Configuring the Teams

After creating all the users in Partner Portal and assigning them to the contact center, they appear under a Default Team in the Control Panel.

Create as many teams as required, for example, teams that contain all the agents trained for a specific queue. You can also create teams that contain agents cross-trained on multiple queues, or teams that take different calls at different priorities. Skillsets can help with multi-tasked agent setup.

Creating teams enables filtering in both monitoring and reporting. For example, you can filter live views to focus on one team or to generate historical reports per team. The views also account in cases where the customer has only a single team. The views always contain the entire contact center.

To move agents to a new team, follow these steps:

1. On the left menu, click the team’s name.

2. Navigate to the Members tab, and then select the agents to add to the team.

If the contact center is likely to have turnover, our best practice recommendation is to create an Inactive or similarly named team, thus allowing the customer to move staff out of active teams as required.

You can set thresholds by team instead of individually. This can make configuration easier if every member of a team has the same settings. After setting thresholds for a team, each member of that team automatically adopts them.  Flexibility can be key, so even if Team thresholds are set, they can be changed for individual agents as required.

Additional Information Regarding Teams and Agents

Once you create an agent, their role can be changed from Agent (this is the default setting) to a Team Leader, Office Manager, Call Center Manager, or Administrator. These settings control what an individual can see when looking at monitors or running reports. 

• Team Leader: Restricted to only their team

• Office Manager: Restricted to only their office (if there are multiple)

• Call Center Manager: Can see all teams in all offices

• Administrator: Can access everything

These roles are useful for helping people to focus their view while managing different activities in the organization.

Each role is assigned a default set of functions/pages that they can access; the Security tab allows for modifying these permissions. Adding or removing a check in a function/page adds or removes that from their view. Remember the role hierarchy: even as permissions are changed, the range of view does not.

Setting thresholds trigger color changes as warnings on the live monitor and dashboards. They can also trigger alerts to Team Leaders/Managers. If required, you can force agents to available (ready to take calls) when the threshold expires for Not Ready and Wrap-Up.

Not Ready is a good status for when the teams first log in at the beginning of their shift. Under this status, agents can be logged in, but given a few minutes to open other apps, set up their workstations, and more, before the first call arrives at their phone. Forcing to available from Not Ready limits the time spent before receiving the first call. Not Ready is also automatically triggered if an agent misses answering a call delivered to their phone. 

Wrap-up can also be useful to limit. If there are no lengthy tasks that need to be completed between calls, forcing to available can give the agent a few moments to catch their breath, take sip of water, or any other actions needed between calls, but they do not have to remember to make themselves available again.

This process requires some thought and consideration, but setting up agents and teams effectively helps immensely in the running of any contact center.