Do Not Call Lists

Overview

The Symbee Connect Do Not Call List (DNC) functionality provides a means for you to associate and upload lists of phone numbers (Do Not Call Lists) to your Symbee Connect Company Environment and then enable the DNC feature at a user profile level so all attempts to make outbound calls by users are first checked against your configured DNC Lists.

You can have multiple active DNC Lists configured in a Symbee Connect Environment - for example, a list sourced from Federal, State or Local DNC bodies, as well as a list (or lists) specific to your company, of people asking not to be called. If the DNC feature is enabled for a user, prior to a requested outbound call being initiated, the phone number being called will be checked against all configured DNC lists, and if a match is found the user will receive a “denied” alert with the call not allowed to be made.

Do Not Call lists only apply to agents/users that have DNC enabled on their user profile

Blocking of outbound calls to matching phone numbers on your DNC lists only applies to user/agents that have Do Not Call Checking Enabled on their user profile (see Do Not Call Settings in the Voice Channel section of the user profile).

Adding DNC list entries, and the "Default List"

Note: All phone number entries in your DNC lists need to be in E.164 international notation format. That is, starting with a '+' (plus) sign followed by the international country dialing code (for example: +15552301250).

A phone number can be added to one of your configured DNC lists in three ways:

  1. A configured DNC list can be populated by uploading a flat file containing a list of phone numbers. The file can either be uploaded from the Do Not Call Lists screens within the Symbee Connect Administration Portal, or you can automate repopulation on a regular basis by uploading a file to the do not call intake S3 bucket. Upload files contain the list of phone numbers, each phone number on a separate line with no header line in the file. Each line must begin with the phone number. Each line may contain additional information in comma separated (CSV) format, but only the phone number (first column) will be loaded - any remaining columns in the file will be ignored.

  2. An administrator can add an ad-hoc phone number manually to an existing DNC list through the Do Not Call Lists screens within the Symbee Connect Administration Portal.

  3. A user/agent (optionally, if configured) can request the phone number of an active call be added to the DNC list. This is the use-case where a user/agent makes an outbound call to a customer and the customer indicates during that call that they don't want to be called ever again. If the Allow Do Not Call Additions setting is enabled on the user's' profile, the user can click the '+ DNC' button on the Symbee Connect User/Agent UI which will cause the phone number of the current call to be added to the Default DNC List.

In support of 3 above, exactly one of your DNC lists needs to be nominated as the Default DNC List. If the DNC Allow Do Not Call Additions setting is enabled on the user/agent profile, the Default List is where new ad-hoc entries requested by the agent (when talking with a customer) are added. Without a Default list, agent requests for DNC entries will not be added properly, leading to potential compliance issues.

Initial Do Not Call Set Up

To use Symbee Connect Do Not Call lists, you need to download an install the Do Not Call Lists CloudFormation in your AWS account. This is for security purposes, to ensure all your customer / do not call phone numbers always remain in your control in your AWS account. See the Do Not Call Lists Step by Step guide for details.


Administering Do Not Call Lists

DNC lists are configured within the Symbee Connect Administration Portal, with separation by Symbee Connect Environment. From the main Function menu in the top navigation bar, select Do Not Call Lists located under the Contact Center Configuration section.

On the Do Not Call Lists page, options are Modify List Attributes, Delete List and Add New List.

Add New List

Complete the following to create a new Do Not Call list:

Name

Name of the new list.

Description

A short description of the list.

Strictly enforced?

Do you want to have the list strictly enforce. Either are True or False.

Expiration period

The number of days after which an entry will be automatically removed from the list. Set to 0 or leave blank for no expiration. If provided, entries in the list will become inactive and automatically removed from the list after this period has elapsed.

Default list?

Sets this list to be the Default list. If True is selected, new entries added by Agents will be added to this list. Note: There can only be one Default list. Setting this to true will reset any other current Default list to False.

Address Type

There is on one option - Phone.

Delete List

Deleting a list removes the selected DNC list (or lists) including all their phone number entries. This action can not be undone.

Modify List Attributes

Selecting Modify List Attributes enables you to change the parameters and selections you defined (see above) when you created the selected list.

Maintaining Do Not Call List entries

To maintain phone number entries within a DNC list, click the List Name of the respective DNC list from the Do Not Call Lists screen.

In the resulting Manage Do Not Call List screen, use the Add Item To List action to add individual phone number entries to the list one at a time, or select existing entries and use the Delete Selected items action to remove them.

Use the Reload List From File action to replace the current contents of the list with the new data uploaded from a flat file. For further details about populating a Do Not Call list using a file, refer to the Create and Populate your first Do Not Call List section of the Do Not Call Step By Step Guide.

Configuring Users/Agents to use Do Not Call Lists

Note - the below steps detail how to enable Do Not Call checking for an individual user. Alternatively the same changes can be made at a User Template level and applied to your user groups in bulk.

  1. Log into the Symbee Connect Administration Portal.
  2. If you have more than one Environment configured within your Company in Symbee Connect, make sure you have the appropriate one selected. This can be found on the Navigation bar to the left of the Function menu.
  3. In the Symbee Connect Administration Portal, click on the main Function menu in the top navigation bar, and click on User Administration in the User Configuration section.
  4. From the Users list screen, choose the user you want to configure and click Modify.
  5. Go to Voice Channel and then click on Do Not Call Settings.


  6. For the setting Do Not Call Checking Enabled, click the checkbox (red above). This forces all outbound calls made by the user to first be validated against your Do Not Call Lists.
  7. If you also want to allow users the option to add the phone number of the currently connected caller they are speaking with to the Default Do Not Call list, you can click on the checkbox next to Allow Do Not Call Additions (blue above). This will add a “+ DNC” button to the user’s interface that is only visible when they are actively on a phone call, or during wrap of a phone call.
  8. Save the User profile by clicking Save at the top of the profile.


End User/Agent Do Not Call experience

The screen shot below shows the user/agent experience when an outbound call is attempted by the user to a phone number currently present in any one of your Do Not Call lists. Outbound calls are blocked regardless of how the call is initiated - whether from the New Outbound panel, the Call History tool, a Directory entry, a Preview/Progressive dial task click-to-call request, or as the result of a click-to-call request from a CRM.


The screen shot below shows how the configurable Add to DNC List option looks for the user/agent, if the Allow Do Not Call Additions option has been enabled on their user profile (see previous section).