skills-based routing in the modern contact centerfigure 3: routing in a multi-contact call center...

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Skills-Based Routing In the Modern Contact Center

by Vijay MehrotraVice President, Blue Pumpkin Solutions

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| TABLE OF CONTENTS |

INTRODUCTION 1

THE MODERN CONTACT CENTER 2

SKILL-BASED ROUTING FOR THE MODERN CONTACT CENTER: TECHNOLOGY + PROCESSES + PEOPLE 3

WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT FOR THE MODERN CONTACT CENTER: MORE COMPLEX THAN EVER 7

CONCLUSION: WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS 9

ABOUT BLUE PUMPKIN 10

About the Author 10

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| SKILLS-BASED ROUTING IN THE MODERN CONTACT CENTER |

INTRODUCTION

In The Beginning, there was The Call Center. Calls came in and were handled immediately if there was an agent available; ifnot, they waited for an agent to become available. All agents could handle all calls, and if a call was not handled immedi-ately it waited on a first-come-first-served basis until someone was available to take it (see Figure 1).

Accurate forecasting, accurate scheduling, and cost-effec-tive planning were significant challenges for managementeven then, due to uncertainties in call volumes, arrival pat-terns, and handle times as well as agent breaks, lunches,attendance, and attrition. But at least managing the rout-ing was simple.

Then, back in the dark ages of the 1980s, along came TheSkill-Based Call Center. Different agents were trained andskilled to handle different call types. Some agents handledone type of call, some handled calls from multiple queues,and perhaps some agents handled all types of calls (seeFigure 2).

Suddenly, forecasting became harder ("how do I deal withmultiple queues with different Service Level targets?"),agent scheduling became harder ("how can I tell if I haveenough coverage I have on the French queue when some ofmy agents speak both English and French?"), and planningbecame much harder ("how many people should I hire forwhich groups, and should I cross train some of my existingagents?").

Then, back in the recent glory days of the 1990s, The Skill-Based Call Center somewhat abruptly became The ModernContact Center (also know as the Multi-Channel ContactCenter). In addition to one or more inbound call queues,suddenly inbound emails (and in some cases chat sessions,web forms, and customer callbacks) were added to the traf-fic load (see Figure 3).

And now effective forecasting, scheduling, and planning arereally, really hard.

This article is focused on Skill-Based Routing and WorkforceManagement in today’s Modern Contact Center ("MCC"). Tobegin, we will provide some historical background abouthow we came to be where we are. From here, we will exam-ine the different routing strategies that can be employedwithin a contact center today and discuss the basic pros andcons of different strategies. From here, we will look at thechallenges of forecasting, scheduling, and planning forMCCs. We will conclude with some predictions about whatthe future may hold for routing and workforce management.

Figure 3: Routing in a multi-contact Call Center withcustomer queries coming in via multiple channels—call,email, chat, etc—to skills-based group of agents.

Figure 2: Routing in a skill-based Call Center with cus-tomers calling into skills-based group of agents (e.g. bylanguage), with routing based on language preference ofthe caller.

Figure 1: Routing in a standard Call center with custom-ers calling into homogeneous group of agents.

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THE MODERN CONTACT CENTER

Many outsiders yawn at the notion of the Modern Contact Center. "What’s the big deal?" they ask derisively."Haven’t most call centers always had to deal with faxes, correspondence, and customer callbacks when doingtheir planning and scheduling? What’s so different now?".

Good questions. Indeed, what is so different now?

Email. Lots of email.

The evolution Modern Contact Center is a direct consequence of the explosive accessibility and popularity ofemail. Email is clearly the "killer app" for the Internet: according to Jupiter Media Metrix (July 2000), 96% ofall Internet users are using email.

The growth rate in the number of Internet users continues to be explosive (online site nua.com estimates 407.1million as of November 2000, up from just 16 million in December of 1995), with nearly all of them using email.Given this widespread adoption, email customer service appears at first glance to be an ideal on-line business-to-business and consumer-to-business application.

For customers, email communications are not limited to the hours of operation of a call center, and they neednot ever wait on hold before sending an email. For online merchants, customers’ expectations have made emailsupport virtually a requirement. Managers salivate at the prospect of reduced telecommunications and laborcosts coupled with the promise of increased customer satisfaction, while customers dream of efficient,frictionless communications.

NET RESULT: this tidal wave of Internet email users has been the primary catalyst for transforming yesterday’sCall Center into today’s Modern Contact Center, although the results have not quite been what we all hadexpected and hoped for (more on this below). More recently, Chat and "Call-Me-Back" features have alsoemerged as potentially important channels for the delivery of support and service via the Internet—andthrough the call center. However, the pace and volume of adoption of these technologies has to date been farless than that of email.

