How call routing works?

SIPcity Editorial Staff
How Call Routing Works
SIPcity Editorial Staff

By Mike Johnstone

We’ve all done it, fighting through a seemingly endless Call Queue only to discover massive wait times or, worse, simply going to a dead-end voicemail. The question of how call routing works should be rephrased to how can my company use Call Routing to improve customer experience.

Firstly, we need to understand what Call routing is. Also known as Agent Queue, this is the process of routing incoming customer calls to queues based on distribution to the right Agent or department. However, poorly handled inbound calls create unnecessary fires and inevitable additional management.

Call routing or call queues is a crucial feature of our service. Examples of this might be finance or technical support, after-hours support, or specific skills like an emergency service.

  • What are common Call Routing examples?
  • How do Call Queues work?
  • Better strategies
  • Benefits of Call Routing
  • Upgrading your phone system

What are common Call Routing examples?

Call Routing automatically answers incoming business calls directing them to individual people or groups based on rules and criteria you set.

Ultimately Routing incoming calls customers find the right person or department removing the need to dial separate phone numbers. Call routing is often also linked to auto attendants.

Then, check below for an example use case:

A customer wishes to refresh their account balance from the contact us number listed against the corporate website.

When he calls into the published support phone number, the system presents with the option for technical support, general accounts, or managing billings.

Recognising the incoming phone call, the ACD recognises the customer, seeks a more simple prompt for the five-digit security PIN and asks the qualified customer to confirm the requested top-up.

How do Call Queues Work?

IP phone systems route calls in a variety of ways.

cloud-based phone system accept the call, provide an auto-attendant menu, and transfer the customer to one of your team members that are better suited to help in his situation. We provide business communication without complexity, with fast and straightforward deployment.

Call Routing Strategies

While the setup of the individual queues is unique to each business, for example, hours of operation, 9-5, after hours, emergency services, some situations are prevalent in most companies.

Once mapped or whiteboard your processes, implementation usually is straightforward. Here, we’re listing the most common strategies in every business segment.

  • Time of day. Set up the time zone of your services.
  • Caller ID. The system can identify the caller’s location from the incoming call’s phone number.
  • Auto-attendant selections. Provide an auto-attendant menu of choices for the caller.
  • Agent skill. The client can talk directly to better-suited team members.
  • Interactive Voice Response (IVR). The phone system uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to transfer the call to the appropriate service based on what the caller says.

Our system supports several Route queue strategies to help in your customer services.

  • Ring All. Simultaneously calls all agents in the queue, with all calls evenly distributed similarly among your team.
  • Round Robin. Rings the available Agent following the order of the agents.
  • Least Ring. Calls the Agent with the least recently called.
  • Fewest Calls. Calls the Agent with the fewest completed calls.
  • Random. Randomly calls available Agents.
  • Memory Round Robin. It takes turns ringing once each available Agent is in the queue.

The Benefits of Call Routing

phone numbers stay the critical and most efficient communication device. So, how business owners and executives transfer those necessary inbound calls impacts customer satisfaction and business scalability.

  • Reduced headcount where staff are answering and directing calls manually.
  • Increased customer satisfaction when they get to the right person in a shorter timeframe.
  • Easily changed and updated to suit the changing needs of your business.
  • Transfer customers to remote workers quickly.
  • Transfer customers by time zone and time schedules.

Upgrading your Phone System

If you haven’t got excellent Call Routing within your current phone system, now could be the right time to change this. Learn more about our Call Routing features! And find out more about how our Cloud PBX solution can improve your business communication with our powerful Call Routing features.

SIPcity Editorial Staff

By Mike Johnstone

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