Callback Planner
The Callback Planner schedules callback appointments in your own calendar for you. Useful for when you're unavailable to take on calls right now.
Last updated
The Callback Planner schedules callback appointments in your own calendar for you. Useful for when you're unavailable to take on calls right now.
Last updated
Read this if you have Smart Apps in use that have been ordered before 21 october 2024. New Smart Apps documentation can be found within the Marketplace.
Can't answer the phone during peak moments? Or are you contacted outside of your service hours? Have the Callback Planner offer your customers some convenience by making it easy for them to plan a callback appointment.
This way callers don't need to wait in the queue or remind themselves to call back sometime later.
The Callback planner will try to find the right date and time together with the customer. You can configure the planner to either directly offer one or multiple suggestions, or even ask the customer directly for a desired date and time.
The user can either confirm or decline. When the user declines, the bot will find the next possible slot. When users ask for a specific alternative, the bot will try to find the best possible option that corresponds to the request. In the below example, the bot found the next available slot that comes closest to the question to be Monday at 10:00:
After finding the right point in time for the callback appointment, the planner will ask the customer for their name, phone number, and reason for the call.
When finishing the conversation, the bot will create a Todo item with the registered details in the Today view within the Inbox for a human agent to handle.
The Bot App is plug and play. It does however need to know when it can plan appointments. To do this we will hook up a planner for the bot. The planner is a view across one or multiple calendars (e.g. different colleagues or departments). But it is also fine to just use a single calendar for the planner.
Let's configure our first calendar and planner.
Go to 'Settings', and then 'Calendars'
From there, click on 'Add calendar', name your first calendar and hit 'Save'.
Now that we have a calendar we can link it to a planner.
In the left sidebar, go to Planning.
Then via the planner selector in the top left, click 'Add new planner'
Provide a name, configure the limits and choose between a free/busy or a slots planner, then click 'Save'.
Free/busy or Slots?
The Free/busy planner attempts to find gaps in the calendar that haven't been filled yet. As a result, events will not overlap. Free/busy can work with multiple calendars to find the first one that has an open spot. The Slots planner tries to find slots that haven't been completely filled yet, and plans an event that matches the starting and ending time of the slot. Events will overlap if the capacity is greater than one.
Both planners require availability slots
To plan appointments, both the free/busy and the slots planner require you to create slots upfront.
When creating slots in the free/busy planner, you can think of these slots as your opening hours. Appointments can be scheduled anywhere in these slots, as long as they do not overlap or exceed the capacity limit. The bot cannot plan events outside of these availability windows.
The slots planner can create as many appointments in the same slot as the capacity limit allows. These appointments all have the starting time their chosen slot.
You can create a slot by selecting and dragging a time window on the planner.
You will then be shown a modal where you can set up the recurrence of the slot, and the maximum capacity.
This Bot App comprises three Flow files:
Playbook, to start the conversation
Appointment, to make the appointment
Details, to capture the details for the appointment
The Playbook and the Details flows use common Flow nodes which you can read all about in the here.
The Appointment flow is specific for this Bot App and introduces a new Flow Node type called "Planner - Plan". It is introduced by the Planner skill.
The Plan node is responsible for having the dialog with the user to elicit the right date and time to make the appointment.
Once the date and time are selected, the plan node will fire the Details flow for gathering the details needed to making the callback appointment, which are in this case asking for the name, the phone number and the reason for the call:
When the details flow is finished, the appointment will be planned in the calendar of this bot. Inbox users will be able to find the Callback appointments in the Today view of the inbox.
This bot is composed out of the following skills. Click on the skill to read the details.