Early adopters proudly trumpeted the availability of service and support via email to customers, press, andanalysts. Other companies, pressured by customers and competitors, scrambled to make themselves accessiblevia email.

In many cases, there was not much real thought about the systems or people infrastructure that would beneeded to support email traffic. Nor was their much recognition of, (a) how quickly customers would adopt thismedium; (b) what types of expectations for responsiveness and problem resolution customers would have foremail; or (c) what the cost and public relations implications of poorly managed email processes might be.

Many management teams typically just dumped this responsibility onto their call centers with a shrug and a"just deal with it" directive.

The results have been decidedly mixed.

Good news: Customer adoption has been strong. Customer contacts by e-mail have been projected to grow bymore than 250% during 1999-2001—and the actual growth rate will end up being even higher.

Bad news: Email service quality (and its management) has been abysmal. A recent ICSA/e-Satisfy (March 2001)survey lays out the state of email support and service quite starkly. Among its many findings: only 4 of 10emails ever get resolved. More telling is the fact that only 1 of 10 companies monitors the quality of service thatis delivered by email.



Worse news: Customers are not happy with companies who provide poor service. For executives, the mostserious findings in the ICSA/e-Satisfy survey: customers’ negative experience with email services drives a 30-48% decrease in customer loyalty.

So what exactly has gone wrong?

At the most basic level, what we have been learning the hard way over the past few years is that managementof a Modern Contact Center is a more complex undertaking than standard call center management. Managingeffectively in these environments depends on a clear and integrated vision of Technology, Processes, andPeople. The two most important components of this are Skill-Based Routing and Workforce Management, whichwe will discuss in the next two sections.

SKILL-BASED ROUTING FOR THE MODERN CONTACT CENTER: TECHNOLOGY + PROCESSES + PEOPLE

Historically, there has been a tendency to think of Skill-Based Routing as a feature of an ACD, a CTI device, or someother piece of call center technology. Similarly, MCC Skill-Based routing is thought of by most people as the com-bination of routing technologies (email servers and tracking systems, chat servers, ACDs, and CTI devices) thatwork together to physically route the traffic to, and through, the contact center.

In reality, however, Skill-Based Routing is actually a combination of Technology (technical specifications pro-grammed into routing devices about which contacts should be routed to which people at which times), Processes(policies and decisions about how best to manage these different types of contacts), and People (the employeeswho actually have the skills, training, and knowledge to diagnose customer issues, resolve them successfully, andcommunicate effectively with customers through the different channels that the center supports).

To understand MCC Skill-Based Routing, it is important to first recognize that there are really two distinct typesof contacts: "Immediate" and "Deferred." Each contact type, in turn, has different Technology, Process, and Peopleaspects to consider.

Inbound phone calls, as well as Chat sessions, are "Immediate" contacts. Immediate contacts require an immedi-ate response to a customer who is interacting with the agent in real-time and staying engaged with the agent untilthe issue that prompted the service request is resolved.

Immediate queues have Service Objectives that are measured in terms of the time a customer spends waitingbefore being engaged in direct communication with an agent, and these goals are typically defined in terms ofshort time intervals of seconds or minutes (for example, Average Speed of Answer of 30 seconds, 95% beinganswered within 2 minutes, etc). Customers who make contact through Immediate channels and have to wait to beserved by an agent will eventually abandon the queue—and quite likely be unhappy about it.

Emails, as well as customer callbacks, are "Deferred" contacts. Deferred contacts are not handled in real-time, butinstead are queued up in a database-driven routing system for agents to work on without having the customerthrough the whole process. For example, a customer sends an email that waits in queue for some time; its con-tents are eventually read, researched, and replied to by an agent. Similarly, for a customer whose issue is notresolved on an initial phone call, an open case or trouble ticket may be created in a database and put into a queue;a second-level agent will eventually read this case, research the problem, and call the customer back.

Deferred queues typically have Service Objectives that are measured in terms of the time spent until a customer’sissue is either initially responded to or eventually resolved. These goals are typically defined in terms of hours ordays (for example, Initial Customer Response within 4 hours, 95% Resolution within 12 hours, etc).

Deferred contacts do not formally abandon the same way that Immediate contacts do—instead, the backlog ofcases in these queues continues to grow until the cases are addressed. However, there is a clearly observed andlogical phenomenon that occurs: the longer a customer’s issue waits in a Deferred queue, the more likely that cus-tomer is to either make a phone call and/or send another email trying to understand what is happening with theircase.

