Intelligent Routing

The Intelligent Routing feature allows you to define rules and auto-assign chats to agents based on these pre-configured rules. In the LiveChat widget, you can configure rules based on customer attributes, inbound messages, chat attributes, and pre-chat survey fields. You can assign a chat to a queue, a particular skill, or an individual agent.

The intelligent routing feature is supported on SMS, Email, Facebook, Twitter, API, and LiveChat channels. These rules are applicable for new chats alone. The first inbound message of a conversation gets picked while processing the routing rules.

You can use a parameter called Chat Creation Time to route chats on channels (WhatsApp and Apple Messages for Business) that do not support intelligent routing to a skill. Using the Chat Creation Time parameter, you can configure rules for chats created in a specified time interval. Further, the parameter is even applicable to chats created via API.

To configure an IR rule, you must define routing attributes, assign custom attributes to agent profiles, and configure skills. The following sections detail the brief steps to configure them.

Skill-based Routing

To enable skill-based routing on Webex Engage, agents should be grouped into logical skills based on their attributes.

Define Routing Attributes

You can define routing attributes that can be assigned to the user(agent) profiles.

Follow these steps to configure routing attributes:

1. Navigate to Settings > Routing Attributes.
2. Click Add an Attribute on the top-right corner of the page.
3. Add an attribute by providing a Name, Type, and Description.

The client admin can create any number of attributes within a tenant.

Assign custom attributes to agent profiles

Follow these steps to assign a custom attribute to an agent profile :

1. Log in as client admin and navigate to the Users section.
2. Add a user profile or edit an existing user profile to view the profile details page.
3. Under the Custom Attributes section, add a custom attribute.
4. Choose a Key from the list of pre-defined custom attributes and provide a Value.
5. Click Submit to save the attributes.

Add Skill

The skills help to logically group users (agents) based on attributes that they possess.

Follow these steps to add a skill:

1. Navigate to Client Admin Console > Groups and select a team within a group.
2. Under the Skills tab, click Add Skill.
3. Enter Name and Description.
4. In the rule builder, create a skill using a combination of custom attributes.
5. Click Save Changes.

Add Rule

Once the skills are created, rules can be created using a combination of various customer and chat attributes. The rules will be triggered when a new chat is created. Based on the conditions configured within the rules, any chat fulfilling these conditions will be assigned either to a skill or live/virtual agent.

Follow the below steps to add a new rule:

1. Click Add Rule on the top-right-corner of the intelligent routing screen.
   The following screen appears.

2. Enter Rule Name.
3. Select the Channel, Asset, and Website from the respective drop-down lists.
4. Build a rule by using a combination of conditions on customer properties and chat properties.
5. Define the chat assignment condition.
   Assign to Queue will assign the chat to the team's queue.
   Assign to Particular Skill will assign the chat to any of the agents who match a particular skill. This happens in a round-robin fashion where the longest waiting customer's chat is assigned to the longest idle agent.
   Assign to Individual Assignee will assign the chat to the selected user.

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Note:

In case a chat matches the conditions of a rule but none of the agents are available to accept chats (because of a limit on the threshold), the chat will be assigned to the team's queue.

6. Select Queue radio button, to assign the chat to the team's queue.
7. If you select Particular Skill radio button, the Skill drop-down list appears. The drop-down lists all the configured skills for a team.

8. If you select Individual Assignee radio button, the Assignee drop-down list appears. The drop-down lists all the available live and virtual agents.

9. Client admins can skip a routing rule instead of queuing the chat within the same skill, based on the following conditions thereby allowing businesses to offer lower wait times.

Team Working Hours: When this condition is enabled, the system checks the condition first and skips the rule if the team is not in working hours and checks the consecutive rules defined for that team.

Agent Presence: When this condition is enabled, the system checks the condition first and skips the rule if the individual agent or skilled agents are not available to accept chats within the selected team.

Slots Left: When this condition is enabled, the system checks the condition first and skips the rule if the individual agent or skilled agent groups have reached their chat concurrency threshold.

If all the conditions are enabled, the system skips the rule based on the above sub-conditions else, it will execute other configured rules.

10. Enable the required sub-conditions.
11. Click Save and Close, to save the rule.
12. Click Save and Publish, to publish the rule.
    The success message appears on the screen.

If you assign chats to a skill (while adding/editing an IR rule) that have no users under them, the application displays a warning message.

Edit Rule

Follow these steps to edit a rule:

1. Click the Edit icon in the actions column of the IR rules screen.

The following screen appears.

2. Edit the required fields.
3. When you edit a skill, Webex Engage throws an error message with the list of routing rules that might get affected while editing it.
4. Click Save or Close.
5. Click Save and Close, to save the rule.
6. Click Save and Publish, to publish the rule.
   The success message appears on the screen.

Content-based Routing

Client admins can configure routing rules based on the presence of certain keywords or phrases within an incoming message. This can be achieved using inbound message attribute under chat attributes on all channel except email channel.

Content-based routing rule can be configured using Equal to or Contains operator on one or more keywords or phrases.

For email as a channel, this feature is applicable only to the subject line but not to the body.

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Note:

• A maximum of 50 characters are allowed for keywords/phrases in these rules. If you have a use case that requires more characters, multiple rules can be chained using the AND or OR constructs.

• Trailing spaces are ignored if present in the configured phrase.

• A minimum of Three characters must be given when using the contains operator.

• When using the contains operator, spaces between multiple words in a phrase are ignored when checking at runtime.
  For example, if you want to check whether a message contains the phrase debit card, the rule will be activated for both the messages I have an issue with my debit card and I want a new debit card.