Managers in contact centers often have to deal with many factors:

• Utilization of the team
• Keeping the team happy
• Avoiding long wait times for customers
• Increasing customer happiness
• Be cost efficient

Sometimes, these interests can interfere and it is tough to find the best balance.

Having an efficient and flexible routing might be the best way to combine all of these conflicting goals. There are many ways to optimize routing - some basics are to keep opening hours and holidays straight. A caller should not be routed to a queue if the service is closed.

But there are many more options. For instance, you could offer a different routing if all your agents are in a call or if you have more than, let's say, 20 customers waiting* in your queue. In this case, you could check whether or not the caller is a VIP or any other important customer. If they are not, they could be forwarded to self-service options, call-backs or voicemail. If they are VIP, have them connected to one of your specialized VIP agents to ensure that they get personalized support despite high volume.

Let me briefly explain how you could achieve this with babelforce.

• Setup an inbound flow with switches checking opening times, queue load and agent availability.
• To check for the caller's status (whether or not VIP) you need a 2-way-integration.

And that's it! Have fun thinking of great routing options to improve your agent and customer happiness as well as your budget.

* This number of waiting customer is random. Before deciding on implementing such thresholds we always recommend careful data analysis that takes into account available agents per shift and average call volume.