At a Glance
Intelligent routing for all media channels
Use data from 3rd party CRMs or ERPs to inform decisions
Show a friendly face by connecting customers to agents they already know
Select the most suitable, best-skilled agent for each call
Balance agents across all lines of business to maintain optimum service levels
The Impact Of Optimised Inbound Routing
To ensure that a contact center runs at peak efficiency, and customers are delighted by the service they receive, inbound contact sessions must be connected to the right agent at the right time. A contact center solution must ensure that:
- incoming sessions of all types (phone call, chat, email, etc) are routed and delivered to agents in accordance with business priorities
- the most suitable agent is identified for each session
- if the caller doesn’t want to wait, they should have the option to contact through an alternative method or request a callback.
With Sytel’s Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) platform, the route for an inbound session can be influenced and may change during the session’s lifecycle.
Needless to say they’ve noticed the difference and have reflected this in the immensely improved feedback they’ve provided.
Sophisticated routing decisions
When a session (voice, chat, SMS or other) enters the contact center, decisions must be made about what to do with it. SCC offers flexibility in all these decisions.
They can be made based on:
- Source - where this session originated; for example, the CLI/CID of a phone call, the ‘from’ address of an email, or a unique identifier for a text session
- Destination - where the session was directed; for example, phone number, chat/email ‘to’ address
- Self-service selection – e.g. the customer pressing ‘0’ for Reception, saying ‘Account balance’, or entering their ID number. For a more in-depth look at SCC’s auto-response capabilities visit IVR, Conversational AI and Chatbots.
- 3rd party software/ web service response – a list of possible agents/ queues is presented to an external process, which returns a selected agent/ queue.
This video shows how these factors can be used to influence routing decisions in a dynamic workforce management environment.
Profiling a customer session
The combination of source and destination, or any entered ID, can be used as a reference for querying other data sources such as a CRM and SCC’s own contact history for that customer. This creates an effective profile for the customer.
Choosing the right queue
This customer profile information can be used by SCC to route the session to the most appropriate queue, and to manage its relative priority.
Once the session arrives at its destination queue, instead of just playing hold music, an in-queue bot can serve directed messaging and offer additional options to a waiting session, such as offering a callback if the caller has arrived in a queue that is particularly busy, or leaving a message with an agent familiar with the customer case.
Assigning a ‘preferred’ agent
To provide a more familiar and personal customer experience, it may be desirable to connect a customer to an agent they have previously spoken to. SCC’s ASD (Automatic Session Distributor) can utilise the customer profile information to direct the session to this preferred agent.
If the preferred agent is not available within a specified time, the ASD will choose the best-skilled agent from those serving the queue.
To illustrate, this diagram shows the flow of a typical contact session, of any media channel
We are very happy with how our reputation for excellent customer service has sky rocketed in the past few months.
Assigning a ‘best-skilled’ agent
To ensure optimal handling of each session, the customer profile information for the session may contain skill requirements such as proficiency in customer service, spoken language skills or specialist product skills, and the level of each skill requirement which may vary for each session.
Similarly, agents may have a variety of skills, and they may be better at some than others. The skill requirements, skills and their respective levels are all known to SCC. By comparing the skill requirements for each session and the skills of each agent, the most suitable agent can be identified for each session. This is known as skills-based routing.
Time also plays a part in the selection process. If a customer does not have an ideal skills match in the agent pool, then the ASD can do a best match to ensure that the session doesn’t get held up in the queue.
Prioritising sessions in real-time
Sytel’s ASD automatically meets inbound demand and provides the best possible customer service across all queues. It load-balances and blends inbound and outbound workload across all media channels. By setting a service level target against each queue, the relative priority of all sessions in all queues can be determined in real time. The ASD can then distribute sessions to agents according to this priority.
See also …
Skills-Based Routing
Choosing the best agent for the session
Preferred Routing
Connecting to an agent with a previous successful relationship with the customer
Softdial Pathfinder™
Simple building blocks to allow the development of any kind of routing rules, for any media, for realtime deployment
Advanced Routing
Highly complex rules and conditions to be applied to session flow for all media channels
Advanced Routing Examples
Five use case examples showing how Pathfinder may be used to optimise the customer experience
Explore more of SCC’s capabilities:
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