Email Channel

Owned by XCALLY Knowledge (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Apr 12, 2024 by Product Knowledge
8 min read

The Email Channel Section shows all the interactions managed by the Agents and coming from external Email Systems. 

The Email Channel allows you to define the Email Accounts that the Agents, belonging to specific Email Queues, will share and use to send and receive Email messages in the standard XCALLY Motion Omni Desktop Interface.

The XCALLY Motion Email Channel provides some ready-to-use interfaces towards mailing systems (like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and so on) but the System Administrator can very easily configure new ones. 

Email Benefits

The Customer and the Agent can exchange email messages (including files, emoticons, pictures and so on), reaping the following benefits:

  • the Customer can use market standard email systems

  • the Agent interaction happens inside the XCALLY Motion common environment

  • the Agent can manage several types of interactions at the same time

  • the interaction content is shared, easily retrieved and managed

  • all the Customers information is stored in the Contacts Manager 

Email session

Let's see how a typical email session looks like!

Let's see how it works when the Agents receive an e-mail from a customer and need to manage it.

 

Whenever customers interact with the Contact Center using an email system, the Agents belonging to the specific email channel queue will receive a notification on the Omni Desktop interface.

They can reject it and the request is passed to another Agent in the same queue (in this case Sales). 

The interaction starts when one agent  accepts it: all the others will be notified that the interaction has already been taken by somebody else.

If your Agent Desktop is running on MAC with OS High Sierra and using the Browser Safari, remember to enable the audio notifications in Safari in order to receive an audio alert for all incoming interactions

 

After accepting the notify of the incoming email request, a new email tab opens:

 

 

Remember that anytime you open a message, the full list of messages exchanged in the same interaction (thread) will be shown.

If the Agent is a CC or a BCC recipient, the message will display a notification like the following in the message header:

On the right side, every interaction presents contextual information that the agent can use (during the session or after it) to manage the interaction/customer with these tabs: Contact, Interaction and Customer Journey.

You can explore documentation about that on this page.

 

  1. DRAFT:  Replying or forwarding a mail message can be suspended and the message can be saved by the Agent as a draft copy and opened and finished later by the same Agent who saved it. In this case:

  • if the pencil icon is grey, it means that there is no draft message saved for this interaction

  • if the pencil icon is red, it means that there is a draft message saved previously (using the SAVE AS DRAFT button) and linked to this interaction. If you click on this button the draft will be reopened

  1. REPLY: When replying, the field TO  would be automatically filled with the email that has been used by the sender or, if different, with the email set as "reply to" by the sender. 

  2. REPLY TO ALL 

  3. FORWARD

  4. NOTE: The agent can also insert an internal note: explore here the documentation.

  5. DOWNLOAD the message (with or without its attachments)

  6. OTHER FEATURES:

  • The interaction can be tagged: explore here the documentation.

  • The Agent can set email Sub-status (where Pending is a default sub-status but many more can be added by the administrator).

  • The Agent can also set the email as unread (if this function has been enabled by the administrator) with Mark as unread.

  • The interaction can be simply Closed & Disposed.  You can explore documentation about dispositions on this page.

If the Agent replies or forwards it, the new-message form shows like the following:

The Agent can attach one or more files (each one must not exceed 15 MB size) clicking on the attach button.

Moreover it’s possible to add attachments in email with Drag and Drop feature

The Show original message switch (default=off) at the bottom of the panel allows the Agent to see the full list of messages exchanged in the same interaction

If the Transfer option is set by the administrator as possible, the Agent can also see this command in the menu in order to redirect the email message (you can click here to explore documentation about transfer).

 

The Agent can type the answer or use the canned answers to reply to the message, choose the mail format, attach files and Send it clicking on the button SEND

It is also possible to click on the down arrow of the Send button and choose one of the following options:

  • Send as and choose a Substatus (e.g. Pending or one of those made available by the Supervisor)

About Open Substatus: Pending (or any other customized sub-status of an open message) is set by the Agent in order to highlight a message: this status is automatically removed anytime the email has been replied by the customer

  • Send and Close

 

 

Message Draft

The Agent can also decide to suspend composing a message (a new one or one as Reply/Forward to a received message) and to continue later, clicking on the button SAVE AS DRAFT: doing this, the message is temporarily saved as its draft is linked to this interaction.

