1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a system and method to manage efficiency of an enterprise and particularly to a system and method for selecting agents to handle incoming contacts in an enterprise or any work/resource selection system.
2. Description of Related Art
Contact centers or general work/resource selection management systems are often employed by enterprises to service, inbound and outbound contacts or customers. A primary objective of contact center management, for example, is to ultimately maximize contact center performance and profitability. An ongoing challenge in contact center administration is monitoring and optimizing contact center efficiency usage of its available resources. The contact center efficiency is generally measured by metrics such as Service Level Agreement (SLA), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and match rate. Contact center resources may include, agents, communication assets (e.g., number of voice trunks, number and bandwidth of video trunks, etc.), computing resources (e.g., a speed, a queue length, a storage space, etc.), and so forth.
Service level is one measurement of the contact center efficiency. Service level is typically determined by dividing the number of contacts accepted within a specified period by the number accepted plus number that were not accepted, but completed in some other way (e.g., abandoned, given busy, canceled, flowed out). Service level definitions may vary from one enterprise to another.
Match rate is another indicator used in measuring the contact center efficiency. Match rate is usually determined by dividing the number of contacts accepted by a primary skill level agent within a period of time by the number of contacts accepted by any agent in a queue over the same period. An agent with a primary skill level is one who typically may handle contacts of a certain nature more effectively and/or efficiently as compared to an agent of lesser skill level. There are other contact center agents who may not be as proficient as the primary skill level agent, and those agents are identified either as skill level agents or backup skill level agents. As can be appreciated, contacts received by a primary skill level agent are typically handled more quickly and accurately or effectively (e.g., higher revenue attained) than a contact received by a secondary or even backup skill level agent. Thus, it is an objective of most contact centers to optimize match rate along with the service level.
In addition to service level and match rate performance measures, contact centers use other Key Performance Indicators (“KPIs”), such as revenue, estimated, actual, or predicted wait time, average speed of answer, throughput, agent utilization, agent performance, agent responsiveness and the like, to calculate performance relative to their Service Level Agreements (“SLAs”). Operational efficiency is achieved when the KPIs are managed near, but not above, SLA threshold levels.
Throughput is a measure of the number of contacts/contact requests or work requests that may be processed in a given amount of time. Agent utilization is a measure of how efficiently the agents' time is being used. Customer service level is a measure of the time customers spend waiting for their work to be handled. Company contact center customers wish to provide service to as many requests as possible in a given amount of time, using the least number of agents to do so, and minimizing the wait time for their customers that may increase the Service Level Agreement (SLA) of the contact center. Further, the contact center may also have to maintain the Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) metrics in order to maintain the KPIs of the contact center. For this purpose, agents may have to maintain the quality of services provided to the customers through multimedia (e.g., voice contacts, video contacts, emails, etc.).
In today's scenario, efficiency of a contact center is increased when an appropriate agent is selected to provide customer services to incoming contacts. Conventionally, multiple routing techniques based on skills, contact needs, and so forth are being used to route incoming contacts to an appropriate agent of the contact center to provide better customer support services. Generally, in skill-based routing techniques, in order to select an appropriate agent, information associated with an incoming contact is gathered. The information is then mapped with skills defined within the contact center. These skills are the skills assigned to agents of the contact center. An agent can be assigned with multiple skills within the contact center. Further, an agent whose skills best matches with the gathered information is selected and the incoming contact is then routed to the selected agent of the contact center.
The same principle applies to attribute-based routing techniques. However, these conventional techniques require a cumbersome task to map information with attributes assigned to agents of the contact center to select an appropriate agent. Further, these techniques lack in determining attributes of an agent associated with an incoming contact for the purpose of selecting an appropriate agent. Further, critical information may be ignored at the time of mapping information with attributes of agents of the contact center.
There is thus a need for a system and method for selecting an appropriate agent to improve handling of an incoming contact in an enterprise or any work/resource selection system.