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Overview of skills

Skills represent the particular characteristic, skill, product, or knowledge that a user or workgroup possesses. Skills are used by ACD (Automatic Communication Distribution) handlers to route interactions to the agents who are best equipped to handle them.

After you create skills in the Skills container, you can assign them to agents in the Skills container or the Users container. You can also assign skills to ACD workgroups in the Workgroups container. All agents in a workgroup inherit the skills that you assign to the workgroup.

Note: You cannot assign skills to a non-ACD workgroup or a custom workgroup.

Prerequisites: For each skill, you can select the workgroups, users, and access control groups who have it. While you can add these items at any time, it can be more efficient to add them before you configure skills.
* Define workgroups in the Workgroups container. On the Configuration tab, in the Workgroup has Queue list, be sure to select ACD.
* Define users in the Users container.
* Define access control groups in the Access Control Groups container.

How CIC routes interactions based on skills

CIC uses sophisticated mathematical algorithms to determine how to route interactions to agents. For more information on the ACD routing process, see the CIC ACD Processing Technical Reference in the PureConnect Documentation Library.  

When you define skills, you set several values that influence the automated routing behavior:

Proficiency level

For each skill, you assign a proficiency level. The proficiency scale is from 1-100, with 100 being the highest value. The proficiency number represents of the ability of the user or workgroup with regards to the skill. Interactions can require minimum proficiency levels for one or more skills.  

For example, suppose you have four agents who speak Spanish. Juan is a native speaker, so you assign him a proficiency level of 100. Rebecca studied Spanish in college and can speak and understand conversational Spanish well enough to address most straightforward questions. You assign Rebecca a proficiency level of 60. Barb knows a few basic phrases, so you assign her a proficiency level of 10. Mark does not know Spanish. Therefore, you do not assign the skill to him at all. When an interaction comes in with a requirement of Spanish at 51, CIC can direct it to either Juan or Rebecca.

Depending on the complexity of your combination of skills and agents, you may prefer to identify your criteria for assigning proficiency levels offline before you assign them in CIC.

Desire to use

For each skill, you also set the Desire to use level. The desire to use scale is from 1-100, with 100 being the highest value. The desire to use number represents the level of interest the user or workgroup has in applying the skill while they are handling interactions. You can also set this based on your organization’s desire for an agent or workgroup to use that skill. The higher you set this number, the greater the likelihood that an agent or workgroup will receive an interaction that requires that skill.

For example, suppose that Rebecca wants to use her Spanish whenever possible. However, since Juan is a native speaker, you would prefer that he answer interactions requiring Spanish ability whenever possible. Therefore, you set Juan's desire to use level to 100 and Rebecca's desire to use level to 80.

Depending on the complexity of your combination of skills and agents, you may prefer to identify your criteria for assigning desire to use levels offline before you assign them in CIC.

Related topics

Add a skill