If the AUTOSAVE button is switched on, the system saves the draft automatically, every few seconds, as the Agent works.

Please note that:

  • each interaction allows only one draft message at a time to be saved. You can write as many messages you like but as soon as you try to save a draft, if there is already one for the same interaction, you will be notified that if you continue the old draft will be replaced by the new one;

  • when you compose a message you can save it as a draft as soon as the interaction is open: if the interaction has been closed since when you saved the draft (for example, by another agent) your draft will be deleted;

  • only the Agent that has saved a message as draft can see it, but some limitations apply:

    • the agent must access to the e-mail environment from the same browser used before

    • on the Agent workstation no local storage cancellation must be performed (otherwise all drafts will be deleted)

    • local draft saving is lost if the browser is closed.

 

All the messages that have been saved by the Agent will be shown minimized in boxes at the bottom of the Mail Interactions List:

They can be deleted by the Agent clicking on the X near the name of the draft.

In order to reopen a draft message and to continue composing and eventually sending it, just click on the box of the minimized draft you see at the bottom of the email interactions list

or open the interaction itself and click on the red pencil. When you open a draft message, the whole interaction will be opened as well.

 

The name of the draft message is shown as: "ACCOUNT KEY - TO"  or "ACCOUNT KEY -SUBJECT", in case the To field is empty. In case the fields To and Subject are both empty, the message is shown as "ACCOUNT KEY - Untitled". In the examples above, the Account Key is SERV for both drafts, followed by the destination address (for the first one) and the subject (for the second one). 

 

Send a new Email Message

To send a New Email Message, just click on the button +  you find in the right side of the Email Interactions List header, choose from the the proposed list one of the email Account you are configured to use and compose the message:

The operation is the same as described above (in the example of how to reply to a customer's e-mail).

Closing mail session

If the Agent closes the session clicking on the X sign in the session tab:

and confirm:

The interaction can be simply Closed or Closed & Disposed.  You can explore documentation about dispositions on this page.

Email Interactions

The list of the interactions managed by the Agents will be available on the Email Channel Interactions List:

If the email Subject is underlined when you hover over the text you'll see the first lines of the last message content, like in this example:

This function can be disabled by the Administrator.

The down/up arrows near the Last message field indicate if the last message was incoming or outgoing.

Messages sent as Auto-Reply or Secret Notes will not be considered as a Last Message

You can filter the interaction list by: Start Date, Read/Unread, Status (Open/Closed), Account (Me, Not Assigned, All), Agent (the first one who managed it), Tags (multiple choice).

Moreover you can search interactions by search button (click here for documentation) or you can use advanced search (click here to read relative documentation).

 

The interaction Status can be:

  • Open

  • Open - Sub-status (where Pending is a default sub-status but many more can be added by the administrator)

  • Closed (by an Agent)

  • Closed Unmanaged (the interaction request has not been managed)

There are two ways to set an interaction Sub-status (only if it is Open):

Sending the Message

click on the down arrow of the SEND button choose Send as and a Sub-status from the list:

Without sending the Message

click on 3 dots menu on the Message View, choose Set as and a Sub-status from the list

The Administrator can set new sub statuses.

If you see a small number near the contact name, like in the following picture:

it means that new interactions have been received (but not managed) in the same conversation.

  • Clicking on the Interaction row, the agent is able to see all the messages exchanged in the single session, as well as the right side bar information (contact, interaction, journey).

  • Clicking on the three dots menu, the agent can apply the following commands to the selected interaction:
    - Show the interaction contents
    - Download a pdf transcript of the interaction, with or without attachments (depending on Agent's permissions)
    - Close and (eventually) dispose the interaction.