Calling Lists

A calling list is a collection of contact records that Personal Connection (PC) attempts to reach through Proactive Voice, agentless Proactive SMS, or agentless Proactive Email. You can create and upload a calling list manually, or you can work with your NICE CXone account manager and Professional Services to enable Proactive XS. Proactive XS uses Studio scripts to automatically pull contact information from your CRM. After PC dial calls or send texts or emails to those contacts, Proactive XS checks the contacts back into the CRM with the interactions and interaction attempts recorded.

Regular maintenance of calling lists helps to keep your organization within the retention threshold. You should be aware of storage-related aspects of calling lists, such as the fact that your environment is limited to no more than 30 days of inventory storage or 1,000,000 total records (whichever is less), and that CXone permanently removes a calling list 10 days after you delete it. You can set automatic processes to delete or expire outdated calling lists to help manage storage space, which is described on the Manage Calling Lists page.

Mr. Darcy set up the PCPhoneCollections Proactive Voice skill and the PCEmailCollections Proactive Email skill to collect late payments for Classics, Inc. He compiled a list of all customers who have been billed in the last 6 months and placed them in a calling list he created in Notepad. Each row in the calling list includes the unique external ID, first and last name, home phone number, amount owed, cell phone number, email address, and time zone of the customer. In CXone, Mr. Darcy creates custom fields for the cell phone numbers, email addresses, and the amounts owed. He then uploads the calling list, assigning it to his the PCPhoneCollections skill. He verifies the automatic field mapping is correct and completes the calling list processing.

When the calling list upload completes successfully, Mr. Darcy opens the PCPhoneCollections skill to configure the filter and sort parameters. He creates a filter that only dials records where the amount owed is greater than 0. He then sorts the column in descending order by amount owed so that customers who owe the most are dialed first, making Mr. Wickham the first customer to be called. Mr. Darcy then creates a dialing order, specifying that he would like the dialer to attempt to call the contact's home phone three times, the cell phone twice, and then send a text to the cell phone number before attempting to call the home phone number twice more. After that, the record is retired.

Mr. Darcy uploads the same calling list again and assigns it to the PCEmailCollections skill. He only maps the external ID, email address, and amount owed fields. He processes the calling list and then applies the same filter and sorting criteria to the list that he applied to the calling list for the PCPhoneCollections skill.

With his calling lists uploaded, filtered, and sorted, Mr. Darcy turns on the PCPhoneCollections and PCEmailCollections skills and the collection work for agents begins.

Each calling list has an audit history tab that displays a table of information about the creation and last modification of the calling list. You can see what was modified, when it was modified, and who did the modification. Audit history tables can become very large, so you can use search and filter tools to limit the display.

Calling List Time Zones

If your calling list covers an area covered by the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), Personal Connection uses the following process to determine the time zone for the record:

  1. If the time zone for all 3 fields (zip code, city and state, and phone number) match, that time zone is used for the record.
  2. If any of the 3 fields match to different time zones, PC compares the time zones for the zip code and phone number.

  3. If the time zones for the zip code and phone number are the same, that time zone is used for the record. If they are different and both the zip code and phone number are US-based or Canada-based, PC records both time zones and restricts calling to the hours during which both of the time zones are allowable.

    If Anne keeps her New York City phone number when she moves to Wichita, Kansas, her record will show two different time zones: Eastern Time (ET) for the phone number and Central Time (CT) for the zip code. If CXone is configured to have Eastern Time call between 9am and 9pm and Central Time to call between 9 AM and 9 PM, Anne’s record could only be dialed between 10 AM and 9 PM ET / 9 AM and 8 PM CT.

  4. If for some reason no time zone is found for the phone number (for example, if the area code is new and not yet added to the database), PC uses the time zone that matches the zip code.

For cases where a time zone cannot be automatically matched, such as for records outside of the NANP, you can specify whether to apply a default time zone or reject the record, or specify a time zone manually. You can also set the allowable time range for all phone numbers in the record.

Bo Peep has a calling list with records from the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Her records from the United States and Canada are processed without issue, but the records from Mexico produce a "Time zone not found" error. Mexico's records were rejected because the leading digits are +52 and are not part of the NANP. Bo needs to single out the records from Mexico and specify a time zone manually in each record.

For the next calling list, Bo can specify a time zone for records in the data source when necessary to prevent this issue in the future.

Key Facts About Calling Lists

  • You can upload up to 1,000,000 leads per batch. The CXone system can keep up to 1,000,000 total active records (both calling records and do not call records) at once. If your upload passes these thresholds, your upload will fail and return an error message.

  • You can filter and sort calling lists so the dialer only calls certain records and prioritizes them based on the fields you consider most important.
  • CXone strips the formatting from phone numbers in calling lists and stores the phone numbers in a universal format. This allows phone numbers to pass between calling lists and do not call lists without conflict.
  • Calling lists can be simple or detailed, but you must at least include an external ID and one phone number for Proactive Voice and Proactive SMS skills, or an external ID and an email address for Proactive Email skills.
  • You can use the same calling list to both call and text contacts, but you can't use the same list for phone contacts and email contacts. As an alternative, you can upload the same calling list twice to use one for phone interactions and another for email interactions.
  • When you update an existing calling list, you must first stop the skill and then restart the skill after you complete the update.
  • When you upload a calling list, the columns in the list automatically map to CXone fields. This includes system fields and custom fields you created. You have the opportunity to fix any incorrect mappings before the upload starts.
  • You can assign multiple phone numbers for each record and create a dialing order based on the phone number type. For example, you can have the dialer call the home number three times, send a text message, and then dial the work number twice. Because system phone number fields are limited, you support additional phone numbers using custom fields.
  • Your environment is limited to 30 days of inventory storage or 1,000,000 total records, whichever is less. Remember to deactivate or delete your old and unused calling lists. You can make this task easier by automating the process in your tenantClosed High-level organizational grouping used to manage technical support, billing, and global settings for your CXone environment settings.

  • Calling lists support all languages that UTF-8 encoding supports, including languages that uses non-Latin-based characters. Calling lists musts be formatted with UTF-8 encoding.

  • When viewing a Calling List, the Contact Count equals the Total Records Loaded. This includes the Finalized Count, Fresh Count, and Retries Count. The Outbound Skill Control Table provides more detail on the List Inventory numbers.