Skills Based Routing (Outbound)

The general model is that a call can be associated with a 'Skill Group'. Skill groups are implemented as queues, which must be added to the Skill Groups campaign, which is created automatically on installation. (See Softdial Repository™ Campaigns & Queues.) Agents can then be assigned to these queues in the usual way.

Using this process it is possible to use the Queue Overflow handling procedure to apply a priority-ordered list of skill groups to the call.

When an outbound call is connected, the Softdial CallGem™ ACD engine uses the assigned skill group queue's agent selection logic (including any overflows), to select the next suitable agent to handle the call.

If an agent is logged in to the outbound campaign, and is also a member of the skill group queue (or its overflows), then when the agent is in a waiting state, the agent may be selected to take the call.

This selection logic is run the instant the outbound call is answered and will either yield a suitable agent to handle the call or not.

In the event that a suitable agent is not found, the call may be handled in two ways:

1. Relative SBR:
   the call will be offered to any waiting agent in the agent pool
2. Absolute SBR:
   the call will be abandoned with an optional, customisable switch outcome. In this case, the abandoned call will be dialed again using the specified switch outcome retry rules.

This general process is used for skill selection for all modes of dialing. Detailed behaviour may differ, depending on the dialing method being used as described below.

Outbound skills-based routing seeks to provide the most suitable agent resource to which to connect a customer call, and is inherently relative.

A predictive dialer dials for the whole pool of agents on a campaign. On connect, the call must be delivered to one of the agents in that pool, regardless of whether there is an exact skills match. If skills are absolute, rather than relative, this splits the pool and is properly viewed as 2 (or more) separate campaigns.

The reason why SCC provides some support for absolute SBR on outbound is twofold:

1. Customers who run Preview campaigns may wish to use absolute SBR, and can do so as agent selection for a call is made before the outbound dial is placed
2. Some customers running boiler-room operations in countries with no regulatory framework for predictive dialing are prepared to accept uncontrolled call abandons or poor dialer performance in order to use absolute skills-based routing on predictive campaigns.

A dialer cannot pace accurately for absolute skills-based routing on outbound predictive. Here is why:

Imagine you have agents with English and Spanish language skills. Some agents will have 1 language skill; some will have both skills. From a business perspective, it is easy to see that support for absolute skills-based routing is useful for such a case; you would not want a Spanish-speaking customer put through to an agent who cannot speak Spanish.

In the case where there is no intersection of skills (only English-speaking agents and only Spanish-speaking agents), this is easy enough to achieve. The agent pool is divided into two predictive campaigns and the dialer paces for each pool of agents independently.

If, however, an agent has skills in both languages, the agent could belong to either pool. This presents a problem. In order to pace, the dialer starts from a position of knowing...

• which agents are in which states
• what calls are being dialed, and
• how long the calls have been ringing for

in order to make a determination of how many calls to make at that instant in time. The determination is made by running repeated simulations using recent dialing outcomes for that pool and this yields an outcome of At this instant in time, make X calls and on the balance of probabilities this will either

1. not abandon any calls, or
2. abandon few enough calls to keep the abandon rate within the campaign's target or regulatory limit.

It is not possible to state deterministically that a dual-language agent is in one pool or another. Since the probability calculation relies on the distribution of events given a known starting point, having a "Schrodinger's cat" agent makes the probability calculation unworkable.

It is acknowledged that other vendors do provide this functionality. The price of this functionality is inherent lack of control over call abandon rates. No vendor can provide absolute skills-based routing for outbound predictive without there being consequences of uncontrolled call abandonment or poor predictive performance, with attendant side effects such as data churn owing to calls either not made due to no suitable agent waiting, or abandoned for the same.

Fig. 1 shows the Outbound skills based routing section of Softdial Campaign Manager™ Dialing Tuning configuration:

Fig. 1 - Skills Based Routing Settings

Here, a call may be assigned to be handled by a skill group queue in one of two ways:

1. If a skill is related to a particular data set or list, linked campaigns can be used in Campaign Manager and the skill queue assigned at a linked campaign level. Select Queue address for this list and enter the skill group queue name in the active textbox
2. A column in the customer database table may be used to define the skill group queue address to be used for the record. Select Queue address from this column and enter the campaign table column name that contains the skill group queue details in the active textbox

For Predictive campaigns, where multiple calls may be dialed for each available agent and the composition of the agent waiting pool changes rapidly, there is little possibility to match skills to waiting agents.

Both relative and absolute SBR are possible. In both cases, the agents with the most suitable skills will be selected if available, but if not,

• with relative SBR, the call will be passed to any available agent. The call will only be abandoned if there are no agents available.
• with absolute SBR, the call will be will be abandoned with an optional, customisable switch outcome. In this case, the abandoned call will be dialed again using the specified switch outcome retry rules.

For the purposes of SBR, Preview and Progressive dialing methods can be considered together as they follow similar rules.

For Preview/ Progressive campaigns, agent selection based on skill is made by Softdial CallGem™ prior to the preview data being screen popped, in the following sequence:

1. Scan through all agents looking for ones that is waiting.
   1. Scan through priority calls looking for one with a skills match
      • If found, match that call with that agent
   2. Scan through the regular calls looking for one with a skills match
      • If found, match that call with that agent

Calls that are not matched by skills to an agent during the first scan are then matched to any waiting agent in a second scan:

2. Scan through all agents a second time, looking for one that is waiting.
   1. Scan through the priority calls for any call
      • If found, match that call with that agent
   2. Scan through the regular calls for any call
      • If found, match that call with that agent

There are various recommended patterns for common use cases for outbound SBR. The following are for predictive campaigns, with a Last Failure Outcome (LFO) of offer to group:

Type	Use case	Skill group	Comment
Loose Account Ownership	If an agent has an ownership relationship with a customer account but the account may be processed by another agent	Configure per agent, possibly overflowing into another skill group if required to perform relative skill selection	For a small number of agents, consider using linked campaigns for each agent for reporting, or select skill from a database column for a large number of agents
Value Based Routing	Route calls with a high potential value to specialist resources and route calls with lower value to less specialised resources	Configure for high value	Use linked campaigns to deliver high value and low value calls in proportion to agent pool size
Generalised skills-based routing using multiple skill groups		Configure for each key attribute. Set up overflows for each skill group carefully	Use linked campaigns to deliver each skill group. This enables control of data delivery rates to match with the agent pool composition, and if necessary allows calls for a particular skill group to be turned on or off

The method used by the algorithm - relative or absolute - depends on whether a LFO is defined:

• LFO is not defined - relative SBR will be used.
  This means that the call will offered to any waiting agent in the agent pool IF there is no available agent with the specific skill.
• LFO is defined - absolute SBR will be used.
  This means that the call will not be offered to other agents and it will be abandoned using the switch outcome number defined in the LFO configuration. It is imperative that the switch outcome number configured in the LFO parameter has type abandoned. You can use the existing Abandoned switch outcome (#7 - see Dialing Cycle Outcomes) or create a new one if you want to customize it.