Back-to-Back User Agent (Feature)

  • Article

The back-to-back user agent concept, added in Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API (UCMA) 3.0, is essential for call center/helpdesk applications. The back-to-back user agent acts as a bridge between an incoming customer call and one or more call center agents. The most important features of this concept, as implemented in UCMA 3.0 are the following.

  • Agents are anonymous.

    The customer communicates directly with the back-to-back user agent, not the call center agent, enabling the agent’s identity to be hidden from the caller.

  • The pairing between callers and agents is many-to-many.

    One customer can be served by multiple agents, or multiple customers can be served by a single agent.

  • A supervisor can monitor a conversation between a customer and an agent, and can “whisper” advice to the agent that is inaudible to the customer.

    Monitoring the conversation aids in quality control.