How outbound scripts work from an agent’s perspective

If your organization uses outbound dialing to contact a list of people, it is important to understand how outbound scripts work from the perspective of a contact center agent.

Outbound dialing campaigns are only as effective as the agent’s ability to accomplish goals. So, the campaign script is a central part of most campaign configurations. Some campaigns do not use agents. A campaign that does use agents has an associated script that defines the agent experience.

Outbound scripts tell the agent how to interact with a contact. When a call arrives, the script that is associated with the campaign populates the agent’s display. The information pertains to the call, the contact, and the campaign, based on the behavior defined in the script. The information that appears is called a screen pop.

Scripts display information from a campaign’s contact list for the agent to read from or fill out. Their screen presents information using a combination of visual controls, text, graphics, and navigational aids.

Your script can tell the agent how to greet the contact and what to say during each stage of the call. These instructions mix prompt text with forms-based data entry and navigation controls. An agent can navigate to different script pages based on the conversation with the contact.

Or, your script can present a single page that displays columns from the contact list as text boxes for the agent to update. This single page is a base script. The level of sophistication is up to you. The outbound dialing system ensures that data that agents update writes back to the contact list after they disposition the call.

As script designer, you decide what information displays and how that information displays to the agent using visual components (such as text boxes and radio buttons). You also set up navigation options for branching from page to page.

When a script pops on the agent’s display, it is ready for the agent to complete. Sometimes the agent’s screen presents information before a call is placed, so that the agent can preview or skip the contact record. The dialing mode, and not the script, determines whether agents see information before a call is placed.