Initially, many organizations gave very little thought to email, and management of these queues was far less for-mal than traditional phone queues, both in terms of technology and process. Organizations often fall into the fol-lowing bad practices when launching their email support channel:

• Lack of Service Level Objectives. Just as with inbound calls, the definition of a Service Level objec-tive for email has major implications for staffing requirements and agent schedules. By treating emailas an informal support channel without a specific service target, managers create problems, both bynot helping to establish customers’ expectations and by not understanding the financial costs associ-ated with supporting email.

• Unclear Queue Definitions. Just as with inbound calls, different types of email require agents with dif-ferent knowledge. Early adopters of email service often lack either the routing technology or the clearthinking to separate out different types of cases into separate queues that are handled by differentagents. The result can border on chaos: slower response times and reduced first-reply resolution, bothof which drive up the backlog and increase the average response and resolution times.

• Lack of Recognition for the Different Skills Required to Support Different Channels. Differentchannels require agents to have different skills. For example, the ability to interpret an issue that ispresented in writing in an email is a somewhat different capability than being able to troubleshoot aproblem with a customer over the phone.

• Naïve Assumptions About Self-Service and Auto-Response. Thanks in part to overzealous vendorsof new technologies in this area, there has been a lot of hype around web-based customer service ("justpublish your FAQ list, and customers will solve all their own problems") and around email auto-responsecapabilities ("we can determine the customer’s question and reply without any assistance from anagent at all!"). However, such hype overlooks the fact that both self-service and auto-response (a)depends heavily on the quality of your knowledge base, which can have significant expense associatedwith it and (b) simply will not resolve the issues for a great many customers.

The result: unrealistically low forecasts for traffic, and overly optimistic estimates of the cost of sup-porting web, email, and chat channels.

Once management have defined queues, established service level expectations, examined the agent skillsrequired, and taken their best realistic guess at the traffic that will be coming through each of your new channels,there are still key business questions about how to route these contacts through the center.





For Modern Call Centers, there are three basic types of routing strategies (see Figure 4):

• Dedicated Groups: In this model, each queue for each type of contact has a group of agents that isdedicated to handle those contacts.

• Task Switching Groups: Here, agents are capable of handling multiple types of contacts (email,inbound phone, chat, etc), but are scheduled to handle different contact types at different times of day.For example, an agent may be scheduled for email from 8:00 am to 10:30 am, lunch from 10:30 am to11:15 am, inbound phone calls from 11:15 am to 2:30 pm, and email from 2:30 pm to 5:00 pm.

• Blended Groups: In this model, agents who are skilled for multiple types of channels can get routedcontacts from each of these channels at any time. For example, an agent who is skilled for inboundphone queue, an email queue, and a chat queue could handle three phone calls followed by an emailfollowed by a chat session.

When selecting a routing strategy, whether for a multi-site virtual center, a single contact center, or for an indi-vidual group of agents or queues, there are a number of key factors to take into account, including:

• Agents’ Capabilities

• Costs of Acquiring/Training/Retaining Agents

• Scheduling Processes

• Technology Capabilities and Limitations

• Response Time Objectives For Different Queues and Different Channels

• Benefits of Specialization

• Agent Occupancy

Figure 4: For MCCs, there are three basic types of routing strategies: Dedicated, Task Switching, and Blended.

Each of the routing models described above has its pros and cons, as summarized in the table below:

To summarize, different environments will require different routing strategies. In particular, email (as well as chat)may require different competencies (interpretive reading and analysis, strong written communications skills) thantraditional call centers require. In addition, there is almost always a trade-off among specialization, AverageHandle Time, and agent occupancy: greater specialization typically produces lower AHT values, but can also resultin lower agent occupancy.



Dedicated Groups • Easiest to hire for

• Shorter training

• Specializing typicallyenables agents todeliver lower AHTs

• Groups with lowvolumes and/or spikytraffic patterns can bevery expensive tosupport

• Single-focus agentsresult in very limitedflexibility in dealingwith multiple channels

This is an ideal modelfor large organizationsthat have the trafficvolume to cost-effectively support it.

Smaller centers.However, will simplynot be able to justifythe expense.

Task Switching Groups • Unlike blending, doesnot depend on tightly integrated multi-channel routing technologies

• Easier for agents tounderstand

• Provides variety formulti-talented agentswithout the potentialconfusion of blending

• Requires multi-skilledagents

• Situations may arisewhere calls wait whileless urgent emails arebeing handled

This is the mostcommon model in theindustry today.

Effectiveimplementationdepends on anintelligent WorkforceManagement System.

