| Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends |
| July 5, 2023 | July 5, 2023 | July 14, 2023 |
Zendesk is pleased to announce the general availability release of skills in omnichannel routing.
What is changing?
In addition to directly assigning work to agents based on their capacity and status, admins on Professional and Enterprise plans can now turn on skills-based routing within omnichannel routing. When enabled, the routing engine finds agents within the assigned group who have the required skills, then is considers agent status and capacity to determine which agent to assign or offer the ticket to.
When you turn on skills, you can also specify channel-specific skill timeouts so ensure tickets don't get stuck in the queue for too long while waiting for agents with the required skills to become available. When the skills timeout threshold is reached, omnichannel routing drops the skills requirement and assigns or offers the ticket to an agent in the group based on agent status and capacity alone.
Additionally, accounts with omnichannel routing enabled can use triggers to add, set (add and remove all previous skills), or remove skills from email, messaging, and call tickets at any stage of the ticket lifecycle. This means skills can be automatically updated for tickets when they're updated rather than only at ticket creation.
Why is Zendesk making this change?
Omnichannel routing already provides our most sophisticated routing logic, and adding support for skills takes it one step further. Routing by skills can help ensure that the agents assigned to tickets have the right expertise, regardless of the channel through which the tickets were received. It improves the quality of service you can provide and contributes to shorter times to resolution.
Furthermore, adding the capability to change skills on tickets with triggers ensures the skills on tickets remains accurate even as new information becomes available. Previously, when using standalone skills-based routing, skills could only be added automatically at ticket creation; any modifications required manual intervention.
What do I need to do?
You don't need to do anything. The option to use skills in omnichannel routing is available on Professional plans and above. It is completely optional and turned off by default.
If you want to start using skills with omnichannel routing, see About using skills to route tickets. The following resources may also be of use:
15 Comments
Super! Skill timeouts is a great concept, allowing for a broader usage of skills.
Barry Neary Can this timeout be applied solely to specific Skill types, or to exclude some? It'd be relevant to keep some as persistent, others as timeout-able.
Hi Rafael
This timeout currently can only be configured by channel, not by skill type
It is something we could consider if several customers ask for it
Barry
Hello Barry Neary,
I have turned on skills timeout (with default values) and it is not working for Talk.
Calls are not offered to online agents without the skill. It is exclusively offered to online agents with the skill and remain in queue until max wait time (much longer than skills timeout time) if no one with the skill is online.
My company is planning to switch to Omnichannel this month. We had put it off until Skills-Based Routing and Skills timeouts were available. If this feature is not working for Talk we will have to delay our switch, can someone at Zendesk confirm if it is working?
Hi Shaun Murray
It does work with Talk, but one thing to be aware of when using the timeout.
When the skills timeout expires, the call/message/support ticket will not automatically be given to an available agent....the agent needs to do something to trigger the routing of the call to them. Do something means:
Hi Barry Neary
Thank you for the frank and swift answer!
So it is not working in the way the article states. Please amend the article to prevent companies from switching to Omnichannel expecting the Skills Timeout to work. This will stop my company from making this change and if we had switched we would have been forced to switch back. We cannot expect our agents to sit there changing tickets or their status when they are waiting for calls/chats/etc. Do you have a timeline on when they will fix this flaw?
Thank you!
- Shaun
Hi Barry Neary,
Thank you for the clarification. I saw this note in the documentation
I thought reconsidered referred to the agent who has the skill, but was unavailable when the ticket was offered. Now I see you are mentioning it refers to agent who does not have the skill and could be offered the ticket after the time out. This part could indeed use some clarification.
The current logic fails when agents with the skill are unavailable, and those without it are completely free with no activity, no tickets to update and no reason to change their status. They are not even aware of the increased work load on the agents with the skill.
In other words, their low workload is the exact reason that is preventing them from taking some workload off busy agents with the skill. So, it could be a big blind spot for some teams like mine.
I know that your team is always very engaged and interactive with user feedback and produces impressive improvements. So, I hope this can be considered.
Hi Ahmed
You are correct - ideally when skills timeout, all agents are automatically rechecked to see if they are available to be routed the ticket independent of skills (although if an agent is now available with skill, she should be selected)
This is on the roadmap to address
Barry
Hi Barry Neary
Thank you for letting us know it is on the roadmap to address. My company was planning to switch to Omnichannel with Skill Based routing this month, but we will be needing to delay until this is addressed. Could you give me a rough estimate of when it will be fixed so I can pass that on to everyone in my company who was excited about Omnichannel?
Thank you,
Shaun.
Hi Shaun
I dont really have an estimate at this point , but earliest would be late Q4 of this year
Barry
Hi Barry,
Any update on when this will be addressed? Just want to see if it ended up on the roadmap for this quarter.
Thank you,
Shaun
This is now scheduled for Q1 2024
Barry Neary, do you know when 'partial skills' match will be available for Omnichannel Routing?
Hi Denise Sehlmeyer
Likely partial skills match will be launched in latter half of H1 2024
Of course, thats not a commitment!
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