Overview: Interactions (App)

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This article provides an overview of interactions in App.

Overview

An interaction is a communication between a queue user and an external customer. The core functionality of Edify CX revolves around processing and routing interactions.

Interactions are created in queues. The settings of a queue drive how the interaction is set up for the queue user and the overall interaction experience including what happens when it’s first created, when it moves to wrap up status, and when it’s finally completed.

This article will go into the various states, directions, and communication types of interactions.

Interaction states

There are two overarching states for all interactions:

Active interaction in interaction workspace

Example of an active interaction

An active interaction is any interaction that hasn’t yet been marked as completed. Active interactions age as time goes on, and they contribute to your queue’s SLA (service level agreement) metrics. Active interactions can be claimed by a queue user. They can also be transferred to a variety of destinations like another queue user, another queue, or an external contact. Active interactions remain active until they’re officially completed. 

A completed interaction is any formerly active interaction that’s been marked as completed.

Completed interaction in the interaction workspace

Example of a completed interaction

Once completed, an interaction no longer contributes to your queue’s SLA metrics. You can view an interaction’s call recordings, audio transcriptions, chat transcriptions, dispositioning notes, feed activity, or coaching tools (if these features were enabled while the interaction was active) to get a sense of what happened during the interaction when it was active and how it went overall.

Another helpful feature of completed interactions is seeing who completed the interaction and when, so you can reach out to them to ask questions about the interaction as needed.

Although you can’t communicate with the customer on a completed interaction, you can clone a completed interaction to create a new, active interaction, so you can quickly reach back out to the customer to follow-up if needed.

Once completed, you can also edit various fields on an interaction, including:

Interaction directions

In addition to states (active or completed), interactions also have directions. There are two types of directions for an interaction:

Queue users may receive or claim inbound interactions in any queues they have access to. Users with appropriate permissions can create outbound interactions from Queue home.

Note that interaction directions are closely related to subcommunication types (described in the section below). The most important takeaway is to understand that interactions can either originate from an external source (inbound) or from within your account (outbound).

Interaction actions

While handling an interaction, there's a wide array of actions you can perform, including:

For more information, view our library of interaction documentation to learn more about how to handle interactions.

Communication types

Every interaction has a communication type. As its name suggests, the communication type of an interaction indicates how the queue user and the external customer communicate. The communication type of an interaction can change at any time. 

This means that the interaction could have been created as an inbound phone call interaction, but during the conversation the customer decided to continue the engagement over SMS texting. So, in this scenario, the interaction communication type moved from a phone call to a messaging interaction, specifically text messaging. This communication type change all happened in real time.

subcommunication type of an interaction in the Queue Home list

The communication type of an interaction can be viewed from the Queue Home list.

 The four communication types are:

In addition to these communication types, there are also subcommunication types. These provide even greater specificity into the kind of communication taking place between a queue user and an external customer. 

The list below shows each communication type with its associated subcommunication types.

Chat: A web chat interaction.

Text: An SMS interaction.

Voicemail: An interaction created when a customer leaves a voicemail on a queue.

Routing interactions

Admins with access to Console can route interactions to appropriate queues or users based on tags that can be assigned with workflows. 

To learn more about routing an interaction, see: Overview: Tag routing (Console).

Transferring an interaction

Interaction transfers allow you to send an interaction to any of the following types of destinations

You can initiate an interaction transfer at any time on an active interaction by clicking the Transfer button in the call controls of an interaction.

To learn more about transferring an interaction, see: Overview: Transferring interactions (App).

Ending an interaction

Ending an interaction closes it, with the queue user able to either mark it as resolved or unresolved. To learn more about ending an interaction, see: Overview: Ending interactions (App).

Visual breakdowns

Breakdown: Active interaction

All interactions include a details tab on the left side of the interaction. This is where you can see the customer’s information and the call control buttons. On the right side of the interaction, a menu of workspaces is available to you for toggling between different applications. The interaction tab along the top is where you can see quick details.

Active interaction in the interaction workspace with callouts

Note: Each queue can have a different configuration of small tabs. However, every interaction will show the Customer Details tab.

Note: Each queue can have a different configuration of Large tabs. 

Breakdown: Completed interaction

In a completed interaction, the customer details tab workspace allows you to edit interaction details and/or clone the interaction. The completed interaction also includes access to the coaching tab, which is where you see data about the interaction and the coaching tools for evaluating it. 

Refer to the labeled image below to learn more about the important features of a completed interaction.

Completed interaction in interaction workspace with callouts

Note: If you already have a direct message with the user your conversation will continue in that thread. 

Note: You can’t modify who completed an interaction or the activity associated with an interaction.

Note: This feature is not available to all users.