Queue-Based Vs Skills-Based Routing

In our previous episode, we discussed whether Omni-Channel is the Next-Generation Live Agent. Now that we know the answer to that question, here is the second episode of our Salesforce Next-Generation Live Agent Series where we talk about the differences between queue-based routing and skills-based routing!

Learn How to Implement Live Agent

With Queue-based routing, agents frequently log into queues to process interactions, and the reporting is also centered around queues. Queue-based routing sends the customer request to a group of agents, making it much harder to service, manage, and report on interactions in any channel, let alone across all channels.

It’s also hard to blend or load balance agents across queues (and channels). Therefore, the customer interacts with a less competent agent, leading to lower NPS Scores, and a customer request is routed to multiple agents leading to confusion among agents as to who should be the owner.

Skill-based routing, in contrast, has many advantages as you can see in the image above.

With skills-based routing, each caller is routed with precision to the agent with the skills needed to respond to the customer’s particular issue. Instead of being served in the order of their arrival, calls are served by the agent that has the most appropriate skill set.

Agents go online where interactions are routed to agents based on skills, availability, capacity SLAs and other business rules to cost-effectively deliver the best experience for each customer. The routing can be flexibly configured to leverage additional contexts such as opportunity value, customer segmentation, customer profile, and history.

All work items across channels, including back-office interactions, now go through a routing engine matching the customer with the right agent. The work is automatically load-balanced across agents so the reporting on any KPIs is available.

What if we compare the productivity and the average call handling ratios of two routing models? BMI Research, which conducts the most credible call center surveys in the world, found out that there is a 98% first-call/chat resolution and a 25% gain in agent productivity after implementing skills-based routing.

Two key ingredients to realizing such gains are having (1) the right tools and (2) the right processes in place.

Salesforce offers a world-class skills-based routing tool where establishing a ‘zero to skills-based routing’ is easy. Below short video elaborates on how to implement skills-based routing on Salesforce. 

The harder part is establishing the process with which to build a sustainable agent competency mapping. In our next episode, we will talk about how we, as CyanGate, determine agent competencies for Fortune 500 companies.

Ready to learn how to determine agent skills and skill levels and build competency maps? Take a look at our next episode when it goes live!

Check out our native Live Agent Solution!

Visit Us at AppExchange