Workflow: Using skills in omnichannel routing to overflow calls to other agents

What's my plan?

This article assumes omnichannel routing has been turned on for your account. See Turning on omnichannel routing and Managing your omnichannel routing configuration.

In some cases, you might want to route calls to certain agents, but need to have the routing logic to "overflow" to alternative agents if none of the preferred agents are available. This workflow example shows how you can leverage skills in omnichannel routing and triggers to route incoming calls to a particular agents but overflow to other agents if necessary.

This recipe uses omnichannel routing, skills, and triggers.

This example includes:

• Workflow goal
• Creating a group of agents to handle billing calls
• Defining the billing language skills
• Using a trigger to assign the skill to incoming calls
• Configuring omnichannel routing skill settings

Workflow goal

Your company currently routes all billing-related calls to agents in the Billing group. Now that they're using omnichannel routing, they also want to use the country code from which the call is originating to direct calls to agents within the Billing group that have the necessary language skills and overlapping timezones. If no agents with the matching skill are available, you want the call to go to an agent in the Billing group without the matching skill.

Using omnichannel routing for calls

Before deciding how to route calls, it's important to understand the ticket creation process. When you use omnichannel routing, a ticket is created for the call as soon as it enters the queue. That means you can run triggers on incoming calls before it is answered. If you choose not to use omnichannel routing, tickets are created for calls after the call is answered by an agent, and triggers can't be run against the incoming calls until the ticket is created. That means omnichannel routing is the only way you can use triggers to influence call routing.

See How omnichannel routing works.

Creating a group of agents to handle billing calls

Groups collect agents together, allowing admins to manage agent ticket assignments based on an agent's skills and experience.

To create the Billing group

1. In Admin Center, click People in the sidebar, then select Team > Groups.
2. Click Add group.
3. Enter a group name. In this example, we'll use Billing.
4. Select the agents you want to add to the group.
5. (Enterprise only) If you want to make this group private, click Make this group private.
6. Click Save.
7. Create a process, such as a trigger, to assign billing-related calls to the Billing group.

Defining the billing language skills

There are three parts to creating new skills: create a skill type, add skills to the skill type, and assign the skills to agents. Before doing this, it's a good idea to make sure you understand what skills are and how they can be used.

To define the skills

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Skills.
2. Create a skill type named Billing Language.
3. Add each skill within the Billing Language skill type. For example, Billing_EN and Billing_FR.
4. While adding each skill, under Agents, click Mangage and assign each agent with the respective language and location.

   Each skill must be assigned to at least one agent.

Using a trigger to assign the skill to incoming calls

After you create skills and assign them to agents, you have to create a process for assigning the skills to incoming calls. The best way to do this is via triggers, which can be used to manage skills when the ticket is created or updated. See Adding and managing skills on tickets.

Ticket created for incoming calls include a comment with the phone number of the caller. That means you can use the country code to predict the language and cultural skills required to handle the ticket.

Note: The following steps assume you've already assigned the ticket to the Billing group in Talk phone number settings or using a different trigger.

To create a trigger that adds the Billing_FR skills to a call from French phone numbers

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
2. Create or edit a trigger.
3. Under Conditions, specify the conditions under which you want the skill to be added. For example:
   • Ticket > Channel > Is > Phone call (incoming)
   • Ticket > Group > Is > Billing
   • Ticket > Comment text > Contains at least one of the following words > Call from: +33

   See Building trigger condition statements.

4. Under Actions, select Add skills or Set skills and then select the individual customer skill you want to assign, such as Billing_FR.

   See Building trigger action statements.

5. Select an Optional priority for all skills. Using the same optional priority level, such as Optional (Low priority), for all skills ensures they all timeout simultaneously.

   For this workflow to function properly, your skills must be subject to the skills timeout in the omnichannel routing configuration. Marking a skill as Required is incompatible with the goals of the workflow.

6. Click Save, or if this is a new trigger, click Create.

Configuring omnichannel routing skill settings

As soon as you create skills and start assigning them to agents and tickets, they can influence routing. However, omnichannel routing won't consider skills until you turn it on in your routing configuration.

To configure omnichannel routing to consider skills

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Omnichannel routing > Routing configuration.
2. On the Routing Configuration page, click Edit next to the Initial routing configuration.
3. On the Initial routing configuration page, select Turn on skills-based routing.
4. Select Turn on skills timeout and specify skill timeout thresholds for each channel.
   Note: You must turn on skills timeout for calls to "overflow" or "fall back" to other agents without the matching skills. Otherwise, calls remain in the queue until an agent with the matching skills becomes available or the call is sent to voicemail.

When you use the configurations described in this article, billing-related calls from specific country codes are routed first to agents with the matching language and culture skills but will overflow to any agent in the Billing group if all agents with the skill are unavailable for the duration of the skills timeout you specified.