Skill reduction examples
Potentially available agents
The system considers an agent potentially available when all of the following conditions are fulfilled. The agent:
- is signed into the system and the queue.
- has selected a presence profile.
- is not serving in an outbound campaign.
Examples of situations where the system considers an agent potentially available when the above conditions are also fulfilled:
- The agent is available and not currently handling a conversation.
- The agent’s status is Not Ready.
- The agent is busy and currently handling a conversation.
- The agent is doing wrap-up for a conversation.
This means that if all the agents that fulfil the queue’s skill requirements are, for example, Not Ready or busy with another conversation, the system waits the defined skill reduction time before reducing the skill requirement and offering the conversation to the best available agent with lower skills.
Conversations transferred to another queue
Skill reduction is applied only to the skill requirements of the current queue. If the conversation has been transferred to the current queue and it has skill requirements that are not defined for the current queue, those requirements are handled without skill reduction. This means that if the conversation has such a skill requirement set to:
- level 5, the system offers the conversation only to agents whose skill level is at least 1
- less than level 5, the system offers the conversation also to agents whose skill level is 0.
Example
“Queue1” has a skill requirement for skill “English” set to level 5. Skill reduction is enabled for “Queue2” that has a skill requirement only for skill “Finnish”. If the conversation is transferred from “Queue1” to “Queue2”, the conversation is offered only to agents whose “English” skill level is at least 1. The requirement for skill “Finnish” is handled according to the defined skill reduction steps.
Note that reducible skills of the previous queues are handled based on the current level of those requirements. This means that those requirements may have been reduced in the previous queue.
Example
If skill reduction is enabled for “Queue1” in the previous example, and the skill requirement for “English” has been reduced before the transfer (that is, the current skill requirement for “English” is less than 5 in “Queue2”), the system can offer the conversation to agents with any “English” skill level (0-5).
Skill reduction when Use Absolute Waiting Times is set to Off
If there are no potentially available agents in the queue with the required skill level, the system reduces the requirement to match the highest skill level of a potentially available agent and can offer the conversation immediately to the agent that best fulfills the requirement.
Example
“Queue1” has a skill requirement 5 for skill “German” and the following reduction values:
| Time (s) | Skill Requirement |
|---|---|
| 35 | 4 |
| 40 | 3 |
| 35 | 2 |
| Agent | Skill Level |
|---|---|
| Agent 1 | 5 |
| Agent 2 | 4 |
| Agent 3 | 3 |
| Agent 4 | 2 |
| Agent 5 | 1 |
If “Agent 1” and “Agent 2” have an absence profile, a conversation that arrives into “Queue1” is offered immediately to “Agent 3”. However, if “Agent 3” does not accept the conversation, it is offered to “Agent 4” only after 1 minute and 50 seconds, according to skill reduction waiting times (35 + 40 + 35). If “Agent 4” does not accept the conversation, the system will not offer the conversation to “Agent 5”, as they do not fulfill the minimum skill requirement (2).
The system can also offer the conversation immediately to the agent that best fulfills the requirements, if there are several skill requirements for the queue but no potentially available agent fulfills all of them.
A queue has two skill requirements: English 5 and Finnish 5. Skill reduction is enabled for the queue and there are two potentially available agents in the queue:| Agent | Skill | Skill Level |
|---|---|---|
| Agent 1 | English | 4 |
| Finnish | 3 | |
| Agent 2 | English | 3 |
| Finnish | 3 |
The highest skill levels for the queue are English 4 and Finnish 3, as Agent 1 has the highest English skill level and both agents have the same Finnish skill level. As a result, the system offers a new conversation immediately to Agent 1 if they are available.
Skill reduction in skill match calculation
Skill match calculation ignores possible skill reductions. This means that skill match calculation uses the original skill requirements instead of possible reduced skill requirements.
It's calculated with formula: 100 x sum of agent skill levels / sum of conversation's skill requirements.
If the conversation is transferred to another queue and the Clear Old Skills setting is not selected, the sum contains cumulated skill requirements.
Skill reduction in callback
If skill reduction is defined for the customer service queue, a callback is offered to an agent according to the skill requirements that may have already been reduced in the customer service queue. If you want to use skill reduction when offering callbacks to agents, define it for the callback queue. For more information on queue callback, see Queue Callback.