As a business, it’s not unreasonable for you to expect high call volumes on a daily basis—phone calls, after all, are essential to an organization’s operations. It doesn’t matter if you’re running an agency, a firm, a call center, or a manufacturing facility. Your clients, customers, vendors, and sometimes even the media are bound to dial your number, and they expect to speak to the employees who can best help them.

That’s why call routing systems are such an important part of business telephony. They make sure calls end up where they need to be.

But what exactly is call routing and how does it work, especially for companies that have call centers? Use the jump links below to learn more.

What is call routing and distribution?

How does call routing work?

What are the benefits of routing calls?

What are the types of call routing that work best for a call center?

What type of call routing system is best?

Call routing FAQs

Call routing refers to the process of sorting and distributing phone calls to individuals or team members, departments, and/or different phone lines based on a set of predetermined rules and criteria. You can base the routing system’s behavior on different factors (more on these later) to manage and streamline call flows effectively and ensure that operations run efficiently.

This particular business phone system capability can be applied to companies in all sorts of industries, but it’s especially useful for the call center setup.

Call routing has become increasingly advanced in recent years. You may have heard of the term Automatic Call Distribution (or ACD for short). ACD systems use machine learning to intelligently send calls to agents on the most appropriate extension. With inbound calls automatically forwarded in this way, companies can reduce the number of callers getting placed on hold, sent to voicemail, or— worse—met with either a “busy” tone or perpetual ringing.

As previously mentioned, call routing is a common fixture in call centers. Most of us will have already interacted with this type of system at one point or another.

But how does it actually work? These days, it’s primarily based on software.

Routing software works by distributing calls based on either:

• Pre-set rules
• An interactive voice response (IVR) system supported by an auto attendant.

Let’s explore these two options.

Routing via pre-set rules

Pre-set rules are conditions with little to no input on the part of callers that determine the system’s call routing behavior. Examples of criteria often considered in this setup include:

• Business hours
• Agent or operator availability
• Call priority (based on caller ID information)

This approach to managing phone calls isn’t just useful for call centers, they’re great for other types of companies too. For instance, calls coming in after business operating hours will be sent to voicemail—alternatively, they’ll be sent to a branch or department that’s still open to addressing concerns.

Routing via Interactive Voice Response

To understand how calls are routed based on this, we first need to understand how an IVR system works.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology works by providing customers who call into a business with a menu of options and routing them to the most appropriate phone number or extension based on the customer’s choices.

Here’s how the standard sequence goes:

• Caller input: The caller is met by a custom greeting (care of the auto attendant) and prompted to use either their voice or their dial pad to select from a range of call routing options. For example “Press ‘1’ for sales, ‘2’ for billing, or ‘3’ to speak to someone from our customer support team.”
• Queue: Using the real-time data provided by the caller care of the IVR system, the calls will then be put through to the ACD system. From there, they will be put in relevant call queues until the next agent becomes available.
• Connection: Once an agent from the caller’s chosen department is available, the call will be connected and the interaction will begin in earnest.

The main purpose of an effective call routing system is to successfully manage call volumes. Your call distribution method determines how quickly, appropriately, and efficiently interactions with your contacts are handled—especially when there’s an uptick in the demand for your company’s attention.

So it’s safe to say that the ability to route calls is an advantage for any organization.

Let’s take a look at more specific benefits of call routing:

1. Reduced wait times: Effective call distribution reduces waiting times by automatically assigning incoming calls to the next available and suitable live agent.
2. First call resolution: When calls are routed based on criteria set by customers, it’s more likely that issues will be resolved—and tickets will be closed—the first time around.
3. Enhanced productivity: Effective routing makes agents more productive by reducing downtime between interactions and distributing calls to the next available agent.
4. Improved performance: Skills-based routing means ensures customers will always be connected to reps who have the expertise to help them, resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction.
5. Streamlined workflows: When calls are distributed effectively, call centers avoid lengthy call queues and backlogs. Calls will be distributed evenly among qualified agents, allowing workflows to remain efficient.

There are different types of routing a call center or contact center can choose from. They address specific call routing strategies for distributing calls to individual agents.

Here’s a quick list of the most common approaches deployed by customer support organizations:

• Skills-based
• Least occupied
• Uniform
• Simultaneous
• Round robin
• Weighted
• Intelligent
• Time of day
• Sequential
• VIP

Let’s look at each of them more closely.

