This article refers to Omni clients using release 26.x or higher.
Outcomes are usually an essential part of the agent workflow in the Omni interface. When the agent closes a call or conversation, they will see a list of available outcomes to select from.
As an Admin, you can define the outcomes that the agent selects from, what those outcomes are called, and what effect that has (if any) on the contact. These outcome will show in certain reports, and you can use them to monitor activity however you wish.
The outcomes can be created such that they are available to all projects (see Creating Global outcomes) or individual projects (see Outcomes: Creating and editing outcomes).
This approach to outcomes does not fit all workflows however, and Omni offers options, if you feel having agents click to select outcomes is not something you need.
Using a call outcome to close the conversation
The default behaviour, then, is that agents must record an outcome:
- At the end of every phone call.
- At the end of every conversation whether the conversation involved calls or messages (or both).
- This means, if the conversation starts and ends with one call, the agent will potentially need to select an outcome twice, once for the call, and then immediately select an outcome for the conversation too.
If many of your agents' customer service interactions look like, this, you can remove this redundancy by creating outcomes for calls which are also automatically applied to the conversation with no extra clicks.
When creating your outcome, with as a global outcome or a project specific outcome:
- Go to the Extra settings section of the outcome.
- Click to tick the checkbox for If call was ended with this outcome...
- Make any other changes to the outcome as needed.
If the agent clicks to select this outcome when choosing the outcome for a call, the outcome will also be applied to the conversation, and the conversation will close automatically.
This setting only does anything if the outcome is selected as the outcome of a call. If the agent selects this outcome for a conversation, it will behave like any other outcome.
Closing calls and conversations without selecting outcomes
If you decide you do not need your agents to record outcomes for conversations, you can set the project to not record an outcome, or to record the same outcome for all conversations.
When creating the customer service project:
- Go to the Outcomes section of the project settings.
- Click the Hide button to hide all Global outcomes.
- Delete any existing Project specific outcomes.
- Click to Hide the Busy outcome.
Note: you can keep as many unanswered call outcomes as you need.
- Optionally, you can leave one Global outcome unhidden, or one Project specific outcome available (not both). In this screenshot, a Project specific outcome called "No outcome" has been created and left active.
| If you do leave an outcome available, consider using the If call was ended with this outcome setting mentioned above for that outcome. |
- Click to tick the checkbox Automatically close the call if the project has no outcomes or only one outcome.
- Make any other changes needed to the project.
- Click the Save button.
Now when the agent ends the call, they will not be prompted to select an outcome.
This setting also applies to conversations, and while the agent will still need to click to the Close button to close a conversation, they will not be prompted for an outcome.
Unanswered calls
Normally, if the agent makes an outbound call and the call is unanswered, the conversation for that call is immediately closed. In some cases, you may want agents to follow up an unanswered call, perhaps by sending an SMS attached to the same conversation. To allow this:
- Click to tick If outbound call is unanswered, keep the conversation active.
One outcome or zero outcomes
There is a small difference in the behaviour if you left no active outcomes in your project or left only one.
If you leave the project with no active outcomes:
If you hide all global outcomes and have no project specific outcomes:
- The outcome will be shown in the history table and dashboards as -.
If you leave one outcome available in the project:
- All calls and conversations for this project will be assigned this outcome when they are closed, and will display as such in the history table and dashboards.