Mindful is the Medallia product family for contact centres that removes hold time through intelligent callback and collects post-interaction feedback. Medallia’s product page describes it as an intelligent callback solution that gives customers the option of being called back instead of waiting on hold, and says that Mindful is platform-agnostic, working with legacy on-premises systems and with cloud contact centre platforms.[13] For licensing, two models stand out in the documentation. On-premises Callback, whose documentation still carries the VHT and Virtual Hold Technology names, is licensed by licence file and behaves like a concurrent-use product. Mindful Feedback, a survey capability, is licensed per user per month with a pooled usage allowance.
Editions
Medallia does not publish edition names for these products. The documentation instead distinguishes platform features, which are enabled for an entire system, from licence features, which are purchased separately and enabled for selected queue groups. The features named in the documentation include Conversation Bridge, Enterprise Pulse, Agent Assist, Outreach, ASAP Callback and the VXML Interaction Server (VIS), with the note that the list is not exhaustive.[3] Purchases of platform and licence features go through a VHT representative. Catalog rows: Mindful Callback and Mindful Feedback.
Metrics
Voice licences
Voice licences are first set as inbound or outbound and then allocated to queue groups.[2] Each inbound or outbound interaction “checks out a voice license for the duration of the corresponding voice treatment” and then the licence is released, so calls continue to process as long as a licence of the right type is available.[1] The documentation gives these operating figures: inbound calls occupy a licence for an average of 90 seconds and outbound calls for an average of 50 seconds. As a safeguard, a licence that is not released is released automatically after 15 minutes for inbound and 5 minutes for outbound.[1] Catalog rows: Inbound voice licence and Outbound voice licence.
If no configuration exists, voice licences default to 70 percent inbound and 30 percent outbound.[2] Licences can also be purchased “with only outbound capabilities”. Such outbound-only licences are added to the licences allocated as outbound: with 150 outbound-only licences and 300 licences designated outbound, the outbound total is 450.[2]
API bandwidth
When the licence file contains an API Bandwidth section, the Licensing application displays an API Bandwidth Allocation screen. The metric is “the maximum number of API requests that can be successfully made during the specified time period (default is 15 minutes).”[5] The documentation’s example is a company that has bought 1,000 Conversation Bridge requests per 15 minutes and gives 200 requests to each of four queue groups, leaving 200 in the Global Pool.[5] Catalog row: API bandwidth.
Feature licences
Platform features apply to the whole system. Licence features “can be purchased and enabled on a per queue group basis.”[3] Catalog row: License feature enablement.
Licensed user in Mindful Feedback
Mindful Feedback uses services that accrue costs with use, such as survey channels. Each licensed user receives draw-down funds “equal to 7% of the contracted monthly per-user license cost.” The allowance is pooled across all users, and the documentation gives an example: ten users billed at $16 per user per month can spend $11.20 in total.[10] The usage need not be tied to a user, as with surveys started by API.[10] The License Usage page shows historical and current usage by cost, units added or funds added.[10] Catalog row: Licensed user (Mindful Feedback).
Usage reporting units
The Mindful dashboards report volumes using their own units. Callback Usage reports Callback Requests, Total Calls, Unique Customers and Repeat Customers, noting that retries count as separate calls.[12] Messaging Usage defines a messaging conversation as one “initiated by an incoming message from a customer and defined as 20 or fewer messages sent/received between your organization and the customer within a 24-hour period,” with the 24-hour clock resetting on the 21st message.[11] These are reporting definitions. The documentation does not state that they are billing units, so confirm in the Order which of them, if any, are metered.
Counting / floors
Enterprise Licensing
An entitlement called Enterprise Licensing changes the voice model. If a customer is entitled for it, “inbound and outbound voice have a Capacity of unlimited.” Usage caps can still be set by entering an integer for inbound, outbound or both.[1][2] Catalog row: Enterprise Licensing.
Queue groups and the Global Pool
Queue groups “partition licenses” among related business functions. A queue belongs to at most one queue group, and queues not assigned to a group draw from the Global Pool.[6] Deleting a queue group moves its feature enablements, voice allocations and API bandwidth allocations to the Global Group.[6] The documentation’s worked example has a company with 600 voice licences, split 300 inbound and 300 outbound, allocated to named queue groups with 50 inbound and 50 outbound left in the Global Pool.[2] “License maximums are enforced on a per queue group basis,” so one group can exhaust its licences while another has spare capacity.[2]
Floors and behaviour at the limit
- For every queue group, “allocation of one or more inbound licenses requires allocation of at least one outbound license.”[2]
- When all inbound licences of a group are in use, inbound calls are diverted to the hold queue until a licence becomes available. Outbound calls are retried and not launched until an outbound licence is available.[2] The product therefore degrades rather than failing over to unlicensed use.
- Feature licences must be at least equal to the total voice licences of the queue groups they are enabled for, and when the feature licence count is greater than or equal to the number of voice licences, including outbound-only licences, the feature becomes a platform feature for the whole system.[3] The documentation’s example shows a company that cannot enable Agent Assist for two groups together because it has 250 Agent Assist licences but would assign 350.[3]
- Outreach requires a valid Callback licence to function and is provisioned to queue groups in the Licensing application.[9]
Scaling mode
When a licence file with fewer licences than the previous one is applied, the application enters scaling mode and proportionately reduces allocations. Voice allocation decreases are resolved to a percentage and applied to all groups including the Global Group, rounded down, with the sum of the remainders returned to the Global Group. When a larger licence file is applied, the surplus is added to the Global Pool and group allocations remain unchanged.[4] The same applies to API bandwidth. For an asset manager this means that a renewal at a lower quantity silently shrinks every business unit’s allocation until an administrator re-allocates and saves.
Virtualization & partitioning
Each licence file “is unique to Core instance in the system” and must be copied to the Core instance indicated by the MAC address within the file. After installation, the License Manager checks for a licence file every minute, and if several files exist the most recently modified one is used.[7] Standby Core instances detect and use the new file when they become active, so a failover design needs the right licence file on each Core instance. The documentation does not address virtual machine cloning or MAC address changes, which a reviewer of a virtualized deployment should raise with Medallia.
Licence expiry is monitored. The system alerts in the user interface and by email when a licence file approaches expiration or has expired. By default the UI alerts at 30, 60 and 90 days, and email notifications are sent at 1, 7, 30, 60 and 90 days before expiry.[8] Catalog row: Callback licence expiry alerts.
Cloud / BYOL
The documentation for on-premises Callback describes customer-hosted Core instances, while Mindful Feedback is operated as an online service with a Licence Usage page. There is no bring-your-own-licence programme. Medallia GovCloud does not list Mindful among its certified products in the sources reviewed here, so federal use should be confirmed.
Programs
Two programmes appear in the documentation: Enterprise Licensing for Callback voice capacity, and the per-user usage allocation for Mindful Feedback. Both are catalogued as programmes with rows Enterprise Licensing and Mindful Feedback per-user usage allocation.
Out of scope
- Prices. Medallia publishes no voice licence price or per-user rate except the illustrative $16 per user in the documentation example.
- Licence file format and signing. The documentation describes installation but not the file content.
- Contract terms. General terms are in the Master Subscription Agreement and Concierge terms.
- Cloud Mindful Callback pricing. The sources reviewed describe on-premises licence files only.