Optimised Inbound Routing

Smart rules and ‘best-available’ decisions to drive great customer service

At a Glance

Contact Center Optimised Inbound Routing

Intelligent routing for all media channels

Contact Center Optimised Inbound Routing

Use data from 3rd party CRMs or ERPs to inform decisions

Contact Center Optimised Inbound Routing

Show a friendly face by connecting customers to agents they already know

Contact Center Optimised Inbound Routing

Select the most suitable, best-skilled agent for each call

Contact Center Optimised Inbound Routing

Balance agents across all lines of business to maintain optimum service levels

The Impact Of Optimised Inbound Routing

To ensure that a contact  center  runs at peak efficiency, and customers are delighted by the service they receive, inbound contact sessions must be connected to the right agent at the right time. A contact center solution must ensure that:

  • incoming sessions of all types (phone call, chat, email, etc) are routed and delivered to agents in accordance with business priorities
  • the most suitable agent is identified for each session
  • if the caller doesn’t want to wait, they should have the option to contact through an alternative method or request a callback.

With Sytel’s Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) platform, the route for an inbound session can be influenced and may change during the session’s  lifecycle.

{
Many of our customers have gone from queue wait times of 5 minutes and upwards unattended, to being attended to within a few seconds.

Needless to say they’ve noticed the difference and have reflected this in the immensely improved feedback they’ve provided.

Sophisticated routing decisions

When a session (voice, chat, SMS or other) enters the contact center, decisions must be made about what to do with it. SCC offers flexibility in all these decisions.

They can be made based on:

  • Source - where this session originated; for example, the CLI/CID of a phone call, the ‘from’ address of an email, or a unique identifier for a text session
  • Destination - where the session was directed; for example, phone number, chat/email ‘to’ address
  • Self-service selection – e.g. the customer pressing ‘0’ for Reception, saying ‘Account balance’, or entering their ID number. For a more in-depth look at SCC’s auto-response capabilities visit IVR, Conversational AI and Chatbots.
  • 3rd party software/ web service response – a list of possible agents/ queues is presented to an external process, which returns a selected agent/ queue.

This video shows how these factors can be used to influence routing decisions in a dynamic workforce management environment.

Softdial Contact Center™ version 11 - Smart Routing and Blending

Profiling a customer session

The combination of source and destination, or any entered ID, can be used as a reference for querying other data sources such as a CRM and SCC’s own contact history for that customer.  This creates an effective profile for the customer.

Choosing the right queue

This  customer  profile information can be used by SCC to route the session to the most appropriate queue, and to manage its relative priority.

Once the session arrives at its destination queue, instead of just playing hold music, an in-queue bot can serve directed messaging and offer additional options to a waiting session, such as offering a callback  if the caller has arrived in a queue that is particularly busy, or leaving a message with an agent familiar with the customer case.

Assigning a ‘preferred’ agent

To provide a more familiar and personal customer experience, it may be desirable to connect a customer to an agent they have previously spoken to. SCC’s ASD (Automatic Session Distributor) can utilise the customer profile information to direct the session to this preferred agent.

If the preferred agent is not available within a specified time, the ASD will choose the best-skilled agent from those serving the queue.

Optimised inbound routing - the flow of a typical contact session, of any media channel

To illustrate, this diagram shows the flow of a typical contact session, of any media channel

{
Sytel’s enhanced skills-based routing means our customers are now connecting with the same agents they have previously dealt with and, most importantly, trust.

We are very happy with how our reputation for excellent customer service has sky rocketed in the past few months.

Assigning a ‘best-skilled’ agent

To ensure optimal handling of each session, the customer profile information for the session may contain skill requirements such as proficiency in customer service, spoken language skills or specialist product skills, and the level of each skill requirement which may vary for each session.

Similarly, agents may have a variety of  skills, and they may be better at some than others. The skill requirements, skills and their respective  levels are all known to SCC. By comparing the skill requirements for each session and the skills of each agent, the most suitable agent can be identified for each session. This is known as skills-based routing.

Time also plays a part in the selection process. If a customer does not have an ideal skills match in the agent pool, then the ASD can do a best match to ensure that the session doesn’t get held up in the queue.

Prioritising sessions in real-time

Sytel’s ASD automatically meets inbound demand and provides the best possible customer service across all queues. It load-balances and blends  inbound and outbound workload  across all media channels.  By setting a service level target against each queue,  the relative priority of all sessions in all queues can be determined in real time. The ASD can then distribute  sessions to agents  according to this priority.

