Designing Multi-Skilled Agent Proficiency Routing for Blended Contact Centers

How-To-Articles
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Designing Multi-Skilled Agent Proficiency Routing for Blended Contact Centers

What This Guide Covers

  • Breaking down the “siloed queue” architecture and moving to a true “Blended” routing model using Bullseye Routing and Agent Skills in Genesys Cloud.
  • Architecting a skill proficiency matrix that routes complex interactions to your highest-performing agents first, while gracefully degrading the skill requirements to expand the pool during volume spikes.
  • The end result is a highly efficient contact center where agents handle both Voice and Digital interactions based on their specific proficiencies, dramatically lowering Average Speed of Answer (ASA) without sacrificing First Contact Resolution (FCR).

Prerequisites, Roles & Licensing

  • Licensing: Genesys Cloud CX 2 or 3 (Digital/Blended).
  • Permissions: Routing > Skill > Edit, Routing > Queue > Edit, Architect > Flow > Edit.
  • Infrastructure: A defined organizational matrix of agent capabilities (e.g., Language, Product Knowledge, Tier Level).

The Implementation Deep-Dive

1. The Inefficiency of Siloed Queues

Historically, contact centers routed calls using rigid queues: Sales_Queue, Support_Queue, Billing_Queue.

The Trap:
If you have 10 agents in Sales_Queue sitting idle, and 50 calls holding in Billing_Queue, those sales agents cannot help because they are logged into the wrong silo. Even if a Sales agent happens to know how to answer a billing question, the routing engine won’t give them the call. This leads to massive inefficiencies: high wait times for customers and wasted idle time for agents.

2. Transitioning to Skill-Based Routing (SBR)

Instead of putting agents into 50 different queues, put all agents into a single Global_Queue and let their Skills dictate what interactions they receive.

Architectural Reasoning:
Skills are granular attributes assigned to a user profile, rated on a proficiency scale from 0 to 5. (e.g., Spanish: 5, Mac_Support: 3, Windows_Support: 1).

Implementation Steps:

  1. Navigate to Admin > Routing > Skills.
  2. Create your core skills: Product_A, Product_B, Language_Spanish, Language_English.
  3. Navigate to Admin > Directory > Users.
  4. Assign these skills to your agents, configuring their Proficiency.
    • A Tier 3 engineer gets Product_A: 5.
    • A new hire gets Product_A: 1.

3. Architecting Bullseye Routing

If a customer calls about Product_A, you want the system to try and find a Tier 3 engineer (Proficiency 5) first. If no Tier 3 engineer is available after 30 seconds, you want the system to “widen the net” and accept a Tier 2 engineer (Proficiency 3 or 4).

Implementation Steps:

  1. In Architect, configure your Inbound Call Flow. When the customer selects “Product A” in the IVR, use a Transfer to ACD block.
  2. In the ACD block, set the required skill to Product_A.
  3. Navigate to Admin > Routing > Queues and select your queue.
  4. Under the Routing tab, set the Routing Method to Bullseye.
  5. Configure the Rings:
    • Ring 1 (0 to 30 seconds): Strip no skills. The engine searches for an agent with Product_A at Proficiency 5.
    • Ring 2 (31 to 60 seconds): The engine degrades the requirement. It searches for an agent with Product_A at Proficiency 3 or higher.
    • Ring 3 (61+ seconds): The engine strips the skill entirely. The call routes to the longest-idle agent in the queue, regardless of their proficiency in Product_A (assuming that any agent is better than leaving the customer on hold indefinitely).

4. Blending Voice and Digital with Utilization

A true multi-skilled agent handles emails and chats when the phone lines are quiet.

Implementation Steps:

  1. Navigate to Admin > Routing > Utilization.
  2. This is where you define how much work an agent can handle concurrently.
  3. Configure Voice to Maximum Capacity: 1. (An agent can only take 1 call at a time).
  4. Configure Web Chat to Maximum Capacity: 3.
  5. The Blending Rule: You must decide if Digital interrupts Voice, or Voice interrupts Digital.
    • Check the box: Voice can interrupt Web Chat.
    • If an agent is handling 2 Web Chats, and a Voice call comes in, the agent will receive the Voice call. Their chats remain active in the background. They are expected to put the chatters on hold (“Please give me a moment to look that up”) while they answer the phone.
    • Crucial: Do NOT check the box allowing Web Chat to interrupt Voice. A ringing chat popup during a live phone call is incredibly distracting and degrades the customer experience.

Validation, Edge Cases & Troubleshooting

Edge Case 1: The “Penalty of Excellence”

  • The Failure Condition: Your Tier 3 engineer (Proficiency 5 in every skill) complains they are completely burned out. They take 50 grueling escalations a day, while the new hires (Proficiency 1) sit idle and browse the internet.
  • The Root Cause: Standard Evaluation routing routes to the highest proficiency first. If your top agent is always available, they catch every call in Ring 1.
  • The Solution: In your Queue settings, change the Evaluation Method from Best Available Skills to All Skills Matching. When using Bullseye, if 5 agents meet the Ring 1 criteria, All Skills Matching will route the call to the longest idle agent among that group, rather than exclusively hammering the agent with the highest numeric proficiency score.

Edge Case 2: The Mandatory Compliance Skill

  • The Failure Condition: A Spanish-speaking customer calls. The system rings for 60 seconds looking for a Language_Spanish agent. It hits Bullseye Ring 3, strips the Language_Spanish skill, and routes the call to an English-only agent. The agent and customer cannot communicate. The call fails.
  • The Root Cause: Some skills (like Language or Security Clearance) are absolute requirements. They cannot be gracefully degraded or stripped.
  • The Solution: In the Architect Transfer to ACD block, do not place Language_Spanish in the standard Skills field. Place it in the ACD Skills (Not Stripped) field (if using older UI) or ensure it is explicitly excluded from the Bullseye ring stripping rules in the Queue configuration. The system will hold the call in queue forever until a Spanish speaker is available, rather than routing it to an English speaker.

Official References