A routing strategy that matches an incoming contact with the best-placed agent is at the core of every service operation.
Get this right, and customer experience, agent engagement, and business outcomes blossom. It’s quite a value proposition, and CX vendors have long recognized this.
As such, they have continually designed new strategies to evolve standard routing practices.
Where It All Began
First came hunt groups. These offered direct lines to various business units. The first call went to the first person on a particular department’s list, the second to the next, and so on.
Then, there was least-idle routing, where the next call flowed through to the agent waiting the longest. Refreshed, many would consider that agent best-placed.
Yet, are they? What if the customer speaks another language, has a question outside of their training, or has previously dealt with another agent?
That is where skill-based routing entered the fray. With this, the contact centers can develop their own routing strategies based on business rules.
Typically, these rules center on agent skills and customer demographic data. Examples include:
- Routing high-value customers to specialist agents
- Routing unhappy customers to the most empathetic agents
- Routing customers to an agent that speaks their first language
For years, service teams have developed their own rules and embraced this as the best approach to customer routing.
Yet, as digital channels come to the fore, more innovative vendors have started to push the boundaries further, taking the technology to the next level.
Routing In New Omnichannel World
While skills-based routing has many advantages, it has become increasingly difficult for modern service operations to route contacts quickly and efficiently.
After all, service leaders apply more rules to their routing strategy as the number of channels they implement increase. As a result, agent segments shrink and timely routing suffers.
Of course, contact centers could reassess and reduce business rules. Nonetheless, that may negatively affect customer conversations.
Enter intelligent routing. This approach allows contact centers to configure routing, queuing, and omnichannel workflows themselves – with the addition of AI.
Meanwhile, the contact center may automate time-consuming business processes, driving efficiency across the organization.
What does this look like in practice? Consider Bob’s journey.
Meet Bob…
Bob’s tumble dryer has broken. Frustrated, he calls the contact center to schedule a repair.
When connected, Jane greets Bob, an agent he has spoken with before and is familiar with his account details.
Understanding Bob’s problem, Jane reports the problem in the CRM, which triggers an alert to the depot to send a new tumble dryer to Bob’s house.
At the same time, it also schedules an engineer – Ricky – to visit Bob on the same day the new tumble dryer arrives.
Next, Ricky fits the new tumble dryer, makes sure Bob is happy and gives him a QR code to complete a survey on his smartphone – with the results funneling back to the CRM.
Once there, Bob receives an automated SMS notifying him that his case is complete. These texts pop up at each touchpoint, providing real-time updates and reassuring Bob that all is going to plan.
Such an example highlights how intelligent routing combines the best attributes of skill-based routing with configured workflows to drive efficiency across the service operation.
Meanwhile, it enhances the agent experience, keeps customers in the loop, and lowers the burden of the experience across the entire business.
Welcome to the Future
The latest thinking on customer routing goes beyond connecting each customer to the best-placed agent to handle their query.
Instead, the objective is to make it the first step of an intelligent contact center workflow.
Many vendors aspire to make this vision a reality for clients, offering them routing tools, channels, and integrations in a single platform that embeds flexibility into the contact handling process.
Such flexibility is mission-critical to adapt to the flow of customer behavior, enhance satisfaction, and ensure significant cost savings.
