Talkdesk Live™ and Talkdesk Explore™ are using a New Data Model which increases your visibility into several metrics by presenting data related to Contacts, thus providing more detail than the Calls/Interactions paradigm of the old data model.
Below you can find an overview of how the metrics used in the New Data Model (Talkdesk Live, and Contacts Historical Reporting in Explore) differ from the old data model and how you can best leverage the New Data Model for your organization.
What is a Contact, in the context of the New Data Model?
To learn more about this and other New Data Model definitions, please visit the Talkdesk Live FAQ.
What are the major changes in the metrics brought by the New Data Model?
The New Data Model introduces and updates several metrics, such as:
- Inbound Contacts
Inbound contacts include all contacts that reach a queue, regardless of the contact’s final status (e.g., abandoned, short abandoned, answered). Many of the contact types below can be considered subsets of this definition.
- Abandoned Contacts
Abandoned contacts are inbound contacts where the caller disconnected after entering a queue but prior to getting connected to an agent. Calls that disconnect while ringing an agent also fall under this definition in the new model (the old model considered them missed calls). The rationale for this change is there’s no experiential difference between waiting in the queue and ringing from the customer’s perspective. In other words, it’s less valuable to treat these outcomes differently since the customer is ignorant of whether an agent is being rung.
- Pre-queue Abandons
Pre-queue abandons are contacts where the person who initiated the inbound contact disconnects prior to entering a queue. Calls that end during an IVR prompt count as pre-queue abandons. Note: For now, these are not included in Talkdesk Live. They’ll be accessible through the old reporting model during the transition.
When should I use the New Data Model metrics versus the old data model metrics?
Interactions (old data model): You should be using interaction-level data if you are interested in your customers’ experience in your contact center. For example:
- Analyzing wait time for customers;
- Estimating the likelihood of a transfer;
- Reviewing where and how long callers are put on hold;
- Reviewing the number of agents.
Contacts (New Data Model): You should be using contact-level data if you are analyzing agent-facing metrics. For example:
- Managing queues;
- Responsible for capacity planning;
- Creating and managing forecasts and schedules;
- Managing agents.
What is the update introduced in date filtering?
Whereas the old data model used the ending time of interaction events to determine which day calls would be counted towards, the New Contacts Data Model uses the beginning time of contacts to record activity. The advantages of this change include insight into the path that calls take, as well as visibility into when contacts arrive, rather than exit.
What are the benefits of the New Data Model in queues and ring groups?
To build a more actionable narrative of how calls are traveling through your organization, the new model now records queue-specific data at the contact level. This ensures that activities such as transfers don’t skew data by omitting routing behavior prior to the call’s final queue.
How are ring groups improved?
When an agent transfers a call to another ring group (queue), reporting will recognize that as an intentional change of queue rather than the flow’s attempt to widen the eligible agent pool to answer calls that are waiting. This treatment of contacts will provide a clearer picture of the incoming volume, as well as the total amount of time a caller waited before his call was answered.
Which ring groups are assigned to each contact?
By default, the Ring Group and the dial step are included in the first assignment.
How is the Service Level calculated in the New Data Model?
The new calculation method of Service Level percent is the number of contacts answered within your organization’s waiting time threshold. This value is configurable through Admin > Preferences as well as through numbers’ custom settings.
The New Data Model will calculate service level as follows:
[All contacts answered within threshold / (All inbound contacts - Short abandoned contacts)] x 100
Note: The Service Level only accounts positively Answered contacts within the predefined threshold (please refer to the article Configuring your Service Level). You should never attempt to measure agent-level dimensions using service level percentage as it would have no statistical significance.
What is the new metric Average Handle Time (AHT)?
Average handle time (AHT) is a new metric that measures how long an agent is occupied while handling a contact for a given queue. Individual values for handle time are a sum of a contact’s talk, hold, and ACW time. The expected use case for this metric is for staffing and forecasting.
What is the Reporting Step?
A specific component that allows customers to specify the ring group/queue for reporting, this way providing more flexibility on how the data is aggregated. The Reporting Step is configured in Studio, and it’s added to the flows at the stage where the Ring Group of the assignment needs to be re-defined for the remaining flow:
What is a Ring Attempt?
The Ring Attempt is each leg of the contact that tries to reach available agents to deliver the contact. Depending on the Agent, the Ring Attempts have three distinct outcomes that are closely related to the agent performance:
- Answered Ring Attempts: The agent answered the ring attempt and the contact was handled.
- Ignored Ring Attempts: The ring attempt rang to the agent for the total duration of the configured ring time, but the agent did not pick up.
- Rejected Ring Attempts: The agent explicitly clicked the reject button.
There are other Ring Attempt types that inform about the ring attempt outcome and that don’t impact Agents’ Answer Rate.
- Canceled Ring Attempts: The Canceled Ring Attempts are the ones where:
- The caller disconnected and the agent could not answer.
- In case of transfer, the transferring agent disconnected.
- In case of transfer, the contact person disconnected.
- Device Unavailable Ring Attempts: These are the attempts that the agent could not action because:
- Talkdesk Workspace was closed without actually logging out/off.
- There were network connectivity issues.
Notes:
- Please refer to this article for information on how to test the quality of your network connection.
- Please refer to this page for information on how to handle the error message "Experiencing network connectivity issues".
Additional Resources: