The JSON vCon - Contact Center Extension

3.1.1. role

The role that the participant played in the conversation. In a call center there are roles: such as: agents, customer, supervisor and specialist. In conferences there are roles: host, cohost, speaker, panelist, participant and other roles. The role parameter provides the ability to label the role that the part played in the conversation.¶

• role: "String" (optional)¶

The following values for the role parameter MAY be used:¶

• "agent"¶

• "customer"¶

• "supervisor"¶

• "sme" (for subject mater expert)¶

• "thirdparty"¶

Other values for the role parameter MAY also be used.¶

3.1.2. contact_list

In a contact center scenario, the conversation with this party may be part of a larger effort of contacting a group of parties, individually or perhaps in groups. It is sometimes useful to reference the list from which this party was included. The contact_list may be used as a label for foreign key reference to the contact list that this party was on.¶

• contact_list "String" (optional)¶

3.2.1. campaign

In a contact center scenario, a dialog may be initiated as part of a campaign or set of dialogs initiated with a common goal or focus or to be handled or treated in a specific way. The campaign parameter is string that may be used as a label or foreign key in reference to an external specification for how the communication is to be initiated, handled or treated. In some case it may be appropriate to attached the campaign data as an Attachment Object.¶

• campaign: "String" (optional)¶

3.2.2. interaction_type

• interaction_type "String" (optional)¶

TODO: add enumerated values from JDR¶

3.2.3. interaction_id

TODO: Is this different from RFC7989 session ID (session_id in core)?¶

In a contact center scenario, interactions with a party are often labeled with an identifier. In some case the interaction is contained in a single dialog. In others there may be multiple dialogs (e.g. messages or calls) that are all part of a single interaction. There may also be many interactions for a single conversation or vCon. The interaction parameter is used as a label or foreign key in reference to the interaction ID.¶

• interaction_id "String" (optional)¶

3.2.4. skill

A contact center may service multiple purposes or customers. In this scenario it is important to label the conversation segment or dialog. The agent or automata which services the dialog are required to have a specific skill. To facilitate this in a vCon dialog, the skill parameter is provided. The string values of the skill parameter are contact center specific.¶

• skill "String" (optional)¶

5.1.1. vCon Extensions Names Registry

The following extension name is added to the vCon Extensions Names Registry.¶

5.1.2. Parties Object Parameter Names Registry

The following defines additional values for the vCon Parties Object Parameter Names Registry.¶

5.1.3. Dialog Object Parameter Names Registry

The following defines the initial values for the vCon Dialog Object Parameter Names Registry.¶

6.1.1. Recording

Call Recording applications receive call recordings from the core, and then provide long term storage, playback, and search functionality. Recording storage is needed for archival purposes, and is often a requirement to meet compliance regulations in certain industries.¶

6.1.2. Quality Management (QM)

Quality Management (QM) applications are used by contact center managers to make sure agents are following guidelines on proper handling of calls. Many consumers are familiar with the greeting played in voice response systems which say, "This call may be monitored for quality and training purposes". That greeting refers specifically to QM applications.¶

QM applications allow a user - an employee in the quality management group typically - to playback recordings for a particular agent, and then based on that recording, rate them on how they performed. These ratings are made against a questionnaire that defines the rubric against which agents are scored. This rubric will often include questions like, "Did the agent thank the customer for calling and ask them how they can help"? Or, "Did the agent upsell the customer on the newest product?". These scorecards are then shared with the agents and their managers (the supervisors), along with coaching and training materials to handle cases where the agent didn't do well. Originally, scoring was done entirely by humans, and as a consequence, only a handful of calls for each agent could possibly be scored. These were often done by sampling calls at random.¶

It is also common for QM applications to use speech recognition technology to transcribe calls into text. This allows a call to be scored more quickly, and enables search functions for selection of specific calls that would be good candidates for scoring.¶

A part of the agent role involves usage of corporate applications, such as ordering, billing, shipping, to handle the customer inquiry. To determine whether agents are using these tools correctly, it is common in the contact center for agents to have desktop recording applications installed. These record the screen content as a video file. Typically, the vendor of the QM software provides the desktop screen recording and backend applications which receive and store the recording. These are then combined with the audio, email, or chat recordings that come from the core. The following shows the flow of recordings in this use case:¶

+--------+
|Customer|
+--------+
    ^ Real Time
    | Voice
    |
    V    Recording                    +--------+
  +----+ Transfer   +----+  Access    |Quality |
  |Core+----------->| QM +----------->|Manager |
  +----+            +----+            +--------+
    ^ Real Time       ^
    | Voice           |
    |                 | Desktop
    V                 | Recording
+-------+             |
| Agent |-------------+
+-------+

In this flow, the customer calls into the contact center, and is connected to the core. Typically this is done through the Session Initial Protocol (SIP) [RFC3261] and the Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP) [RFC3550]. The call is delivered to the agent, also typically using SIP and RTP. The core will record the call, and then at the end of the call, the recording is transferred to the QM system. During the call, the agent desktop is recorded, and this recording is transferred to the QM system. At a later time, the Quality Manager can log into the QM application, and access the recording, inclusive of the audio, the transcript and the desktop recording.¶

In practice, there are many variations on this basic exchange. Sometimes, the ACD sends the audio portion of the call to the QM system using real-time streaming, sometimes using SIPREC [RFC7866]. This is then augmented with meta-data using proprietary REST APIs. In other cases, the audio is sent post-call, and similarly, meta-data is obtained using proprietary REST APIs. When transcription takes place, it is most often done by the QM system but not always. In some cases, a transcript is sent from the core to the QM system instead of, or in addition to, the audio recording.¶

In a similar way, the transfer of the desktop recording from the agent's computer to the QM system can happen in real-time or post-call. Post-call systems will often upload the recording in chunks, sometimes doing so after hours or when the agent is not on a call.¶

A key considering for this use case is the concept of recording stitching.¶

In a typical call in the contact center, there are multiple segments, each of which represents a phase of the call. There will be a segment that contains the customer's interaction with the voice response system, where no agents were present. When the customer is connected to an agent, there will be a segment representing the portion of the call where the customer talks to the agent. As the call is conferenced, transferred or held, each corresponds to an additional segment.¶

The process of assembling together these segments into a complete recording is referred to as stitching. Different stitches are needed depending on the use case. In a QM use case, the quality manager is rating the agent, and thus what matters is the call as seen by that agent. In the case where a call was handled by multiple agents (a common use case in the contact center), a single call would result in two separate stitched recordings - one representing the customer's time with the first agent, and the second with the second agent. This is different than recording use cases as described above, where what matters is the entire call as seen by the customer.¶

6.1.3. Speech Analytics

Speech analytics applications provide graphs and dashboards on the content of conversations. For voice calls, this includes metrics like cross-talk, silence durations, and anger, which are computed directly from the voice. Voice calls are often transcribed to text, and further analysis is provided on the text. This might include customer sentiment, frequency of common reasons for call, and so on. These tools will also often provide discovery features, such as word clouds and clustering.¶

Speech analytics tools are often used to help companies decide which calls should be reviewed for quality management. This is an improvement over pure random based sampling. They are also used to help companies improve their processes in the contact center, identifying areas where agents are inefficient. For example, speech analytics can be used to determine that there has been a spike in customer refund requests, and the agents are taking too long to handle these types of calls.¶

Architecturally, speech analytics look a lot like recording. At the end of the call, a transcript is sent from the core platform to the speech analytics platform for processing. Meta-data is then fetched.¶