Hi again,

I work in an airline contact centre for reservations where calls generally come in for reconfirmations, amendments , change of routings etc.

I wanted to know if the skill based routing concept actually works. What i mean is if an amendment call hits the waiting room it searches for a an agent with a skill level of 1 for amendments and so on and forth.

To me this makes no real sense, coz if there are calls on park or waiting, it would go to any staff with a lower skill as well, so the whole skill based seems a hogwash.

Long story short, I believe getting the calls directed to the first available agent is the best concept and not skill based.. ( FIFO )

I know the question is kinda vague, would appreciate any inputs from the call centre gurus though...

thanks

Yes but.......

Skills based depends on the call going to the best person to deal with a call.

In your case would you want.

A call involving a 4 sector flight booking, for a wheelchair passenger
with special dietry requirements and access requiremnts going to....

a) An agent who's been out of training for 3 days, can't remember their
way round the booking system yet and has to transfer the call.

or

b) Someone who's been around a while and can do it in 5 min?

Your idea about how it works is a little off.

It will queue the call (normally) and then pass it to an agent as required.

It could be only a small percentage of your calls fit your complex call
criteria but.....

These MUST go to someone who can deal with it. Anything else is pure herasy or
commercial suicide!

I dealt with this very problem a few years ago for a UK travel
operator who had a reputation dropping because of sevice issues on complex
bookings taking hours due to the fact it could go to a new agent.
The system was redesigned (IVR lead) to route simple family bookings
to new op's to give them time to get used to the system, moving up to the skillset associated with
Travel Agents and then onto complex bookings.

The other advantageis this gives a clear progression for the agents, HINT: Pay them more as they go up!.

HTH

DaveA

Thanks for that reply. In pure definition , yes , i would ideally like those calls to get routed to agents who are more skilled to take these calls.

But the whole process of arranging to do that is very laborious. For example, at first the resource planning needs to be involved constantly coz if i am removing the skill for any particular staff , it means one less of head count to take that call, so more calculation on the staffing numbers.

Currently what we have is a skill of 1 for experienced staff for certain categories like catering to F and J customers, however if there is a boom of calls, those same calls would go to any agent with the skill of 3 and 4 as well. In short, all have to be trained, all have to know the drill. Then why the skill bases routing at all ?

PS: Yes one exception here, of not having skills assigned to take all calls could be staff straight on the floor after training.

However,

This is now bringing up a bigger issue.

How are you actually scheduling?

You've just mentioned a Resource planning dept.

Which tools are they using for said planning?

HTH

DaveA

We have a separate WFM department that deals with staffing and service levels. Sorry not much of knowledge on what goes about in there, but superficially speaking its all about how many staff you need per shift/week/month etc and forecasting numbers for future, just like any typical WFM programme.

I know for a fact, there is no calculation for Skill based routing uploaded therein. All staff have the skill assigned just that levels may be different ( 1,2 3 etc..where 1 is the highest priority. )

How do other contact centres in general work? Do all follow this concept of skill based routing ?

Thanks Dave for replying to all this....Others, would really appreciate if you could thrown in some gyan

The WFM calculation needs to be done separately by call type, a forecast of 100 calls in a period could be split 30% complex 70% simple etc. It makes it easier if you think of them as different skills rather than levels.

Hi Paul

Could you further elaborate on that point..how could we possibly bifurcate the complex and the simple calls...u mean the complex ones goes to the senior/experienced staff and the simpler to the newer ones ?..isnt that again goin to be something that wld require more effort and time to monitor..

Dicken.

You seem to be looking for a 'magic bullet' solution and
unfortunatly there's not one on this occasion.

You're skills based routing depends on some kind of identifier
on the call incomer or IVR routing.

The one thing I would say is you've mentioned the 'Planning' dept being
away from the rest.

This kind of thing is something THEY should be doing!

Planning for different skill levels is fundamental WFM. Provided you're
using a WFM Tool.

If not there are ways round it but it's not simple!

Streamed work into seperate skillsets with differing ability levels
is what WFM packages are for. Single stream (which you appear to have at the moment)
can be done, and done well, using handbuilt WFM tools (have a look around this site).

At this point I'm not sure what you're after, bifuricating your calls can be simply
done via IVR, however, you seem to be looking for problems, or at the least issues, where
they don't exist.

You describe Skills based routing as 'hogwash' in your first post but....

Re-reading it I'm not sure how much you want to break down the workstreams.

My example of the simple / complex bookings above is a worthwhile use. Slicing
too thin on the skills isn't. It also bores agents if there's no variety.

HTH

DaveA

If you have a planning department, Have you been downm to ask them what they think? or how they would approach this.

You say its very labour intensive, I think you want us to give you a "do x get y" solution, unfortunately in the majority of multi skilled environments that I have worked in this just doesn't exist.

If you want more specific advice perhaps you could give us more specific details

Hey guys,

Yeah..i guess im really askin a "do x get y solution " as Scott mentioned. The call centre environment definitely has one thing in common...they are all different ;)

Dave - as always thanks for your extensive reply. Perhaps different call centres work on different methods and parameters. In an aviation industry - call centre , the calls that come in are changes to bookings , reconfirmations etc..so in no ways to sound conceited , i personally feel assigning skills to some and not for some does not make real sense...in essence all should know what to handle and all should get the same kind of calls. ( An exception here are the new ones who hit the floor ). So an IVR should be in place to bifurcate the calls from the passengers point of view, but from the inside, all on the floor should be able to handle everything hence a skill based not really necessary.


Hope im making some sense....

cheers

So an IVR should be in place to bifurcate the calls from the passengers point of view

Why?

I'm guessing to split the calls into
skills.