Skills-based routing: definition, process and best practice

If you have a large support team, it can be difficult to maintain complex workflows. In an ideal world, your team would easily distribute tickets to the people who know how to handle them best – with no time lost unnecessarily bouncing support tickets between different agents or departments.

Without the right tools, teams have to use cumbersome and costly workarounds to route tickets to the right places. But using multiple features to route tickets leaves room for error and the tendency to cherry-pick tickets, which impacts agent productivity. If you have a considerable or consistently growing customer base and ticket volume, it might be time to consider skills-based routing.

• What is skills-based routing?
• How does the skills-based routing process work?
• Benefits of skills-based routing
• Types of skills-based routing
• Skills-based routing best practice
• How to set up skills-based routing with Zendesk

What is skills-based routing?

Skills-based routing (SBR) is a strategy support teams use to direct customer requests and questions to the most suitable pool of agents based on their skills and knowledge – rather than showing tickets to all available agents, regardless of whether they’re qualified to answer them.

Skills-based routing vs. automatic call distribution (ACD)

An automatic call distributor (ACD) routes calls to the first available support agent (often for queue-based routing). It’s commonly used in the telecommunications sector to manage high-volume inbound customer calls.

Skills-based routing systems are a technological progression of the ACD system, ensuring support tickets across all channels get routed to the most qualified agent.

Skills-based routing is a more modern and robust approach to ticket assignment because it accounts for more factors than just availability.

How does the skills-based routing process work?

Skills-based routing works by matching customers with agents who have the most relevant skill set to help resolve their issues.

To do this, the system administrator notes business needs and agent skills and then assigns those agents to the skill groups that apply to them. An administrator then sets up routing rules and configurations to ensure inbound support tickets go to an agent with the appropriate skills.

You can base these skill groups on factors important to your organisation, such as:

• Language: some common global languages that may be beneficial in a call centre include English, Spanish, Mandarin, German and Arabic.

• Subject matter expertise: agents who are well versed in a subject area or have a formal education may be better suited to certain tasks.

• Experience: agents who have been with your company longer and have had more training and time to build up their expertise will likely be a big asset when providing customer service.

What are the roles and processes used in skills-based routing?

Intelligent routing is a support strategy that allows contact centre agents to direct conversations to the right agent based on their availability, capacity, skill and conversation priority, so they can resolve tickets faster.

Generally, an IVR is used to direct inbound calls, while an AI tool helps route digital tickets to the best support agent by discerning the customer’s needs and reviewing agent skills listed in the system.

When set up properly, the skills-based routing process should look something like this:

• Administrator: adds agents to the support system and categorises them by skills. They then build out routing rules to ensure AI can accurately assign support tickets to the right agent.

• Customer: experiences an issue and places a support request.

• AI: opens a support ticket, whether the customer placed a traditional request or simply commented on your business’s Facebook page with a question. AI then routes the ticket to the best agent based on the customer’s intent and the business rules the administrator set up.

• Support agent: if limited agents are available, the customer will be placed in a queue.

All of these roles and processes need to work seamlessly to ensure a timely resolution.

Benefits of skills-based routing

The main benefits of skills-based routing include higher agent productivity, more efficient workflows and a better bottom line.

Whether you’re running a busy contact centre and fielding inbound support tickets across several communication channels or a small business helping customers make the most of your product, skills-based distribution can help. Support your team with an optimised ticket or call assignment process so they can focus on their specialisations.

Improved agent productivity

With SBR, efficient customer service reps can focus on the tickets they know how to answer.

This leads to happier agents – because they can get straight to solving problems rather than rerouting tickets – as well as higher productivity, increased first-call resolution and decreased first-response time.

But it gets even better…

Customers get better answers because they get the opportunity to speak with a well-trained agent who understands them and, more importantly, how to resolve their problems.

More efficient workflows

Sometimes, skills-based routing systems become tedious due to an overwhelming catalogue of features that complicate workflows, confuse reps and slow down resolution times.

However, with skills-based routing, support reps can work out of a single view that matches their particular skill set to the tickets they’re handling. With the Zendesk SBR feature, it’s easy to update workflows by adding or removing a skill or adding new agents.

What’s more, as there is often a certain standard of support outlined in customer contracts called a service level agreement (SLA), support teams have to properly prepare themselves to meet those expectations.

Fewer costs and higher profit margins

Removing complex ticket triaging processes frees up hours agents would otherwise spend assigning and routing support requests. Don’t waste time and energy tracking who has what skill – your software should do that for you.

Skills-based routing can help lower costs in a couple of different ways:

• Speeding up time to resolution so you can help more customers without raising payroll expenses

• Reducing the need to have triage agents route tickets, which can easily be a full-time job

Types of routing and when to use them

Skills-based routing is a top solution for companies because other routing types tend to be less effective. Of course, this is entirely subjective and ultimately depends on your business’s needs.

But the three primary skills-based ticket routing strategies you may want to try are: queue-based, omnichannel and value-based.

Skills-based routing best practice

Learn how to implement skills routing in your organisation to maximise productivity and boost customer satisfaction.

How to set up skills-based routing with Zendesk

It’s important to determine which abilities are most important to your support org before you start routing.

Our system is built on the idea that a support rep should be able to answer any ticket they see. If a ticket doesn’t require any special abilities, let anyone answer it – this makes it available to the largest pool. If a ticket requires a unique set of skills, you can hide it from general support agents and ensure that specialised reps get eyes on it. This can help improve the efficiency of your support team.

With our skills-based routing capabilities, you can make each ticket available to a select group of agents rather than routing it to one particular rep by:

• Creating skill types to organise agent skills
• Adding skills that make sense for your organisation
• Assessing agent strengths and weaknesses to accurately assign them to skills
• Building out routing rules specific to your company’s workflow and priorities
• Setting up ticket filtering so the right agents have access to relevant support requests

That way, you don’t have to worry about routing a ticket to a customer support rep who is unavailable, out of the office or overburdened.

Learn more about skills-based routing with Zendesk.

Route your way to success

With a skills-based automated ticketing system, admins can configure agent skills and assign agents to specific ticket types, which ensures they receive a ticket they can solve every time. The ability to automate routine tasks – in this case routing – and getting the right ticket to the right agent can improve efficiency, ultimately making for happier employees and a happier bottom line.