Blended Groups • Drives high agentoccupancy rates,because agents keepworking as long asthere is any contactwaiting

• Responsive tounexpected spikes inone or more channels

• Requires integratedrouting technology

• Heavy strain on agents,potentially largenegative impact onAHTs

• Requires multi-skilledagents

This model isrecommended onlywhen one of yourchannels (typicallyemail or chat) is lightlyloaded relative tophone.

Effectiveimplementationdepends on anintelligent WorkforceManagement System.

Routing Model Strength Weakness Comments



Finally, true blending of traffic across different contact types will require an integrated routing technology, whiletask-switching will require either a single platform for inbound calls and inbound emails or multiple desktop sys-tems and logins for agents. However, from our experience, it is more important for the management team to focuson the competencies and trade-offs associated with these different strategies, and to acquire or adopt the tech-nology to fit the business needs. Today, the availability of many, many different technological solutions in differ-ent price and complexity levels lets you focus on the people- and process-aspects of skill-based routing first,which is critical.

How should one go about choosing a routing strategy? When possible, it is usually very valuable to try differentgroups under different conditions and carefully examine the results. For example, for a center handling bothinbound calls and emails, it may be worthwhile to try one group in a task-switching mode and another in a blend-ing mode and then to compare the resulting values for AHT and overall contacts handled. From these results, youhave a better chance of estimating the impact of adopting each of these strategies on a larger scale.

As contact centers become more complex, simulation models are also increasingly useful for examining theimpact of different strategies. Using historical data to understand arrival patterns for different queues from dif-ferent channels, simulation models provide insight into the impact of different routing strategies, and staffinglevels, on the service levels for the different queues.

WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT FOR THE MODERN CONTACT CENTER: MORE COMPLEX THAN EVER

The traditional call center Workforce Management problem has three main components:

Planning: Based on call forecasts, identify the right number of people needed on staff to achieve Service Levelobjectives, typically within some cost constraints.

Scheduling: Based on near-term call forecasts and work rules, schedule the right number of available agents(including start times, breaks, lunches, and other off-phone activities) to achieve Service Levels for an upcomingweek or month.

Real-Time: Based on new information (such as updated call forecasts, absences, and schedule adherence), makeadjustments to the schedule to maintain service quality for the current day or week.

In traditional call centers, these business processes are typically support-ed by a single software application, or more commonly by people withlarge impenetrable spreadsheets, dark circles under their eyes, and a longline of people outside their office. While there is a great deal of experi-ence, science, and software to support Workforce Management for tradi-tional call centers, most call centers today are still "winging it" with theirhome grown tools.

This can be effective for traditional call centers, especially those withsmall numbers of agents. However, for Skills-Based call centers, planning,scheduling, and managing the agent workforce is a problem that cannotbe effectively handled without more sophisticated Workforce Managementsoftware.

What is different about the Skills-Based environment? First of all, thereare multiple queues to be forecasted, and often these queues will have dif-

ferent service level requirements. In addition, Skills-Based Scheduling is a far more difficult mathematical prob-lem, because Skills-Based Routing means that agents are inherently "differently abled."

Figure 5: Identify the appropriate emp-loyees needed to staff for achievingService Level objectives within costrestraints in a timely manner.



By "differently abled," we mean that some agents can handle one type of call, others can handle all types of calls,and still others may be somewhere in between (see Figure 5). In addition, with different routing logic, calls may beoffered to different groups of agents at different times, with different priorities, and under different conditions("send Sales calls to the Service group only after they have been waiting at least 30 seconds and only if the aver-age occupancy of the Service agents is under 70%").

Traditional call center scheduling methods seek to determine the required number of agents needed during eachtime interval, and then scheduling as close to that number as possible. However, this assumes that all agents canhandle the same types of calls.

However, under Skills-Based Routing,agents are differently abled. Therefore,the idea of a single "required number ofagents" no longer makes any sense: thenumber of agents needed depends on thespecific skills of the available agents andon how calls are actually routed to them.Intelligent scheduling algorithms musttherefore estimate how much of an impactspecific agents will have on Service Levelsfor multiple queues during each specifictime interval, and then use this informationto determine the best overall schedules.

To see this more concretely, consider aSkills-Based call center taking calls inEnglish and French queues, with three dif-ferent types of agents—English only,French only, and Cross-Skilled (see Figure6). Adding a French only agent will notonly help improve Service Levels forFrench calls, but may also allow Cross-Skilled agents to spend more of their timeon English calls, which will improve the SLsfor English calls as well. The actual mag-nitude of the impact of agents on each ofthe queues will be influenced by many fac-tors, including call volume forecasts, AHTforecasts, the mix of skills and agents inthe call center at the time, and the detailsof the routing logic for both types of calls.

