What Is Routing?

When Customers contact you for assistance, you'd want to make sure that they are routed to the best Agent that can help them in the most efficient manner. This is where Gladly's Routing engine brings intelligence, so Customers are helped as fast as possible.

How routing is different in Gladly

Ticket-Based Routing (Others)

Traditional ticket-based systems might assign conversations across Channels into separate tickets, or work items, for each Channel. So, what's the problem? You might end up with multiple Agents addressing the same issue. Not only does this result in overlapping work, but your customers could receive inconsistent responses from your business.

When communications are separated by Channel, and each communication is treated as a single transaction, the process is prioritized over people.

You're able to leverage the Customer Profile to route more than a "place in line." With Gladly, you can use the Customer Profile and situational scenarios to route Customers tailored for your business.

Customer-Centered Routing (Gladly)

Yes, all the traditional routing concepts are still available in Gladly (e.g., Rules, Business Hours) and are still crucial to how Gladly routes Customers. But, we're able to take it a step further by utilizing other tools unique to Gladly, like People Match and the Customer Profile, so that you can ensure complete visibility and context about your Customers.

How Customers are routed in Gladly

The routing engine looks at different factors to route Customers to an Agent. To start, Agents are routed Customers using a Push and Pull model.

• Push implies that the routing engine automatically sends (either offers or assigns) new work to an Agent.
• Pull implies that the Agent requests additional work from the routing engine manually. Typically by clicking Next.

At a high level, the process of routing Customers looks like this:

1. Customer contacts in.
2. The inbound Contact (i.e., phone call, message) is assessed by the routing engine for whether it's routable or not. SLA settings are used to determine the expected duration (for Reporting) and the due date (for Routing).
3. If applicable, Dedicated Hero logic is run.
4. The Customer is assigned to an Inbox based on their Entry Point/Channel.
5. The Customer is now eligible to be routed to an Agent. The Routing engine begins looking for an Agent to assign; Rules are also assessed in parallel. These Rules can move Conversations to a different Inbox, assign an Agent, and/or stop a Conversation from needing to be worked on. Even if a Conversation is routed, Rules will continue to execute until they are completed.
6. If an Agent is available and assigned to the same Inbox the Customer is routed to, and once an available Agent is selected by the routing engine, they are either offered (pushed) the Conversation (meaning the Agent still needs to accept the assignment), or they are automatically assigned.
   1. At this point, the Customer is now considered "routed."
   2. An Agent must be assigned and available in the Inbox to receive work from said Inbox.
7. Sometimes, after work has been routed/assigned to an Agent, it needs to be reassigned, which is a manual transfer of work from one Agent to another and bypasses the routing engine. In this case, the assigning Agent performs the act of routing.
8. When work is reassigned to an Inbox (when the current Agent is "unassigned"), either manually or automatically, this begins the routing process again. The routing engine will begin looking for an Agent to assign the Customer to.

The routing engine gets more intelligent by looking beyond conventional Customer information. This includes data points like their:

• History
• Situation
• Needs

This enhanced routing model is possible with People Match to truly help Customers get to the right Agent at the right time.

How Routing Customers is enhanced with People Match

While also using basic identifying rules like Wait Time and SLA, People Match can look at varying factors to decide which Customers to prioritize, how to route the Customer, and who to route them to.

Route by Customer History

Route the Customer by their status, behavior, sentiment, and overall satisfaction.

Status

• VIP, Lifetime Value, Loyalty Potential

Behavior

• Frequent Purchaser, Brand Influencer, Negative Actions

Satisfaction

• Sentiment, At-Risk Activity, Recalled Product

Route by Customer Situation

Route the Customer by the context of their situation and the overall urgency of the request.

Urgency

• Flight Cancellation, Appointment Today, Wait Time

Consultation

• Vacation Planning, Previous Travel, Exploring Products

Purchase

• Abandoned Cart, Clicked on Ad, Returns

Route By Customer Needs

Route the Customer to the Agent with the best set of skills and knowledge to help.

Expertise

• Billing Question, Product Type, Local Knowledge

Characteristics

• Language, Time Zones, Availability

Familiarity

• Dedicated Hero, Favorite Agent, Relationships