Skills-based routing: What is it and how does it work?
Connect customers with the right agent at the right time with intelligent skills-based routing software.
Introduction to skills-based routing
What is skills-based routing?
Skills-based routing (or skills-based distribution) is a call routing strategy in which customers are assigned to agents with the most relevant skills, technical expertise, and language fluency to handle their concerns. For example, Spanish-speaking customers are sent to agents who can speak Spanish.
With this routing system, the customer won’t have to deal with agents who aren’t equipped with the skills required to assist them, reducing the chances of them being angry.
Why businesses need skills-based routing
Skills-based routing delivers a dual advantage: it creates better experiences for your customers while simultaneously optimizing your workforce operations. By intelligently matching customer needs with agent expertise, you address challenges on both sides of every interaction. Here are the most valuable benefits it can provide your company:
Benefits of skills-based routing
Connect customers to the right agent, the first time
The clearest benefit from skills-based routing is that customers get to the right agent the first time. No one wants to waste time or energy talking to an agent who can't help them. Being transferred multiple times or repeating information to different representatives creates frustration that erodes trust and loyalty. When customers feel like they're being bounced around without resolution, they're far more likely to abandon your brand entirely and seek out competitors who can address their needs efficiently.
Improve customer satisfaction
Skills-based routing ensures that customers are assisted by skilled agents who have the tools and training necessary to resolve concerns efficiently. Having a specialized team with specific skills will increase customer satisfaction (or CSAT levels) by ensuring that problems are addressed only by the most highly trained agents for the job.
Increase first-contact resolution
First-contact resolution is a common contact center metric that looks at the ability of an agent to resolve queries the first time a customer reaches out and without the need for a follow-up. With skills-based routing, interactions are distributed to contact center agents with relevant skill sets, increasing their chances of resolving concerns properly.
Reduce handle time
Skills-based routing can also improve the performance and productivity of your agents. Letting a specific agent handle queries that are more in line with their assigned skills can reduce their average time with customers. This allows them to assist more people more efficiently than ever before.
Higher customer retention
High customer satisfaction tends to lead to higher levels of customer retention, which measures how long customers stay. When customers know that they’ll be connected to a knowledgeable agent who can handle their problems quickly, they’re more likely to stick with you because they know they’ll have a better experience.
Higher agent productivity
Skills-based routing benefits agents and customers. One clear benefit is higher agent productivity. Agents won’t sit idle waiting for calls or other interactions to come in. Rather, they’ll work on customer issues based on their skill set, so there will be a stream of productive work that matches their abilities.
Increase agent satisfaction
Agents feel more confident when they handle interactions that match their skill sets, leading to reduced stress and turnover. Allowing them to specialize in particular areas can also be more rewarding than having to handle a broad range of interactions. Focusing on specific types of customer issues also builds competency.
Improve contact center efficiency
It’s inefficient for agents to hand off an interaction—handle time increases, which means that the interaction becomes more expensive. However, when an agent with the right skills and knowledge deals with the customer, there’s a higher chance of first-call resolution.
Additionally, skills-based routing shortens the time other customers have to wait to speak with an agent; agents with other skill sets are free to speak to customers.
Simpler contact center management
Because skills-based routing is a feature of contact center software, managers no longer have to worry about making sure that a particular agent handles a specific set of interactions. The software takes care of that automatically. Instead, managers can focus on improving performance, retaining agents, and otherwise driving value for the contact center.
How does skills-based routing work?
Let’s examine a basic call routing procedure and how you can set up your own routing rules. In this example, we will focus on voice calls, but keep in mind that the distribution process works in pretty much the same way in both traditional call centers and omnichannel contact centers.
The first step in the call routing process is the qualifying phase. During this phase, an incoming call is sent through interactive voice response (IVR). An IVR helps determine a customer’s concern by letting them select choices from a set of menus. If you’ve heard something like “Press 1 for transaction inquiries,” that is an example of an IVR. It’s similar to an automated agent.
Next, an automated call distributor (ACD) places the inbound calls in a queue. This is where skills-based routing comes into play. The ACD will take the customer’s responses in the IVR and create a call assignment based on agent skills and experience.
Here is a diagram of the routing process:
Some contact centers also use other routing strategies, such as:
- Fixed-order – The customer is assigned to the first available agent on the list
- Round robin – Similar to fixed-order, except the list advances to the next agent on the list for the next call (for example, the first agent on the list receives the first call, and the second agent on the list receives the second call)
- Simultaneous ring – All agents in the group receive the call notification, and the first agent to answer handles the call
- Longest idle agent – The customer is assigned to the agent who has spent the least time assisting customers
Every routing strategy has pros and cons, and you should use the one that best fits your business. However, opting for skills-based distribution can really improve your workflow.
How to set up routing rules
Creating skills may seem daunting at first, but it’s easy to do once you’ve tried it, especially if you have powerful contact center software from RingCentral. Let’s look at the steps to setting up your own rule-based routing strategy
Step 1. Determine your list of skills
To get started, you need to define your list of skills. In other words, define the reasons customers contact you. For example, an online retailer may have skills such as:
- Sales
- Billing
- Returns
- Troubleshooting
- Account management
Step 2. Assign skills to agents
After compiling your list of skills, you need to determine which agents are assigned those skills. There are a few considerations to keep in mind when assigning skills. If you only have a handful of agents with certain skills, customers might have to wait longer to connect. On the other hand, assigning a skill to too many agents could lead to lower first-contact resolution if the agents are not adequately trained.
As a way to avoid this, most contact centers provide an additional level of routing consideration. You can further classify agents by proficiency within each skill. For example, when assigning the “Returns” skill to John and Amy, you can assign a higher rank or proficiency to John. That way the ACD will attempt to connect to John if he is available, increasing the likelihood of a positive customer experience.
Step 3. Configure your IVR to route calls using the configured skills
Now that you have your agents configured properly, you need to set up your routing rules to use the skills you have created. Typically, this would be some form of voice greeting (“Thank you for calling ABC Industries.”), instructions to callers on the options available (“For Sales, press 1. For Billing questions, press 2.”), and the routing configuration rules. Solutions like RingCX provide a visual IVR designer that enables you to easily configure voice greetings and skills-based routing rules to help customers get matched to the right agent.
Step 4. Evaluate performance and make changes as needed
After setting up your skills, assigning them to your agents, and configuring your IVR, all that is left is to monitor how your skills-based routing setup is working. While there are numerous metrics available, some of the key metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of skills-based routing are:
- Average handle time (AHT)—If skills-based routing is configured properly, AHT will decrease since calls are routed to agents best equipped to handle them.
- First contact resolution—Similar to AHT, you should see an improvement in FCR with skills-based routing, as fewer follow-up calls will be required.
- Call transfer rate—Transferred calls indicate that the assigned agent is unable to solve a customer’s issue. With skills-based routing, you should see fewer transferred calls.
- Call abandonment rate—If you see an increase in call abandonment rate, that could indicate an issue with not enough agents for a particular skill, leading to long hold times and dropped calls. You may need to increase the available pool of agents in that skill.
Use intelligent routing for your contact center
As you can see, creating routing systems for your contact center is not difficult at all. Whether you’re a traditional voice-only call center manager or an omnichannel contact center manager, having an intelligent distribution system can have massive benefits to your operations.
Skills-based routing can improve customer service and optimize your workforce. Now that you’ve seen how simple it is to implement, it’s time to upgrade from your old phone system and contact center software.
RingCentral offers a wide range of tools, such as analytics, ACD, workforce management, IVR, call transfers, and more. With it, you can customize how your contact center operates to better assist your customers.