Multimedia Routing & Queuing
Datapoint provides a range of solutions for multi media routing and queuing. These are a central feature of the interaction hubs we supply which have the native benefit of universal queuing and integrated reporting across all media.
This means a single set of business rules can be developed for the routing and reporting of voice, fax, SMS, email, web chat/collaboration and video traffic plus any workflow items from middle office systems that need to be distributed to agents. These can be applied to inbound, outbound and blended queues. Routing Rules Need Clear Contact Strategies
Routing strategies that can be developed from these solutions range from the simple to the sophisticated. They can be based on service levels, weighted prioritisation rules, multi site distribution criteria, media type, agent attributes such as profiles or skills and any CTI enabled segmentation criteria.
This last capability can be exploited in numerous ways based on customer demographics, customer value scoring, customer propensity scores (e.g. for upselling, churn), special treatment contact strategies in response to outcomes from quality monitoring/speech analytics or one to one matching to ensure certain customers are routed through to the same agent each time.
Other solutions provide a further boost to their routing logic with so called ‘predictive routing intelligence’. This feature monitors service levels, agent state, customer segmentation policies and customer intent to further optimise routing of voice, email, or web chat requests via a single universal queue to the best available agent.
All these examples of next generation routing flexibility enable brands to implement clearly differentiated customer service strategies. For instance for call centres whose prime mandate is to develop into profit centres, their routing strategies can be prioritised around customer value. This allows them to fast track customers whose immediate service may bring the greatest value to the business rather than those who have waited longest.
Well Planned Routing Enables Consistent Agent Productivity
The intelligence within the routing logic can be used to automatically balance overall service objectives in order to avoid over servicing one customer segment at risk of under servicing others. Rules can be developed to redirect contacts to another queue, IVR, voice mail, etc when agents are unavailable.
These standard strategies can be further refined to deal with scenarios outside the norm such as understaffing, marketing campaigns that are expected to generate large inbound responses, holiday periods and seasonal demand.
Routing can be planned between sites based on simple overflow rules, media type or whatever skill based or service based strategy has been developed. Fully virtualised sites enjoy even more options for resource optimisation in terms of how customer traffic can be equitably distributed. For instance, they can manage routing decisions across a single enterprise wide agent pool distributed across multiple sites using any supported multi-vendor switching system
Blending Strategies Optimise Agent Productivity And Job Variety
Some solutions enable blending strategies. This is where agents can belong to inbound and outbound voice, chat, email and workflow services concurrently. The system will deliver the appropriate contacts to the agents across these channels based on user-defined business rules and/or agent skill sets.
By switching outbound agents to inbound when inbound traffic is high, the average wait time per interaction can be reduced resulting in less dropped calls and higher customer satisfaction. By switching inbound agents to outbound activities when inbound traffic is low, the inbound service level can be maintained while maximizing agent productivity.
Transitions between inbound and outbound can be done almost instantaneously. Agents can be switched over automatically so they may finish an outbound call and take an inbound call and vice versa. Blending of agents among all services, including chat and email, allows for the optimisation of the agents' time.
CTI Is Becoming More Affordable And Flexible
CTI is of course central to routing decisions and all solutions provide next generation answers to the traditional issues of CTI being a specialist and expensive function to acquire. The process of integration into the required data sources for screen pop, identification for voice portals/IVRs, call recording tags and the like are being simplified through the use of web services and other open standard interfaces.
As SIP becomes more integral to these solutions, further simplification can also be expected by potentially reducing or replacing complex CTI integration with a simple and open standard for implementing third-party call control through SIP call control extensions.
Specialised Features
Some solutions offer tight integration with workforce management solutions to incorporate schedules into routing decisions. Some have automatic workflow distribution which streamlines processes by routing generic objects and tasks such as trouble tickets, order processing, documents and self-paced training to agents from external applications.
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