What Is Call Center Routing and How Does It Improve Customer Experience?

Call centers continuously strive to improve customer experience and quality of interactions. Within call centers, there are multiple call types including sales, service, technical support, billing, etc. Connecting a caller to the right location for handling their call saves time, cost, customer effort and results in higher satisfaction scores. This is achieved by leveraging call center routing efficiently.

The use of call routing technology is central to both in-house customer service and outsourcing solutions for making operations more efficient. An IVR (interactive voice response) paired with an automatic call distributor (ACD) routes the calls seamlessly.

What Is Call Center Routing?

Call center routing is a call management system that connects inbound calls to relevant departments, available agents, and other determining factors set by the contact center administrators. All of this happens before an agent attends a call.

Another name for call center routing software is Automated Call Distributor (ACD) because the software distributes calls at a contact center. Call distribution does not necessarily have to be within the contact center. ACDs can distribute calls across multiple sites, multiple companies for example offshore BPO services, by department, by caller profiles, time of day, call origination location and other demographics.

How Does it Work?

Call routing involves multiple phases that collectively cut down the waiting time and improve the customer experience. The process includes the following periodic steps:

Qualifying Phase

In the first phase, an interactive voice response menu asks customers about their needs. Based on the response via voice answers or the numbers pressed on the dial pad, the system understands the caller’s preferences and sends them to the requested destination.

Queueing Phase

The ACD receives the destination request and looks for the most available qualified agent to handle that call.  If no agent is available, the call sits in a queue until an agent is available.  During the queue time, music, messaging, and the option to be called back can be provided to the caller. The ACD is able to calculate wait times based on the number of calls arriving and count/frequency of available agents and can direct calls to different treatment options based on those calculations.

Call Distribution Phase

After queueing appropriately, a call is sent to an agent based on how each agent is listed for the types of calls they are qualified to handle.  Calls can also be routed to self-service solutions, BOTs, or messages if no agent is available, or the call arrives after hours. Once an agent has a call, they are able to transfer, conference, or place a caller on hold. Transfers and conference calls can be within the center or to any other location. The management staff is able to listen into calls, join calls, and see each agent’s status on calls in real time.

How Does Call Routing Improve Customer Experience?

Call routing is one of the major features of modern contact centers. A call center, being the customer-facing front of a business, has the responsibility of offering a quality customer experience. A seamless routing helps streamline a business’ customer operations and consequently, boosts CSAT (customer satisfaction).  The more effort a customer has to put into getting their request handled, including having to be transferred, the lower the customer’s satisfaction with the experience. So, getting the customer to the right place the first time is paramount to quality as well as cost-efficient in minimizing the resources needed to address their needs.

The following are important benefits of call routing:

Higher Productivity

Businesses can make their call center operations more efficient and increase the productivity of agents. Cutting the clutter with routing helps agents focus more on resolving customers’ issues.

Lower Waiting Times

Waiting in long queues is often frustrating for customers and negatively affects their experience. Automated call routing reduces waiting time by sending calls to available agents.

Reduced Call Abandonment Rates

An unattended customer is likely to hang up. Such calls are called abandoned calls. Call routing can help businesses reduce their call abandonment rates.

High First Contact Resolutions (FCR)

First contact resolution is one of the crucial success metrics of any contact center. By connecting a customer’s call to an agent with the required skillset, call centers yield high FCR.

Improved Call Center Performance

By replacing traditional manual call directing with call center routing software, contact centers can work more productively and efficiently. Thus, the overall performance of the contact center improves.

Enhanced Customer Experience

All these benefits add up and create a solid customer experience. Satisfied customers have a higher lifetime value and generate revenues for a business. Further, customer acquisition is easier when the customer experience is good.

Types of Routing Strategies

The end goal of call routing strategies is to efficiently distribute calls. However, there are different types of strategies call centers use depending on a company’s workforce management challenges. Before diving into strategies, note that call routing is more effective for inbound compared to an outbound contact center.  The following are some common routing strategies:

Automated Call Routing

Automated call routing uses the same number as the entry point and segment calls with the IVR menu. The segmented calls are then distributed among agents using the call center routing software.

Direct Routing

Direct routing is a straightforward routing strategy that uses separate numbers to contact different departments. For example, customers dial separate numbers to reach sales and support. In case the line is busy, a customer must contact again to connect to an agent. It is a dated strategy that is not effective with recent omnichannel contact center strategies.

Least Occupied Routing

Least occupied call routing ensures that all agents have the same workload. This distribution strategy cuts the waiting time for a customer to have their questions answered. The downside of the strategy is that it often overlooks the expertise required to resolve a customer’s issue. Complex issues may be sent to new agents and simple ones could reach the experts.

Skills-Based Routing

 This type of routing assesses the complexity of a customer’s issue and then connects the call to the most available agent with the required skill set. The rates of customer satisfaction and resolutions are significantly high with this strategy.

Intelligent Call Routing

Intelligent call routing is an upgrade from automated call routing that takes other factors like call priority, agent skills, and customer queue into consideration. The routing script records the responses and makes intelligent routing decisions. This strategy can yield solid call center metrics like high FCR, and low AHT.

Conclusion

Call center routing replaces traditional manual time-consuming redirects with an automated process which ensures faster and timely resolution of customer queries or issues. Agents can work more productively and incorporating multiple call centers is easier. Routing further bridges the gaps in service and creates a quality customer experience.

People Also Ask

What are the types of call routing?

What is IVR call routing?

It is a routing strategy that utilizes interactive voice response that records customer responses via dial pad and speech recognition to segment and direct calls.  IVRs can also manage self-service transactions such as providing account information such as order status, balance, last payment, the amount due, etc.