How Call Routing Keeps Customer Support Effective
The actual effectiveness of a customer support system lies in the ability to connect with customers and resolve their issues as quickly as possible. A true call center system then must be able to make your business available to anyone, at any time and offer more personalized attention to customers while addressing their specific needs. Call routing essentially makes this possible. It is a productive tool that routes calls to individual agents or queues based on pre-defined criteria such as time, level of skill required or even distribution.
Traditionally, call routing was offered as a hardware solution; however, they have evolved over time. Today, advanced call routing engines are directly integrated with the computer telephony system. These engines allow you to quickly adjust routing rules without needing any IT assistance. Also known as ACD (Automatic Call Distribution), call routing engines help in optimizing human resources by utilizing the skill and availability of each agent effectively.
Types of Call Routing
Here are some of the important types of call routing that businesses often use to match the customers to the agent that can best solve their problem:
Skills-Based Routing
This type of call routing matches an incoming call to the agent who is well-trained for specific skill sets required to address the caller’s issue. This early detection of the customer intent is possible through tracking solutions that determine the behavior of the customer based on pre-established criteria such as phone number used for calling, choices made on the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system, the channel of communication used, etc. Companies even prefer to route important calls to the agents that have a higher close rate or offer premium support for the best customers.
Time and Location Based Routing
This is an essential call routing procedure where calls are routed based on criterion such as the customer’s calling location, the agent’s calling location and agent’s availability. This is particularly useful for businesses that offer 24/7 customer support, by setting up agents across multiple geographies. Time and location-based routing thus allow businesses to offer a superior level of customer service at any given time.
Least Occupied Routing
This type of routing is used to route calls to agents who are least utilized throughout the day to distribute occupancy evenly within the teams. This approach helps businesses to evaluate the numbers of staff required in a contact center.
Data-Directed or Smart Routing
Data directed call routing is essentially an extension of the skill-based routing where calls are routed to agents based on the customer data available through CRM/help desk profile. A typical example can be routing new customer calls to a sales department and existing ones to the support department. In case if the calls cannot be routed to a particular department, logic can be set to route the call back to the agent with whom the customer would have spoken previously.
Advanced Call Routing Software Takes Customer Support to A Next Level
Call routing engines are rapidly being optimized with added features to deliver enhanced customer support. One of the prime examples of an advanced solution is 8x8’s patented presence detection circuit that can be coupled with IPBX server to receive activity data of agents from their VoIP-enabled devices along with the status of pending calls in the IPBX server. The call routing mechanism based on this data routes the pending incoming calls based on the priority and provides an opportunity to manage unreturned calls effectively.
Call routing plays an essential role in today’s customer support system. It not only helps customers in getting their answers quickly but also provides an opportunity for businesses to utilize the workforce effectively. From offering 24/7 customer support and reducing call handling times and first-response calls, call routing or ACD makes a critical component of a modern call center system. The entire productivity of a customer support system rests on how well the call center is able to route calls.
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