Omnichannel routing automatically directs customer or employee requests across multiple support channels, factoring in agent status, capacity, skill set, and ticket priority. It uses automation to connect individuals with the most suitable agent, regardless of channel.
Customers expect seamless and efficient interactions with your business across their preferred channels. Whether they reach out through a quick social media message, a detailed email, or a traditional phone call, they crave a consistent and frictionless experience. Managing a multitude of communication channels, however, can be a logistical nightmare and often leads to long wait times, frustration, and customer churn.
Omnichannel routing can help prevent these issues and orchestrate a smooth customer journey by skillfully connecting inquiries with agents, regardless of the channel used. Keep reading to discover how omnichannel routing can turn fleeting interactions into lasting customer loyalty.
Omnichannel routing integrates multiple communication channels—such as email, chat, phone calls, social media, and messaging apps—into a single routing engine. It acts as the mastermind behind the scenes, ensuring each conversation finds its way to the best possible agent for the inquiry.
Here’s a breakdown of how it works:
The system employs automated routing logic to determine the best-suited agent for each incoming request. This logic considers factors like agent availability, expertise, workload, and the urgency of the request.
Requests are prioritized based on pre-defined criteria such as ticket urgency, customer value, or issue complexity. This ensures critical issues receive prompt attention and less urgent matters are managed appropriately.
Omnichannel routing takes into account the skills and capabilities of individual agents. Requests are routed to agents with the expertise necessary to address specific issues effectively.
The system continuously monitors agent status and workload in real time. It dynamically adjusts routing decisions to ensure optimal efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Omnichannel routing maintains consistency across all communication channels, providing customers with a seamless experience regardless of how they interact with the business.
By performing the above tasks, omnichannel routing creates a smooth handover for the customer and enables efficient resolutions.
Omnichannel routing examples
Check out how companies use modern routing practices to turn outdated call centers into omnichannel contact centers.
Routing by skill
Imagine a customer contacting a business for technical support over live chat due to issues with the software. Omnichannel routing assesses the customer’s query and identifies it as a technical request. The system then scans its database of agents, looking for those with the specific technical skills and knowledge required to resolve software issues. It immediately assigns the chat to the identified agent, who then uses their skills to diagnose and solve the customer’s problems.
Routing by agent status and capacity
When a customer contacts a company’s call center, an omnichannel routing system instantly evaluates the availability and capacity of agents. The system checks which agents are currently online, how many support tickets they have open, and whether they are handling other interactions, and then routes the conversation accordingly.
This ensures the customer waits on hold for the shortest amount of time possible without overwhelming the agent, decreasing the first reply time. For example, omnichannel routing helped Pair Eyewear reduce its first reply time by 83 percent.
Routing by conversation priority
Omnichannel routing also helps customer service teams prioritize incoming conversations to address urgent matters quickly, ensure critical customer accounts get speedy support, and uphold customer service SLAs. For instance, a customer might use a company’s online portal to submit a ticket and mark it as a high priority due to a business-critical software crash. The routing system recognizes that the ticket is tagged as urgent and moves it to the top of the queue, overriding the default first-come, first-served order.
For example, The City of Portland struggled to prioritize citizen requests using a shared Outlook email inbox. Switching to Zendesk omnichannel routing allowed the organization to fully automate the assignment of requests in compliance with government regulations, like the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Enhancing omnichannel routing with intelligent routing
Intelligent routing leverages AI to direct customer requests based on customer intent, sentiment, and language. While it’s becoming increasingly popular, intelligent routing is not a default feature of omnichannel routing. However, teams can use the two types of routing together to enhance ticket workflows.
Consider this scenario: a customer submits a ticket reporting that an item arrived damaged. With intelligent triage, the ticket is swiftly tagged as a “Damaged item,” routed to the appropriate team, and prioritized based on this intent. When the agent opens the ticket, AI promptly shares these crucial details, empowering them to instantly understand that the customer requires a replacement for the damaged item.
Beyond simply routing tickets based on agent skill sets and customer intent, Liberty London uses Zendesk to identify and label customer sentiment and language. Zendesk AI uses this context to intelligently route issues to the right place and share the details with the agent, leading to faster and more personalized resolutions.
“Liberty is all about delivering a personal service. I see AI enhancing that personal service because now our customers will be interacting with a human who’s being put in front of them at the right time with the right information.” —Ian Hunt, Director of Customer Services at Liberty London
Benefits of omnichannel routing
The automation that omnichannel routing provides leads to several improvements in customer service. Here are some of the key benefits your business stands to experience.
