Contents

Skill Sets view

Overview

This view is used to implement Skills-Based Dialing, an optional feature that looks at skills in contact records, to dial only those contacts that can be handled by the available agent pool. Skills-based dialing is available for preview, power, and predictive campaigns.

Skills-based dialing:

Matches contacts skill requirements to available agent's skills before placing calls
Dials portions of a call list at different ratios based on contact skills
Uses skills-based routing to get connected call to most skilled agent

The Skill Sets view manages Skill Set entries. Each Skill Set maps a skill column in the contact list to skills defined in CIC. A Skill Set manages skills from a Campaign's point of view—by identifying which CIC skills will be used to select contacts.

Like other Dialer Manager views, the top portion of the view displays a list of entries, with buttons to add, copy, paste, and delete items. The lower portion of the view manages details of the selected Skill Set.

Skills-Based Dialing Feature Overview

Skills-Based Dialing is available for preview, power, and predictive campaigns. To understand this feature, it is important to differentiate between skills-based routing and skills-based dialing.

Skills-Based Routing involves an already connected call.  It sends an already connected call to an agent that has required skills, such as the ability to speak the contact's language, required product familiarity, etc.

Skills-based routing is an ACD feature of CIC that can be used for both inbound and outbound calling.  Skills are associated with interactions (required skills) and with agents (available skills). The ACD subsystem matches these skills up to route an interaction to the best available agent.  Dialer can use ACD-based skills-based routing to route a live caller to the best available agent.

Skills-based routing works well in a predictive or power dialing environment when all agents have the skill(s) and can accept the call.  However, it does not work as well when skills are used to select from a subset of agents.  This latter use of skills-based routing can result in excessive abandons and a poor dialing experience.  The solution is to use skills-based dialing instead.
Skills-Based Dialing looks ahead to pick contacts to be dialed. It examines skills in contact records, to dial only those contacts that can be handled by the available agent pool.

Skills-based dialing selects only contacts in the contact list that can be handled by the available agent pool. Skills are evaluated before contacts are dialed. The mixture of contacts' required skills and agents' anticipated availability and skills is dynamic and must be managed similarly to pacing. Some examples of outbound situations in which only a subset of agents will have a skill include:
- State-based licensing—wherein lenders and insurers must be licensed in states into which they are attempting to sell.
- Specialized selling or collections—when a subset of agents are trained or allowed to handle particular products or customers.
- Language skills—when the contact has special language requirements.

Once a contact with an appropriate skill requirement is selected to be dialed and a live person contacted, that contact's skills are associated with the connected call. Then the call is routed to the most appropriate available agent using skills-based ACD routing.

Skills-Based Dialing balances the contacts being dialed with the capabilities of the available agents who could receive calls. This requires sub-selecting only those contacts in the call list that could be handled by the available agent pool before attempting to dial those contacts. The mix of contacts' required skills and agents' anticipated availability and skills is very dynamic and is managed in real time similarly to pacing.

Once a contact with an appropriate skill requirement is selected to be dialed and a live person contacted, that contact's skills are associated with the connected call for use by CIC's ACD in using skills-based routing to get the call to the most appropriate available agent.

To implement Skills-Based Dialing, the contact list must be populated with a custom skills column per contact (e.g. language indicator, state code, etc.) to be matched up with the associated campaign's agent pool skill sets.