A skill is a topic or area of responsibility, for example sales, technical support or complaints. Every conversation belongs to a skill and a language, and only agents qualified for both receive it. Each skill has rules for distribution: when it accepts conversations, how long customers wait at most, which priority its conversations have and how the next agent is selected. In technical jargon, this is called Automatic Call Distribution, or ACD for short.
In the Administration, a skill appears in two places:
- Under Global elements › Skills, you create, name and delete it — see Managing skills.
- Under Automatic conversation distribution, its distribution rules are in a dialog with twelve tabs.
Setting up a skill
A new skill does not accept anything yet. This is how you make it operational:
- Create it under Global elements › Skills.
- Open it under Automatic conversation distribution and enter on the Business hours tab when it is open — see Business hours and holidays. Without an entry, it is always closed.
- Adjust the other tabs, for example wrap-up and priority on Call or Email system.
- In the Automatic conversation distribution list, right-click the skill and choose Open manually. A new skill is closed manually.
- Qualify agents for it — individually or through skill groups, see Agents and profiles.
- Route conversations to the skill in the flow.
How an agent is selected
- Queue. All waiting conversations are in one common order — across skills and channels: first by priority, then by VIP level, then by wait time. See Priority and VIP.
- Stage 1. All logged-in agents who are qualified for the skill in the conversation’s channel and for its language are responsible. At first, only those among them with the best level are considered.
- Stage 2. If an escalation criterion is met — or if none is set and nobody is free in stage 1 — all agents down to the minimum level are considered. See Distribution scheme and distribution strategy.
- Agent. Among several free, equally qualified agents, the distribution strategy chooses, for example the one who has been free the longest. The agent is offered the conversation for the Signaling time. If they do not accept, it returns to the queue with its position.
What the customer experiences while waiting — announcements, music, an offer of a callback — is determined by the flow.
Managing skills
How you create, color and delete skills, what the Automatic conversation distribution list shows and how you open or close a skill manually or transfer its settings.
Queue and basic data
The Basic Data tab of a skill — limits for waiting conversations and wait times, pick, real-time translation and routing group — and how the flow reacts when a limit is reached.
Settings per channel
The Call, Voicemail, Email system and Chat tabs of a skill — signaling time, wrap-up, priority, known agent, callbacks, presented phone number, sender and translation.
Distribution scheme and distribution strategy
When distribution also includes less qualified agents, which of several free agents receives the next conversation and what routing groups are for.
Business hours and holidays
When a skill accepts conversations, how you enter business hours and holidays, open and close the skill manually, and how many callbacks it offers.
Constraints
How you prevent too many agents from taking a break, switching to wrap-up, logging off or giving up a skill at the same time — with warnings and prohibitions that depend on the situation in the skill.
Classification
How agents categorize a conversation at the end — for example by concern or outcome — and how you set the choices per skill and channel.
Languages
How you create the languages in which conversations are conducted and distributed, with voices for announcements, a dictionary for spell checking and a tag for forwarded emails.
Holiday calendars
How you create holiday calendars, import public holidays from the internet or from Outlook, and assign the calendars to skills.
VIP classes and filters
How you give important customers priority in the queue — with VIP classes that have a level and a color, and filters that recognize senders by their phone number or address.