The earliest and latest times to call are configured by the Lower and Upper Bound columns in the database.
4. Per Outcome Basis
   This setting means that a specific retriable outcome will not be rescheduled before or after the earliest or latest time to call.

   This setting does not expire calls that are already in cache, as in the above cases.

5. Combinations
   If all these settings are configured for a record, the call expiry time will be the closest/ earliest/ soonest "latest time to call" configuration. Likewise with the "earliest time to call"

   All fresh records will have a call expiry time since, even when using a single telephone number, there is an entry in the Multiple Telephone Numbers for that column, which has the earliest and latest time to call configurations.

When the Override default fresh/ retry data mix checkbox is checked the 'retry to fresh ratio %' slider is enabled/ displayed.

The retry to fresh ratio provides the facility to throttle the level of retries pushed through Softdial CallGem™. By default, retries are made whenever they are scheduled to be made. See Retry Rules. This can mean on a campaign run over a day or more that most numbers being dialled are retries. By forcing a certain percentage of numbers dialled to be fresh (undialled) numbers, it means that connect rates don't drop too low that performance is adversely affected.

For example, by setting a retry to fresh ratio of

• 100% (the default) - retries will take precedence over fresh data.
• 50% - 1 fresh call will be dialled for each retry (unless we are short of either fresh calls or retries)
• 0% - retries will be postponed until all fresh numbers have been dialled

Normally, retries should be set take precedence over fresh data, and a carefully considered policy on frequency of retry and maximum retry attempts should be established.

This retry regime, coupled with Softdial Campaign Manager™’s intelligent use of history to compute Right Time to Call (RTTC) will ensure that the chance of achieving a connect is maximised.

Unless there are clear business reasons for doing so, and you understand the consequences of your choices with respect to getting value from your dialing data, Sytel recommends the following rules when setting retry strategies:

1. Limit retry of not present type outcomes for a phone number to a maximum of 6 times
2. Set time boundaries for retries according to your contact center shift hours
3. Set a retry interval for no answers and answer machines that is 3 hours or more

In the event that Softdial Campaign Manager™ cannot make retries at or near the scheduled time due to retry throttling or lack of available agents, Softdial Campaign Manager™ will reschedule the retries to take place (by default) 1 day later, preserving the value of the right-time-to-call. Configuration for the overdue cutoff is the Reschedule overdue retries after setting and the default delay is the Time offset for overdue retries setting.

See also Linked Campaigns - Retry Throttling for advice on using this feature with linked campaigns.

The overall maximum number of retries per record. A record will never be called more times than this, regardless of the way in which the switch deems a call to have failed.

This setting overrides any outcome-specific settings listed in the Time delay for type of failure table.

Maximum number of retries per record whose outcomes are defined as not present in the Time delay for type of failure table.

As shown in Fig. 1 (Windows client on right), by default the not present outcomes are

• No Answer
• Fax Machine
• Modem
• Answer Machine

This setting overrides any outcome-specific settings listed in the Time delay for type of failure table.

For further discussion on the Time delay for type of failure table, see below.

From V10.6.890 - When using Accelerate retries... (see General Settings), this option enables more than one retry cycle.

The default value for this parameter is 1. By setting it to 2 (for example), once the first cycle is finished, Softdial Campaign Manager™ will accelerate retries again.

In the Web client, retries that fail to be placed within the period configured here after the due time will be returned to the database and rescheduled after the time configured in the Time offset for overdue retries setting. The retry count for reschedules retries is not incremented and therefore the number of overall retry attempts is not affected.

Unless you have specified very aggressive retries or are limiting the number of retries, retries will generally be dialled at or around the time they are due and the default setting of 5 minutes will be sufficient.

From 10.6.976 - this cannot be for less than 5 minutes. If less than 5 mins is specified, defaults to 1 day.

In the Web client, retries that fail to be placed in the due time (plus any delay configured in the Reschedule overdue retries after setting, can be rescheduled after this period. Note the time offset is from the original retry time (not including any delay). The default setting of 1 day helps preserve the value of right-time-to-call decisions made by the retry engine and should not need to be changed.

The Time delay for type of failure table (Fig. 2) contains retry settings specific to each kind of switch outcome failure. The Add, Edit and Delete buttons may be used to add, edit or delete the rows of this table. They may be enabled by highlighting a row.

The headings for each of the columns in the Time delay for type of failure table are explained below:

Softdial Campaign Manager™ makes an assumption that Softdial CallGem™ will typically take about 5 minutes to work through its FIFO cache of numbers, so the retry is placed into Softdial CallGem™'s cache 5 minutes before it is due. For this reason, in the case where was the cache is depleted, the retry may be dialed slightly earlier than scheduled.

The retry algorithm seeks to avoid placing repeated retries at the same time of day, in order to maximise the chances of a contact. The way this works is that the day is divided into 24 hourly timeslots. The Out of Shift and Out of Timezone hours are marked as Unavailable. The times of any previous retries are also marked as Unavailable. The algorithm takes the current time and adds the retry interval for the specific type of retry. It then checks whether the hour timeslot where the retry has been placed is available. If not, the retry is moved to the next available timeslot (i.e. add 1 hour).