Edit

Share via

Overview of skill-based routing

  • Article

Applies to: Dynamics 365 Contact Center—embedded, Dynamics 365 Contact Center—standalone, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Note

The data such as but not limited to skills, rating model, and rating value that is created, updated, and used in Omnichannel for Customer Service is shared with other model-driven apps (Field Service and Project Service Automation) installed in your environment. Similarly, the data that are created, updated, and used in other model-driven apps are available for use in Omnichannel for Customer Service.

In the customer service center, your customer service representatives (service representatives or representatives) have different skill sets and abilities. The customers who reach out to the contact center might have different needs. Skill-based routing lets your customer service center distribute work items (conversations) to the representative who is most qualified to solve the issue. Skill-based routing improves the quality of customer service by automatically distributing work items to the representative who has the skills necessary to do the work.

You can also associate skills with bots and route work items using skill-based routing.

For example, for an incoming conversation related to Xbox from Spain, the skill required is knowledge of the Xbox product and Spanish language. Now, with skill-based routing, the system identifies the representatives with those specific skills and distributes the conversation to one of them.

Skill-based routing allows you to easily match the conversation with the representative who's most proficient in dealing with it while maintaining the workload of the representative. You can associate distinct skills with each representative on your team and create rules to make sure that conversations matching those skills are always assigned to them.

You can also enable your representative to update skills for the work items assigned to them. Representatives can assess, add, remove, and update skills required for a particular work item, based on their abilities and experience. Now, if your organization uses a machine learning model for skill prediction, you can use the updated skill information to retrain your skill finder model, so that the system is later able to efficiently and effectively route the work items (conversations) to the representative best suited for the work. More information: Retrain skill finder model

The skill control works as expected only when a work item is assigned to a service representative.

Value proposition of skill-based routing

  • Assign conversations to representatives who are best qualified to address the issue.

  • Minimize overheads in queue maintenance.

  • Use representative skills effectively.

  • Enhance productivity.

  • Effectively manage skills based on the CSAT and KPIs.

  • Resolve conversations faster.

Prerequisites

If your environment has scheduling solutions, then you must have version 9.0.0.0 or later.

Videos

Skill-based routing in Omnichannel for Customer Service

Set up skills and assign representatives
Set up skill-based routing
Model data tables as skills