Creating contact lists for Omni

This article is part of the Implementing Omni series. The previous article is Creating an Office.

LeadDesk lets you upload a contact list file in either Excel or CSV format.

Using an existing file

The better the quality of the data in your file, the more useful it will be in LeadDesk. Check your file before trying to upload to make sure there are no obvious errors.

If possible, consider how your data will work in LeadDesk. For example, LeadDesk uses separate fields for first name and last name. If your file has a single Name field, you may want to split that data into two fields if you can.

That said, the names and order of the columns in your contact list file does not need to exactly copy LeadDesk's.  Part of the upload process lets you match fields from your file with the fields LeadDesk expects. For example, if your file has a field for Forename, you can match it to LeadDesk's First name.

Creating a new file

If you have no existing contact list file, and intend to build one for use in LeadDesk, it will be helpful to use the LeadDesk contact list template. Doing so will mean your columns exactly match when uploading the file.

To download a copy of the template, in your Admin account:

1. Go to the Contact Lists page.
2. Go to the Contact Lists subpage.

3. Click the  button.
4. Scroll down to the Import contact list section.

5. Click Download list template

This will download a copy of the LeadDesk contact list template. 

6. You can click the Cancel button at the top of the page.

Use the template to create your contact list file. Once your file is ready, you can upload it.

Uploading your contact list

Once you have your file ready for upload, in your Admin account:

1. Go to the Contact Lists page.
2. Go to the Contact Lists subpage.
3. Click the  button.

The Create contact list form is split into several sections.

Calling list details

First you must choose if you are creating a new contact list in LeadDesk or adding contacts to an existing list.

4. To upload a new list, choose Create contact list.
5. Name of the calling list. You will see this name wherever the list appears in LeadDesk. Type a name that will remind you what the list is for.
6. Legend. Lets you give more details about the list to further describe its use. The Legend only appears on the Contact List page and isn’t visible to agents.

The Office and Sponsor fields are not mandatory, but may be useful later on for filtering reports or in many places across Admin.

7. Click the Office dropdown list to select which office the list is associated with, if any.
8. Click the Sponsor dropdown list to select which sponsor the list is associated with, if any.

9. The field Contact list group lets you optionally create a label for your contact lists. If you have many different contact lists, these labels can be used when creating reports to collect data together from multiple contact lists with the same label.
10. Default call attempts determines how many times numbers in this list can be called. This is primarily useful for contact lists used in outbound situations, for Omni you can leave the default value.
11. Expiry date determines when the list stops being valid. If you are only using the Omni environment, you should put this date far into the future.
12. Calling time allows you to specify the times of day contacts on this list may be called. Optionally, specify an earliest time, a latest time, and which time zone these times are for.

Import contact list

13. Click the Choose File button.
14. Browse to find your file and click to select it.
15. Click the Open button.

Optional settings

For Omni environments, in most situations, you can leave the Optional settings alone. Keeping the automatic formatting for phone number and name will help match contacts when they call and makes message templates easier to handle.

The list order is generally not important in a customer service environment. If you do intend to manually browse the list, you may wish to tick the Keep list order option.

Finally, you could click to tick Create new project for the new list to create a project associated with the list when you upload it. To create the projects manually, leave this unticked.

Filtering

LeadDesk will also try to make the list more efficient, removing duplicate numbers from the list, and automatically removing numbers that are found in specified blacklists.

16. Remove duplicate numbers inside the list that you’re about to upload will keep duplicates if you untick it. If you are using outbound calling, this will result in the same number being called multiple times.
17. Remove numbers from your list if they are found from blacklist will keep contacts with blacklisted numbers on your contact list, if you untick it. When creating a contact list which will be exclusively used for inbound calls and messages, you may want to untick this option, so contacts will still be recognised when they contact you, even if blacklisted.
18. You can choose which blacklists the upload checks. Click to select a list or hold the Ctrl key and click to select multiple lists.

19. You may want to filter out contacts with no phone number, but for Omni your contact list may include contacts that only have an email address listed. Click to tick Add also contacts without phone number.
20. If you tick Filter out contacts that are already on selected contact lists, you can remove contacts from this list that are duplicated in one or more other contact lists. You can check for duplicates by either Phone number or VAT number.

Finalising the upload

When you are ready to complete the upload:

21. Click the Create button in the top right of the screen.

If you used the LeadDesk template for your upload, your contact list will be complete. If not, you will need to match fields.

Matching fields

LeadDesk will automatically match fields where it can, but where field names are not the same, you need to manually match them. In the above example:

• Drag the Surname field in the right-hand column to match it to the Last name field in the left.
• Whichever phone number you want to be primary should be dragged from the right to the Phone number field on the left. Other phone number fields can be matched to other fields on the left.
• The Title field on the left has been matched with Job title A better match would be the Title field on the right.

LeadDesk will remember the most recent matches for fields, so if you upload multiple similar files in a row, you should only need to match fields for the first file.

When the matching is complete, scroll down and click the Create contact list button at the bottom of the screen.

Example contact lists

The Example company has existing lists of its Gold service customers and a less complete list of its other customers. Their list of Gold service customers includes each customer’s membership number.

In LeadDesk they create:

• A contact list called “Gold service” and import that list, mapping their membership number field to Other info 2.
• Another contact list called “Other customers”, importing the original list.

The next step is Creating Projects for Omni.