Back-to-Back User Agent (Feature)
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.