Optimising Performance with Call Disposition Codes

Unconnected calls

Calls that do not successfully connect could be due to many reasons and are assigned an appropriate outcome code accordingly. The process of establishing the outcome code for calls that do not successfully connect may vary depending on the equipment involved between the call recipient’s phone and Sytel’s CallGem.

The diagram briefly identifies the steps involved using an example of the call failing because the number dialed is busy.

In this example, Sytel’s Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) makes an outbound call to a selected number. However, the recipient’s telephone was busy so the telephone exchange generates an ISDN Q.931 cause code of 17 which is sent back to the Sytel equipment.

It is very common for the telephony path to pass through more than one carrier and exchange. Each time a different carrier or exchange is encountered the ISDN Q.931 code is passed on. However, not all exchanges or carriers are ISDN enabled. If a non-ISDN enabled carrier or exchange is encountered then the Inband signaling information which includes Special Information Tones (SIT) is carried forward.

As the information is received in to the organization it may pass through gateways housed on the premises or servers hosted in the cloud etc. The ISDN Q.931 cause code is mapped to a SIP cause code. In this example, the ISDN Q.931 code 17 is mapped to SIP cause code 486, which is passed on to the Softdial Telephony Gateway (STG).

In this case, because the call was not successfully completed, STG ends the call and sends a call failed message to CallGem which contains the reason for the failure. CallGem generates an outcome code from this information. For this example the outcome code is 1, which translates to Busy.

CallGem will pass the outcome code on to the Softdial Campaign Manager, the CRM or the CATI system depending on the equipment and campaign being run by the organization and that system will translate it in to a dialing cycle outcome. The Softdial Campaign Manager, CRM or CATI system will then apply appropriate rules, which might be; try calling again another 6 times at 2 hourly intervals, but not before 9am or after 9pm.