In an ideal world, agents who possess the right skills and respond to customers’ queries in real time are the most appropriate. Unfortunately, that is hardly the case for most organizations.
While there are myriad factors that negatively impact the customer support experience, delayed response time is the most alarming.
According to Zendesk, 60% of customers feel that long hold and wait times are the most frustrating part of their experience. Sad, right?
So, how can we fix this conundrum? The answer is – an automatic call distributor (ACD) or intelligent case routing (ICR) system that identifies customers’ complaints or reasons for the contact and then routes them to the right agent.
This blog post explains the importance of intelligent case routing and why you need it to ride the crest of support success.
But Let’s First Understand What is Intelligent Case Routing?
Do you remember the time when Amazon got caught in a blaze of negative press due to a subpar support experience?
Let me cast your mind back to it. In 2013, a customer named, Chris William feared a phishing attack. To knock out the potential consequences, he contacted Amazon’s live chat to get his email disconnected from his Amazon account.
A simple enough request, ain’t it? Unfortunately, the customer support agent appeared to not understand the query. His poor English and canned responses made William spend almost an hour on the chat. He became so furious that he posted the entire chat transcript online, showing Amazon in a bad light.
Clearly, ignoring a customer’s request or routing the case to a not-so-suited agent is dreadful for support organizations. Now the question is, how can you connect your customers to agents that are most suited to solve their issues? Enter Intelligent Case Routing!
It is a technique used to gather customers’ queries through voice, digital, or social channels, and then apply preferred criteria to route them to the most appropriate agent. As a result, agents’ abilities to add value to support interactions increase, thereby building stronger customer relationships.
The Need for Intelligent Case Routing in the Modern Support World
Intelligent routing plays a significant role in kicking off an impeccable CX and making support operations efficient. Here’s how:
1. Improves First Call Resolution
Industry standards for satisfactory First Call Resolution (FCR) are around 70%-75%.
First Call Resolution (FCR) is one of the crucial KPIs to determine the efficiency of support organizations. An optimized intelligent case routing system connects customers to the right agent based on their skills, previous interactions, case complexity, etc. It leverages AI, ML, and NLP to provide agents with customers’ details, enabling them to deliver relevant and personalized support at the first contact.
2. Elevates Customer Satisfaction
“Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the customer gets out of it.” ~ Peter Drucker
Since the ticket is handled by the best available representative, the amount of time a customer is transferred or put on hold reduces, leading to lowered Average Handle Time (AHT). The quick, convenient, and personalized experience without delay increases customer satisfaction.
3. Augments Agent Productivity
Customer Experience ∝ Agent Productivity
Intelligent routing system isn’t only a boon for customers, it also helps agents by assigning them the cases they are most equipped to handle. As a result, they feel more efficient and productive to solve customer queries without further ado. A win-win situation, right?
Intelligent Case Routing – Traditional Vs SearchUnify Approach
Intelligent case routing has evolved drastically over the years. While traditional routing systems were rule-based, the modern counterparts leverage AI, ML, and more for case routing, resulting in more accuracy and operational efficiency.
SearchUnify, a unified cognitive platform, empowers support organizations with AI-powered automatic case routing that dramatically improves CX, as well as AX by assigning tickets to the right agent right off the bat.
Check out how SearchUnify’s ICR system is more capable of delivering spectacular support than traditional routing systems.
| Traditional Approach | SearchUnify Approach | |
| 1. | First Come First Serve Method Traditional case routing systems are based on the basic approach; the tickets that come in first are handled first. It doesn’t take into account the urgency and importance of the case, increasing the ticket escalation. |
Enables Intelligent Case Prioritization SearchUnify’s Escalation Predictor leverages AI and NLP to identify cases that are near the red mark based on several factors such as case sentiment, case scoring, case priority, product group, delta time, comments exchanged, etc., and prioritizes them over others. |
| 2. | Least Occupied Routing A standard routing system routes the case to the longest waiting agent or next available agent. The only aim of such routing is to reduce the wait time. |
Skill-Based Routing SearchUnify’s ICR system routes the case to the best agent with expertise on the said topic right off the bat, instead of passing it to the next available agent. This technique minimizes the mean time to resolve (MTTR), thereby augmenting the CX. |
| 3. | Direct Routing Conventional routing systems simply want customers’ queries to be connected with the specific department. It assigns the case to the first agent on the list or the next available agent without considering the exact customer’s needs. |
Factors in Customer Profile & Sentiment Analysis SearchUnify extract sentiments from the ticket information to better understand customers’ state of mind and needs. It then prioritizes support tickets accordingly and helps customers connect to the right agent. |
| 4. | Decision-Based Algorithm Traditional systems differentiate high-priority and least-priority cases based on the conditions present in underlying customer data. There is a huge volume of data, and unfortunately, if it’s not of good quality, it can cause the decision tree to become unstable, thus hampering the support experience. |
K-Nearest Neighbor Algorithm SearchUnify determines the similarity between the new case and available cases and then classifies them in the same category. The best part about the K-Nearest Neighbour (K-NN) algorithm is that since the local space is considered, a few data points are enough for the case classification. This ensures that the case is routed to the best-fit agent, reducing the resolution time and customer churn in the process. |
Sure-Shot Strategies To Improve Customer Support With ICR
Now that you know what intelligent case routing is and why it is worth the hype, it’s time to decipher ways to make the most of it.
1. Maintain High Data Quality
The effectiveness of the ICR system relies on customers’ and agents’ data. Make sure to keep indispensable information, such as call duration, customer satisfaction, agent ID, and agent skill set as transparent and accurate as possible.
2. Consistently Monitor Vital KPIs
To measure the efficacy of your ICR system, it is important to monitor customer support KPIs persistently. Keep a tab on agent productivity, customer satisfaction, customer churn rate, etc. to better understand the scope for improvement.
3. Zero In On Other Initiatives Simultaneously
While ICR improves overall support efficiency, it isn’t the only way to reform the customer experience. A support organization must also focus on additional important initiatives, including self-service and in-product support to empower customers to be self-sufficient to resolve queries.
Want to Leverage Intelligent Case Routing For Stellar Support Success?
AI-enabled intelligent case routing is a groundbreaking formula to improve resolution time, agent productivity, and customer satisfaction, to name a few. If you are interested in implementing a next-gen ICR to eliminate the bottlenecks in your support ecosystem, request a live demo today!