Reduces wait times
The system leverages real-time data on agent availability, skill sets, and current workloads to match each customer inquiry with the best-equipped agent to handle the specific issue. This approach minimizes bottlenecks and prevents overloading any single channel or agent so customers swiftly receive support.
Increases agent productivity
Omnichannel routing boosts agent productivity by ensuring they address interactions aligned with their skills and expertise. This minimizes idle time and optimizes their performance and efficiency. It also reduces the need for transfers or escalations, helping agents resolve issues more quickly and effectively.
Boosts customer satisfaction
Omnichannel routing increases customer satisfaction by providing a seamless experience across all communication channels. By efficiently directing customer inquiries to the most appropriate agents, customers receive faster and more accurate responses, which reduces customer frustration and wait times.
For example, the legal and accounting software provider CARET uses skills-based omnichannel routing to connect customers and agents automatically, leading to an average customer satisfaction score of 91 percent.
Helps scale support operations
Omnichannel routing acts as a force multiplier for your call center team, supporting broader strategies for scaling customer support. Using skills-based distribution to direct inquiries to the most qualified agent reduces the time spent on a single issue. This approach frees up valuable agent time, enabling you to address more inquiries without expanding the team.
Frequently asked questions
Multichannel routing independently directs customer inquiries across different communication channels. Conversely, omnichannel routing simplifies agent management by allowing them to set a unified status across all channels, eliminating the need for individual status adjustments per channel.
Omnichannel routing offers different model options to optimize how customer inquiries get distributed to agents, including:
Queue-based routing: Agents are assigned to queues, typically representing a single skill or department. Incoming inquiries get routed to the queue with the most available agent.
Skills-based routing: Customer queries get matched to agents based on pre-defined skill sets. Skills can include product knowledge, language fluency, or specific problem-solving abilities.
Availability routing: This is defined by the single unified status the agent sets across channels.
Capacity routing: You define the maximum capacity for each channel and decide which tickets are eligible for routing.
Omnichannel skill-based routing eliminates guesswork when connecting customers with the right agent. It analyzes incoming inquiries across channels for ticket tags, keywords, and urgency. This information and pre-defined agent skill sets—including technical expertise and language fluency—determine the most suitable agent.
Omnichannel communication offers customers seamless and convenient experiences, with greater personalization across their preferred channels. Whether interacting via voice, email, chat, or social media, customers appreciate the ability to switch between channels without repeating themselves. This continuity and flexibility speed up interactions and ensure tailored experiences, enhancing customer satisfaction.
Effectively implementing omnichannel routing involves several crucial steps to ensure a seamless and efficient customer experience across all communication channels. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the steps:
Choose the right technology: Choose an omnichannel routing solution that’s secure, quick to set up, easy to use, and scalable. You should also ensure it supports all necessary communication channels.
Integrate communication channels: Integrate all communication channels into a unified system to provide a consistent experience across all touchpoints.
Set up tags and triggers: For example, what triggers will you use to add and manage ticket priority?
Define routing rules and strategies: Collaborate with your customer service team to establish clear routing rules. For instance, defining capacity rules is essential for evenly distributing workload among agents.
Define agent skills: Determine the critical customer service skills by which you want to route tickets. Also, consider what routing rules or triggers you plan to use to add and manage skills on tickets.
Monitor performance: Continuously monitor the performance of your omnichannel routing system by analyzing metrics and customer feedback.
Deliver faster support with omnichannel routing
By implementing an omnichannel routing system like Zendesk, you can empower your agents to deliver faster, more efficient customer support across all channels. But Zendesk extends beyond routing, offering a comprehensive customer service solution that is AI-powered, quick to set up, easy to use, scalable, and secure. See our omnichannel routing at work in this Zendesk demo.
Mozhdeh Rastegar-Panah
Senior Director, Product Marketing
Mozhdeh Rastegar-Panah is a seasoned customer experience leader and the Senior Director of Product Marketing at Zendesk. With over 12 years at the forefront of customer service innovation, Mozhdeh specializes in translating complex AI and CX technologies into impactful, scalable solutions for global businesses. Her work focuses on elevating customer support through messaging, automation, and omnichannel strategies. She brings a unique blend of strategic vision and hands-on expertise to the future of customer service.
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