Skills-based

Information provided by the caller via your IVR menu is used to connect them to an agent with the most relevant skill set so they can get the best assistance for their query or problem.

Least occupied

Also called “most idle routing,” this method connects incoming callers to the agent experiencing the lowest call volume at the time, ensuring a more equitable distribution of work—and minimizing the risk of agent burnout.

Uniform

Calls are automatically routed to the call center agent who has been idle for the longest period of time. This makes the pace of work more manageable for teams of operators and agents.

Simultaneous

Incoming calls ring on multiple agents’ phones at once. The first to pick up will take the call.

Round robin (a.k.a. rotary)

Round robin routing distributes incoming calls evenly amongst available call center agents. Also called “rotary” routing, it makes it so that no single agent is required to pick up another call until all other agents in the team have been assigned a call.

Weighted

This lets managers set ratios of incoming calls to be routed to each individual call center representative. Weighted routing can be set up so more experienced reps receive more calls and new hires receive fewer calls.

Intelligent

Also called “predictive behavioral routing,” intelligent call routing uses customer data (based on current and previous interactions) to ensure that callers are connected to the agents best suited to their needs—it can even route them to a rep they’ve already developed a relationship with.

Time of day

We’ve hinted at this before—with this, you can have your calls routed based on an individual agent’s time zone or according to pre-set business hours.

Sequential (a.k.a. fixed order)

Call center agents are organized in lists, with specific agents being assigned as the primary representatives at specific times, with other agents only receiving calls if the main representatives are not available to provide service..

VIP

Based on saved caller IDs, a business’s most important clients are pushed forward to the front of any given call queue so that they receive immediate assistance.

When you sign up with a UCaaS and call center solutions provider like 8x8, you’ll be able to choose from a range of customizable rules and IVR services (among other things)

Call routing FAQs

How expensive is call routing software?

Call routing software pricing varies. Most call center software offers routing as part of their solution. Prices tend to range between $75 and $200 per user per month.

What is call auto routing?

Call auto-routing is just another name for automatic call distributor, (ACD). As previously mentioned, it’s an automated call distribution tool that takes all incoming calls and directs calls to the most relevant extension based on a predefined set of call forwarding rules.

How are calls routed in telecom?

They work similarly to how we’ve described call routing above. One important thing to note, though, is that there are two modes of call distribution used in telecoms. These are outbound (typically used for sales teams) and inbound (typically used for incoming customer calls).

What is call routing with VoIP?

Call routing technology is a standard capability of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems for commercial use. Business VoIP phone systems, much like most enterprise-level voice communications solutions, automate the call routing process, allowing small businesses and call centers to determine how their calls will be routed based on a range of potential criteria. The key difference is that the technology primarily works via the internet.

VoIP vendors make it super easy to set up call routing protocols in your business or call center. For example, 8x8’s ACD capabilities offer automated skills-based routing, which helps direct calls to the agent most capable of handling the caller’s queries.

The 8x8 Contact Center solution is also compatible as a simple integration with numerous popular CRM systems available (see our app marketplace) meaning you’ll be able to sync all of your existing customer data with your ACD capabilities—among other powerful support tools.

What are the differences between call routing and call forwarding?

Call forwarding is a call management functionality used to transfer a live call from one person to another. Call routing is focused on organizing, queuing, and distributing all incoming calls to relevant departments or call center agents.

How do I route an incoming call?

There are two ways to answer this question, depending on what’s meant by it.

If we’re talking about routing a call that’s already arrived at your business phone’s extension, then the answer is: you can’t. The closest thing you can do is to select an option to forward that call to another extension—and that’s only if you have a business phone solution that allows that.

But if we’re talking about setting up a routing protocol for your incoming calls, then that’s a bit easier especially if you’re using a cloud-based phone system.

Generally speaking, you only need to:

1. Go to your system’s admin settings (if you’re setting it up for a group or organization) or your extension settings (if you’re only setting it up for yourself), and look for the section that lets you customize call routing settings.
2. From there, identify which rules you want to follow for handling inbound calls.

The level of customization you can get depends on your vendor and the plan you’re paying for. Make sure you speak to your service provider if you want very specific behaviors out of your call routing capabilities.