What are the best practices for setting up skills-based routing for your agents?

1 Assess your agents' skills

Before you can assign skills to your agents, you need to evaluate their current abilities and knowledge. You can use various methods, such as tests, surveys, feedback, and performance metrics, to measure their proficiency in different areas, such as languages, products, services, and problem-solving. You should also consider their soft skills, such as communication, empathy, and rapport-building, which are essential for customer service. Based on your assessment, you can create a skills matrix that lists your agents and their skill levels.

2 Define your call types and priorities

Next, you need to identify the different types of calls that your call center handles and prioritize them according to their urgency, complexity, and value. You can use various criteria, such as caller ID, IVR selection, customer profile, and call history, to categorize and rank your calls. For example, you might want to route high-value customers, urgent issues, or complex queries to your most skilled agents, while low-priority or simple calls can be handled by less experienced or generalist agents.

3 Configure your routing rules and parameters

Once you have your agents' skills and your call types and priorities, you can configure your routing rules and parameters in your call center software. Routing rules are the logic that determines how calls are distributed among your agents based on their skills and availability. Routing parameters are the settings that control how long calls wait in the queue, how many calls each agent can handle, and how often skills are updated. You should test and adjust your routing rules and parameters regularly to ensure they are effective and efficient.

4 Train and coach your agents

Skills-based routing is not a static system. It requires constant learning and improvement from your agents. You should provide them with regular training and coaching to help them develop new skills, refresh existing ones, and address any gaps or weaknesses. You should also encourage them to share best practices and feedback with each other and learn from their peers. By investing in your agents' skills, you can increase their confidence, motivation, and performance.

5 Monitor and evaluate your results

Finally, you should monitor and evaluate the results of your skills-based routing system. You can use various metrics, such as service level, first call resolution, average handle time, customer satisfaction, and agent utilization, to measure the impact of skills-based routing on your call center performance. You should also collect and analyze customer and agent feedback to identify any issues, challenges, or opportunities for improvement. By tracking and reviewing your results, you can fine-tune your skills-based routing system and ensure it meets your goals and expectations.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?