What is intelligent routing

Using artificial intelligence (AI) to connect customers with agents marks a significant change in technology. For many contact centers, it’s still standard to use methods that originated with technology that is nearing 50 years old. 

The first queue-based call routing strategies originated in 1973 with the first Automatic Call Distributors (ACDs). In queue-based routing, customers reach the first available agent or the longest available agent.  

In the 1990s, contact centers began grouping calls to specifically skilled groups of agents. Skills-based routing offered a minor improvement from the overall queue but still routes customers to the longest available agent within a defined skill.

Both queue and skill-based strategies helped contact centers to keep calls distributed across agents – but what about the customer experience or call connections to target specific business goals? In today’s customer experience economy, a focus on the customer is imperative to remain competitive and manage to business goals.

When Customer Experience Matters, There is No Room for Random

Skill-based or queue-based routing randomly routes customers to agents. Within a skill or queue, intelligent routing identifies the best agent match for every individual customer. Instead of random routes, AI-driven routing powers every customer connection with data to make the best match with an agent.

In the customer experience economy, where customers expect a personalized experience, there is no room for random.

Power Connections in Real-Time with AI Routing

What’s not needed in intelligent routing? Agent surveys, customer surveys, or manual data updates. Instead, intelligent routing uses all available data to make the best match for each customer in real-time.

Enlighten AI Routing uses the most comprehensive holistic CX data in the industry to gather insights from past interactions, discovering how customers prefer to interact and how agents handle different types of interactions. The solution gains more insight from analytics data that adds business-specific information, like Sentiment or agent soft-skills. Matches get even more precise with the addition of any CRM data or information on agents’ training, proficiency, or other experience. All of this data informs transforms the ACD with real-time intelligence that prescribes the best agent for every interaction, driving better experiences for customers while aligning call routing to achieve business goals.

AI is Only as Good as Its Data

Enlighten AI Routing is the only solution that powers its AI with holistic CX data gathered from all available data sources. Data is the backbone for AI to improve experiences; whether the experience is your GPS, your streaming service, or your call routing – data inputs matter.

To gain a holistic view of every unique customer and agent, Enlighten AI Routing layers together all available data to see how agents interact with each unique customer. Combining award-winning analytics, artificial intelligence, natural language processing (NLP), big data, and machine learning, Enlighten AI Routing constantly updates its insights with every single interaction.

What Smarter Connections Mean for Businesses

Intelligent routing aligns every interaction with the business’ goals. By strategically changing how calls are connected, businesses improve customers’ experiences delivering precisely measurable results on their bottom line.

Intelligent routing makes the best match for customers, and the best match for the bottom line. A customer’s “best agent” for CSAT may be different than that same customer’s best agent for First Call Resolution. Businesses easily toggle focus metrics to align with different skills, divisions, and even for seasonality. Any metric from CSAT to Sales, first call resolution (FCR), revenue, or efficiency – better connections means a better bottom-line.  

Read case studies at www.nice.com/products/journey-orchestration/ai-routing