Scalable Case Assignment in Growing Organisations

Large multi-national organisations have support teams spread across multiple countries and often across different continents. In these environments configuring case assignment rules can be a real challenge. Language and time-zone are important factors, but shift-patterns are also key, especially when it comes to SLA-bound cases. To optimise overall performance, it’s critical to route the right case to the right agent in the right location at the right time.

In a global marketplace, customer cases can come in a multitude of languages. Some agents may be multi-lingual, others may not. It’s possible that core languages could be serviced in multiple locations (for Example English in the USA, South Africa or India – or Spanish in Mexico or Spain). To maximise productivity, customer satisfaction and, ultimately, profitability, assignment rules would need to determine the optimum path for each and every case.

When high volumes of cases are routed through an organisation, it’s important not to overload any individual agent or team. Assignment rules are generally looking to match cases to the best-qualified agent however, in a large or growing organisation, this can mean queues can build up for the high achievers. For larger teams, assignment rules will need factor in workloads, using caps, quotas and weighting to balance the load.

As organisations scale-up, identifying and prioritising SLA-bound cases becomes critical. SLA cases are time-sensitive, so routing them to an agent who is best placed to resolve the case quickly is key. In particular, assignment rules need to take account of time-zones and shift-patterns. And if a case cannot be closed down within a given shift, it’s important that any hand-off is routed to an agent at the beginning of their working day, and not the end.

An agent’s availability status can fluctuate throughout the day and throughout the week. Whether they are logged in, in a meeting, on an existing call, or off sick, their availability to handle a new case can change at any time.  Routing cases to agents that might not be able to process them immediately is risky. Unresolved cases can impact CSAT levels. As service teams grow, the ability to auto-detect agent availability becomes a critical factor.

High case-volumes usually mean lots of hard-coded assignment rules. The more cases and agents, the more rules. In large international organisations it’s not uncommon for there to be tens or even hundreds of thousands of assignment rules that need to be managed on a daily basis. Creating and maintaining these rules is labour-intensive and expensive. Replacing them with a smaller number of “dynamic” rules is key.