See also …

Skills-Based Routing

Choosing the best agent for the session

Preferred Routing

Connecting to an agent with a previous successful relationship with the customer

Softdial Pathfinder™

Simple building blocks to allow the development of any kind of routing rules, for any media, for realtime deployment

Advanced Routing

Highly complex rules and conditions to be applied to session flow for all media channels

Advanced Routing Examples

Five use case examples showing how Pathfinder may be used to optimise the customer experience

Explore more of SCC’s capabilities:

Latest posts

Navigating the Evolving CCaaS Landscape: 3 Considerations

Navigating the Evolving CCaaS Landscape: 3 Considerations

Forecast vs. Actual Demand – Resolve the Dilemma in Your Contact Center

Forecast vs. Actual Demand – Resolve the Dilemma in Your Contact Center

Providing Excellent Customer Service During the Festive Season – 10 Tips and Strategies

Providing Excellent Customer Service During the Festive Season – 10 Tips and Strategies

Automation in the Contact Center: Telling it How it is

Automation in the Contact Center: Telling it How it is

Contact Center Reporting: The Challenge of Change

Contact Center Reporting: The Challenge of Change

Intraday Automation – Real-Time Workforce Management

Intraday Automation – Real-Time Workforce Management

What We Offer

Sytel Limited develops and supplies Softdial Contact Center® (SCC) – multimedia, multichannel, fully blended cloud contact center solutions.

Available by subscription as CCaaS, fully managed and supported by Sytel, or for quick and easy deployment by partners and enterprise users.

All Sytel cloud components are secure, resilient and scale seamlessly from 10 agents to 10,000+, whether local, mobile or remote.

Flexible Contact Center Software

Softdial Contact Center™ – rich functionality, all-in-one, designed to deliver at scale

  • Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

    CCaaS for subscribers – global service​, with no upfront costs

  • Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners

    Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software

  • Contact Center Platform – Enterprise

    High performance platform to drive contact center productivity – cloud, on-premise or hybrid

Blended Media Desktop

Fully customisable, multi-channel, multi-session workspace

Work Anywhere

Browser-based tools, no software installation required

Customise, Localise, White Label

Design all user interfaces to individual requirements

Integration via APIs

‘Swap out’ components and integrate with 3rd party apps

World Class Development

Continuous evolution pushing technical boundaries

Capabilities

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) is designed to be flexible, extensible and scalable, integrating with any legacy equipment, and meeting the most complex of requirements.

All Media Channels

Voice, chat, email, social, etc – fully integrated and blended

Agent Multi-Tasking

Work with multiple live contact sessions of any media channel

Dynamic Workforce Management

Optimise agent usage and balance workloads in real-time without human intervention, across all media channels

Predictive Dialing

Best-of-breed performance under compliance

Optimised Inbound Routing

Smart rules and ‘best-available’ decisions to drive great customer service

Agent Scripts

Help agents achieve and maintain excellence

Voice and Screen Recording

See and hear exactly how agents are interacting

Analytics and Data Feeds

Measure and evaluate performance at every level

IVR, Bots & Conversational AI

Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers

Customer Journey Tracking

Stored customer contact history, to aid routing and add context to conversations

Modules

Drive operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction & improve agent performance

Softdial One™

Highly flexible unified web UI for agents, supervisors and administrators

Softdial Scripter™

Create complex process flow scripts for agents, IVR, chatbots and other applications

Sytel AI Dialer™

Maximum predictive dialing performance, under any compliance rules

Softdial Pathfinder™

Precise routing rules for ‘best available’ connection

Softdial Media Server™

Core telephony functions to manage all inbound/outbound SIP calls

Softdial Reporter™ 5

Fully customisable performance stats, charts and reports, across all channels

Softdial Publisher™

Comprehensive data output to build your own reports

Softdial Recording Monitor™

Audio and screen recording of agent activity to ensure the highest standards

Softdial Campaign Manager™

Automation to optimise any outreach strategy

Softdial Repository™

Central storage and configuration of common resources

Sytel Global Compliance™

Flexible ‘no contact’ rules to protect contact center and consumer

Solutions

Performance and efficiency for a wide range of business applications

By Business Type

Enterprise

A full featured contact center software solution, designed for optimum performance at scale

Small/ Medium Business

Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves

By Industry

Customer Service

Connect quickly to well equipped agents

Market Research

Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration

Debt Collection

Automated inbound/ outbound blending integrated with any debt management app

Sales & Telemarketing

Maximise agent productivity with best-of-breed predictive dialing

Healthcare

Secure, highly-configurable multichannel communications for excellence in patient care