If Workforce Management tools are valuable for Skills-Based call centers, they are even more essential for MCCenvironments, where the workforce management challenges are even more complex.

For forecasting in MCCs, it is critical to have accurate data about contact volumes, arrival patterns, and handlingtimes. For centers whose email-handling software does not have either a robust database or custom reportingcapabilities, obtaining this data can be challenging; in general, estimates and rough observations are far betterthan no information at all about traffic, and time spent conducting this data analysis is well invested.

Incoming French

Agents who only speak

French

Agents who speak French and English

Agents who only speak English

Incoming English

Figure 6: By adding a French-only agent, the flow and service level ofFrench calls improves. By freeing up some of the bilingual agents’ time,the flow and service level quality to English callers also increases.


Even when there is an established system for storing and accessing historical data about deferred queues, it isimportant to examine the data carefully. In particular, today’s email systems typically do a poor job of actuallytracking how much time is spent on specific contacts. To see this, think of how often you have multiple emailsopen on your own screen: how should your "handling time" for those contacts be measured? Getting realisticestimates for these values is vital to good forecasting and scheduling.

For both planning and scheduling, forecasts are a key input, as are the details of the routing strategy that is beingfollowed (dedicated groups, blending, or task-switching agents) and other information about agents’ skills andavailability.

In addition, it is critical for workforce management software to be designed specifically for MCCs, for the mathe-matics of optimal scheduling of blended or task-switched agent groups—and the calculations associated withestimating Service Levels—for both immediate and deferred queues—are significantly different than the Erlang-based algorithms used by traditional call center software.

Without an appropriate workforce management model, the result will be inaccurate predictions of service levels,particularly for deferred queues, and errors in headcount and deployment.

CONCLUSION: WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

Despite the recent demise of many "dot-com" companies, it is clear that email and other channels are a perma-nent part of the customer service landscape, and that yesterday’s inbound call centers will be called upon to han-dle most or all of these customer contacts.

This will require more investment in Skills-Based Routing, which includes the hardware and software technologies,as well as the business processes and the people resources needed to support them.

The overall financial investment in the Modern Contact Center, along with the increased emphasis on customerservice as a differentiator between competing firms, will put tremendous pressure on executives, directors, andmanagers.

In these more complex contact centers and more competitive business environments, those responsible for man-aging contact centers will be required to deliver ever better and more consistent service at lower relative costs.

Workforce management software for the Modern Contact Center—along with the people and processes needed tosupport them—will be critical for providing a foundation for intelligent planning, scheduling, and day-to-daymanagement for these contact centers.



Blue Pumpkin 884 Hermosa Court Sunnyvale, California 94085 U.S. & Canada: 877 257 6756 International: 408 830 5400 Fax: 408 830 5411

© 2003 Blue Pumpkin Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Blue Pumpkin and the Blue Pumpkin Logo are registered trademarks of Blue Pumpkin Software, Inc. Rev 04/14/03. PN RP0026

ABOUT BLUE PUMPKIN

Blue Pumpkin offers industry-leading workforce optimization solutions that improve the performance of a cus-tomer contact center’s most important and valuable asset—their people. Our customers improve profitability,increase customer satisfaction, and raise employee productivity through our innovative applications and best-practices professional services. Our solutions, including sophisticated skills-based forecasting and scheduling,enable companies to establish measurable goals, develop long-term staffing plans, deploy resources, manageemployee performance, evaluate the results, and implement on-going improvements. Blue Pumpkin has deliveredproven value and high ROI to more than 1,000 organizations worldwide, including many Global 2000 corporations.

About the Author

As Vice President, Solutions, Vijay Mehrotra works closely with Blue Pumpkin Marketing, Engineering, andConsulting groups to define and deliver business solutions for Blue Pumpkin's customers. During his ten yearcareer as an operations management consultant, he has worked with a wide range of contact centers across manydifferent industries, including AOL-Europe, Intuit, General Electric, Charles Schwab, EDS, Remedy Software, andMaytag.

Vijay worked closely with product development teams at both Blue Pumpkin and Rockwell Software on the devel-opment of advanced Workforce Management technologies. He has published many articles on routing, scheduling,and simulation in publications such as Call Center Management Review, Call Center Solutions, Interfaces, andService Level Newsletter.

He holds a B.A. from St. Olaf College in Mathematics and Economics, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University inOperations Research. He was previously co-founder and CEO of Onward Inc., an operations management consult-ing firm that was acquired by Blue Pumpkin in 2002.

skills-based routing in the modern contact centerfigure 3: routing in a multi-contact call center...

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