The word refuse has such bad connotations. That girl you wanted to take to the prom, but she ‘refused’. You really wanted that car or that house but the bank ‘refused’ to give you the loan. The party your parents ‘refused’ to allow you to attend. All through life, being ‘refused’ was a bad thing. Finally, a ‘refusal’ that does not mean an opportunity lost. One of the challenges that any SaaS based service has to overcome is that its users operate in what is often a less controlled environment. Transactions that have to be processed over the Internet, phone calls that transit the PSTN, a wild array of different types of data networks, designs and equipment, a wide range of personal computers, people working in less structured environments with varied amounts of training and distractions. All of these variables and factors contribute to the complexity and problems of providing service in a SaaS model. NICE CXone is designed to deal with these challenges and still deliver contacts to agents in the most efficient manner possible.
In order for NICE CXone to deliver a contact to an agent, there are a series of data connections that have to be made and a phone call that has to be delivered all in a timely fashion. It also requires an agent to be present and attentive. We have designed NICE CXone with logic to detect when it is taking too long for a data connection to establish, or if the call is not completing quickly enough, or if we encounter a busy signal or any of several other ‘real world’ events that can intrude upon the speedy processing on a contact. Using this logic, and with the intent of delivering the contact as expeditiously as possible, if NICE CXone determines that a contact cannot be delivered in a timely fashion, it will not expend time and resources in what could be a vain effort of delivering that contact to that agent. Instead, it will tag that event as a ‘refusal’, and then it will quickly look for another agent and deliver the contact to a different agent. NICE CXone is so effective at doing this, that the caller is never aware that any delivery problem ever existed and in most cases that contact is not lost but is quickly delivered to and processed by another agent. Refusals do not mean lost contacts!
What causes refusals and what should you do about them? Your CSM can provide you with documentation that describes refusal causes and corrective actions. While a refusal does not mean the contact was lost, it does detract from your efficiency. So understanding their cause and working to reduce them is desirable. Will you ever be able to get rid of all refusals? - probably not. There are many reasons for them, many of which are a product of people behavior. (See my comments on the Human Factor). There are also technical design issues and Internet events that can cause the occasional refusal. What you should do is study and learn what your normal refusal rate is. What is ‘normal’ varies from company to company but commonly, refusals are less than 1 or 2 percent of total contacts. If you have refusal rates of 2 percent or more, you should spend some time to find out why. It may be a simple training issue, or there may be a chronic technical problem that needs to be fixed. Contact our Technical Support team or your CSM and they can help resolve the problem.
At NICE, our goal is to provide a system that delivers your customers and business to you quickly and reliably. Where being ‘refused’ does not mean a customer or opportunity lost, but services delivered in spite of challenges and obstacles.
