Skill-based Mapping Contact Center Software
Despite the rise of new technologies enterprises still, persist in continuing with age-old methods. This is because a system has been known to work and people adapt to systems instead of adapting systems to their needs. Doing so would bring in improvements across the board. One such area is communications. Businesses stick with PBX because it is tried and tested and everyone else is using it. Stratified thinking can be an obstacle especially when better communication technologies can help a business achieve more.
Transplanting contact center software to business
Consider the contact center software so commonly used by call centers. It is a general perception that such call center software is only for call centers. However, transplanting the solution to any business would bring in changes for the better. It is higher up on the evolutionary scale of communications. Predictive dialer in contact center software can be useful for business executives as it is for agents. This feature can be used to assign a person to make cold calls and the dialer automatically dials numbers from a list. Another useful feature is an auto dialer that detects whether a human picks up the phone at the other end or whether the call goes to an answering machine. This feature also ties into a CRM. Businesses can use this for call campaigns and do it efficiently. Handling customers and their queries are part of businesses and most enterprises usually have an IVR, which, if tied to contact center software and a backend CRM, helps to distribute calls so that no one is heavily overburdened with handling calls. It gets even better with skill-based mapping feature of the call center software that business can leverage to save time, costs and also to assure better customer service.
Skill-based mapping
Skill-based mapping is one of the most valuable features of call center solutions. Simply put, it routes calls to a person who is most capable of handling the caller’s issue. In almost all enterprises that have several divisions, it is a routine matter for executives to take a call only to find that the caller’s issue pertains to another person in the department or in another department. The executive wastes valuable time and the caller experiences frustration. The actual person who can handle the caller may be kept idle.
How it works
Skill-based mapping takes care of these communication gaps. It is easy to program the software and include a set of rules mapped to an agent’s skills and the type of calls he is best capable of handling. Each executive is assigned an ID and when he logs into the system his lookup table makes him available for calls. When anyone calls, the switch checks the type of call against the skills and automatically routes the caller to the concerned person within an organization. An executive may have more than one skill and all such skills are mapped to the lookup table in order of priority.
A group of executives, such as executives tasked with selling one particular product or group of products may be linked to a particular defined skill or a set of skills with rankings for particular skills. An executive who has skills A & B and excels in skill A will automatically receive the type of call associated with skill A first and a call associated with skill B only if another executive who tops in skill B is busy or is not available. Skill-based routing also uses a caller’s telephone number as a criterion to route a call to a particular executive. It can also be based on the caller’s identity or any other parameter drawn from the CRM.
What this means for business organizations
Call center software with inherent skill based mapping feature can translate to productivity and efficiency for employees in a business that uses such software. Executives will not be bothered with calls that do not pertain to their area of responsibility. Callers needing specific answers are connected at one stroke to the person who is most capable of the answers or resolving complaints as the case may be. Employees are happy and can handle communications better. Calling customers are happy because they can speak to the right person straight away.
There are other features of call center solutions that may be considered as additional benefits. One of them is WebRTC phone and mobility. Executives may not be in office but they can still access records, make calls and receive skill-based routed calls while on the go. Then there is call recording, reporting, and analytics that help a business further enhance efficiencies. All things considered, contact center solutions are quite a step up from the normal IP PBX used in business enterprises and worth the investment provided the right supplier is chosen.
