The Best And Innovative Call Routing Strategies

Call Routing is a very important aspect of any call center. It plays a crucial role in the success and development of bpo business and can go a long way in providing excellent customer service. However, it’s quite natural to get confused among the several call routing strategies and techniques which you can adopt for your organization. So we have come up with some of the best and innovative call routing strategies which you should definitely implement in your organization in order to get success and growth.

Direct Routing:

This routing strategy is ideal for newly established organizations that generally have a generic and basic approach towards customer service. They want to be free from nay cumbersome or time taking call routing process and simply want to connect the customer calls with the right person or the right department in the organization for accurate support.

Here’s the deal.

It is the standard model and a direct way of connecting to the department or service agent you want. Fort example if you have queries regarding sales you simply dial the number of the sales department and a specialist from that department pick up the call. You might need to wait if the number is busy. Similarly, for queries regarding service you need to dial a different number which will connect you to a specialized agent of the service department.

Least Occupied Routing:

The name itself speaks a lot about this routing strategy. In this routing strategy, the call gets automatically connected to the call center agent who is least occupied or utilized throughout the day. It is similar to the back of the queue game where the agents who are not interested to take calls are in the ready mode and then automatically gets transferred in the idle state which makes them unavailable to take any calls.

Still not convinced?

The entire idea of this routing strategy is based on the concept of occupancy rate which nothing but the percentage of time an agent remains busy over the phone throughout the day. The system automatically calculates and find out the least occupied agent and connects the call to him. It also plays a crucial role in maintaining the balance in the organization and even distribution of workload among the employees. You can also find out the number of agents you require in your organization by the occupancy rate.

Routing Based On Skills:

This is one of the most practical ways of routing calls in a contact center because it takes into account the specialized skills and knowledge of the agents before connecting a call. It analyses the type of customer queries or grievances and connects the call to the most skillful or experienced agent who is specialized in handling that type of query. For example an agent with in-depth technical knowledge about a certain product will get the maximum calls related to its technical or operational difficulties. This will not only lead to good customer service but also will reduce wait time substantially.

And it doesn’t stop there.

The customer experience can be improved a lot by connecting the callers to agents or advisors who have the highest level of experience or skills so that the customer queries can be solved by the first call itself. Therefore it must be taken care so that multi-skilled agents receive proper training and guidance at regular intervals so that they can provide superior customer support.

Dynamic Routing:

It must be noted that by simply connecting the customers with a skillful support agent won’t guarantee total customer happiness. You need to find out whether the contact center agent really has those skills or not. It must also be examined critically whether the agent is empowered to resolve the queries of the customers or they will have to transfer the call to the contact center manager for further processing.

Here’s another thing.

Along with skill-based routing, you also need to keep a strict watch on both the expected and predicted wait times in order to understand the level of customer satisfaction and dynamic routing can play a crucial role in such circumstances. Dynamic routing helps you to take right decision and make a perfect choice. Moreover, depending on situation back up agents can be put at work in order to maintain the service quality.

Value-Based Routing:

With the advancement of technology value-based routing has opened up a new way in providing high tech customer support in the call center industry. Value-based routing is not limited only to cost and quality and takes it one step further. It takes into consideration the value or revenue-based factor in the total equation and brings in a new way of customer handling.

Still not convinced?

Then have a look at this simple example. A mobile phone customer might contact with the call center in order to know about his subscription status and personal details just three months before the date of his renewal. With a proper value-based routing in place, the system would automatically understand that the situation is critical and there is a chance the customer might switch to other operators. So in such a scenario the system will route the call to a specialized retention team so that they can handle the situation well and ensure the retention of the customer.

Data Directed Routing:

As the name suggests it’s the data of the customer or his current status which will route the call to the ideal department or agent. For example a bank customer has contacted the call center for his account related query. But the system has identified the caller as a credit card defaulter and thus the call will automatically get transferred to the recovery department in order to provide a solution.

Thus to conclude we can say that there are several call routing techniques or strategies which you can adopt in your call center. But you need to carefully examine your call center operational structure and then choose the best call routing strategies mentioned above as per your requirements.