Campaigns
Your agent calls a list of contacts within the calling hours you set. Contact list, start check, retries, results and export.
With a campaign, your agent calls a list of contacts one after the other, for example for appointment reminders, callbacks about quotes or customer surveys. You upload the list as a CSV, set calling hours and start. bhomy dials within your hours, retries contacts it couldn't reach according to your rules and shows you the result for every contact.
Requirements
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Pro or Individual plan with no open invoice | Billing |
| A sender number that's allowed to make outbound calls: an imported number or one connected via SIP | Phone Number |
| An agent on this number, with a prompt for outbound conversations | Agent |
| A verified identity | Billing › Identity |
Creating a campaign
- Open Campaigns and click New campaign.
- Enter a Campaign name, such as "Appointment reminder October", and choose the Caller number. The agent of this number holds the conversations.
- Choose the Time zone and the Start: Right after the start or From a point in time.
- Set the Calling hours, for example with Weekdays 9 am to 6 pm. Up to 3 time windows per day are possible.
- Set the Gap between two calls, from 0 to 60 minutes.
- Under Advanced, you set up retries, see below.
- Upload the contact list as a CSV and confirm I may call these people.
- Click Create campaign. The campaign is ready as a Draft.
The contact list
The CSV file needs a phone_number column with every number in international format with a plus sign, such as +491701234567. Every other column becomes a variable that your agent uses in the conversation.
phone_number,first_name,appointment
+491701234567,Anna,Tuesday 10 am
+491609876543,Jonas,Wednesday 2 pm
The agent's prompt then contains, for example: "Hello {{first_name}}, I'm calling about your appointment on {{appointment}}." With Download template, you get a suitable file.
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Contacts per campaign | 1,000 |
Columns besides phone_number | 20 |
| Length of a column name | 40 characters |
| Length of a value | 500 characters |
When you upload, bhomy checks every row. The dashboard shows invalid rows with the reason and leaves them out, such as a number without a plus sign or a duplicate number. If your prompt uses a placeholder for which the file has no column, the dashboard warns you as well. You add more contacts later with Add contacts. Numbers that are already in the campaign are skipped.
Retries
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Attempts per contact | 1 to 3 |
| Gap until the next attempt | 60 minutes to 7 days |
| Call again on | No answer, Busy and Network error, optionally also Voicemail and Announcement |
Contacts who declined or answered, or whose number isn't in service, are never called again. If a request doesn't reach the phone network at all, it doesn't count as an attempt and costs nothing. bhomy retries it up to 3 times, 5 minutes apart.
Start check and start
Before the start, bhomy checks whether everything is ready: campaign access, subscription, identity, sender number, assigned agent, agent active, contact list, calling hours and quota. Every open item takes you to the right place with Fix. When all items are green, click Start.
While the campaign is running
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Pause | Ongoing calls end normally, new ones only start after resuming |
| Resume | The campaign continues dialling in the next calling hours |
| Add contacts | New contacts go to the end of the list |
| Cancel campaign | Waiting contacts are no longer called and are marked as skipped |
| Skip contact | In a contact's details, for example if the person doesn't want any more calls |
The figures Waiting, On a call, Done and Skipped update by themselves while the campaign is running and the page is open. New calls only start within the calling hours. A call that started before the end of a time window runs to the end. Contacts the campaign does not get to within a time window are called in the next one.
If bhomy runs into a problem, such as an open invoice or a sender number that's no longer allowed to call, the campaign pauses by itself and states the reason.
Results
| Result | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Conversation | A person answered, and the agent held the conversation |
| Voicemail | A voicemail answered |
| Announcement | A network announcement answered, such as "The person you are calling is not available" |
| Phone menu | A voice menu answered |
| Hung up | The person called hung up shortly after answering |
| No answer | It rang, but no one answered |
| Busy | The line was busy |
| Declined | The person called declined the call |
| Number not in service | The number isn't assigned |
| Network error | The call failed in the network |
| Blocked | Billing blocked the call, nothing was dialled |
In a contact's details, you see every attempt with a transcript and the variables from the list. With Export, you download all contacts with status, attempts, result, last attempt and duration as a CSV.
Costs
Campaign calls count like all outbound calls: an unanswered attempt counts as 1 minute, an answered call counts every started minute from the moment it's answered, including by a voicemail. If an imported number makes the call, the connection costs are added. Details under Subscription and billing.
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