Setting up Skill-based Ticket Assignment - Zoho Desk Knowledgebase
Setting up Skill-based Ticket Routing to Agents
Skill-based ticket routing is an advanced routing strategy that routes tickets to customer support agents who are best qualified to reply to the incoming tickets. It works by matching the skills required to answer a ticket with those assigned to the agent. So when a ticket is received, it is routed to the first agent who has all the requested skills and can take the work item.
Using skills has numerous benefits for your agents, customers, and your team as a whole. Let's look more closely at the benefits of using skill-based routing in your help desk.
Benefits of Skill-based Assignment
Here are the benefits of assigning tickets to agents based on their skills:
Ensure high-quality customer support by assigning inbound tickets to competent agents in a department.
Assign tickets based on skills while simultaneously maintaining the agent threshold to ensure that none of your agents are overburdened.
Reduce the number of hours support managers and agents spend on manually assigning tickets and finding suitable tickets to work.
Efficient routing to highly skilled agents will reduce ticket resolution time, and ticket reopen rate.
Keywords to Remember
Here are some of the keywords and what they mean in skill-based routing:
Skills
: The distinct talent or expertise possessed by each agent on your team. For example, you could define skills for language (French, German, and English) and product knowledge (software and hardware).
Skill type
: A collection of skills that can be grouped into categories, for example, languages. So “Language” is a skill type while “French” is a skill.
Auto-add skills to tickets
: A setting that can be turned on to automatically add skills to tickets when they are created or edited. When turned off, you can only add skills manually or via a workflow rule.
Skill-based assignment
: An assignment method where tickets are assigned to agents who are most proficient in dealing with them.
Recalculate skills
: Removes all the existing skills and reapplies the required ones based on the ticket's current circumstances.
Reassign ticket by skills
: Reassigns a ticket based on their current skills and listing order.
Remove skills
: When used in workflow rules, it removes the requested skills from tickets that meet the rule criteria.
Add skills
: When used in workflow rules, it adds the requested skills to tickets that meet the rule criteria.
Skill-based Assignment Scenario
You can assign incoming support tickets directly to specific agents or agents within a team based on their skills. This happens when the ticket matches at least one specific skill, and there is an agent available with that particular skill. Let's consider this scenario:
Your help desk provides customer support for
four countries
- France, Austria, Germany, and Denmark. You have
four agents
assigned with the following language skills:
Agent 1 : French
Agent 2 : Danish and German
Agent 3 : German
Agent 4 : Danish
An incoming ticket from an Austrian customer will be assigned to the least loaded among Agent 2 and Agent 3 as they both speak German, and it is Austria's official language.
Thanks to auto language detection on the ticket - you can also filter tickets using the
Language
field data. So all you need to do is create appropriate skills and assign them to your agents.
Setting up Skill-based Routing
Setting up skill-based ticket routing in Zoho Desk is a three-step process.
Step 1
: Add the required Skills and Skill Types
Step 2
: Set your Skill Preferences
Step 3
: Create a skill-based Round Robin rule
Let's look at each of the 3 steps in more detail.
Step 1
: Adding Skills and Skill Types
The first step is to add the required skills and then group them into skill types.
To add a skill:
Click the
Setup
icon (
) in the top bar.
Click
Skills
under
Automation
.
On the
Skills
page, click
Add Skill
on the upper-right side of the page.
On the
Add Skill
page, perform the following actions:
Enter a
name
for the new skill, for example, French.
Select the
Skill Type
to be associated with the skill.
If you haven't added any
Skill Types
yet, click the
icon, enter a
name
for the Skill Type, and then click
Save
.
Enter an appropriate
description
for the skill.
Specify the
criteria
that will define which tickets should be mapped to this skill. You can specify multiple criteria conditions.
Select the
agents
you want to assign to the skill from the drop-down menu.
Click
Save
when you are done.
Now that you have your first skill and skill type, you can add more skill types before setting up specific skills.
To add a skill type:
Click the
Setup
icon (
) in the top bar.
Click
Skills
under
Automation
.
On the
Skills
page, select the
Skill Types
tab.
Click
Add Skill Type
on the upper-right side of the page.
Enter a unique
name
for the skill type.
Click
Save
.
Repeat these steps for each skill type you want to add.
Important:
You can add a maximum of
30 Skills
and
30 Skill Types
in a department.
An
agent
can be associated with a maximum of
30 skills
in a department.
The Skills, Skill Types, and Preferences are
department-specific
.
Step 2 : Setting Skill Preferences
The Preferences window allows you to define default settings for adding skills to tickets. For example, you might want to stop the auto-application of skills to tickets and instead add them manually or via a workflow rule.
To set your skill preferences:
Click the
Setup
icon (
) in the top bar.
Click
Skills
under
Automation
.
On the
Skills
page, click the
Skill Preferences
icon (
) on the upper right corner.
In the
Skill Preferences
window, do the following:
Turn off the toggle button for the “
Auto-add skills to tickets
" option.
When turned off, you will only be able to add skills manually or via workflow rules.
Select where you would like to add new skills to the ticket. You can choose between the
top of the list
, the
bottom of the list
, or
based on their order in settings
from the drop-down menu.
Click
Save
.
Note
:
Skills are auto-assigned to tickets based on the
criteria
specified in them and their
order
of appearance on the
Skills List
page.
Step 3 : Creating a skill-based Round Robin rule
Now that you've added the required skills and skill types, it is time to determine which tickets should be assigned to whom based on skills. These sets of conditions are defined in the skill-based Round Robin rule.
To create a rule:
Click the
Setup
icon (
) in the top bar.
Click
Assignment Rules
under
Automation
.
Click
Round Robin
under the
Assignment Rules
sub-menu.
On the
Round Robin
page, click
New Round Robin Assignment
.
Enter an appropriate
name
and
description
for the rule.
Select when do you want to trigger the rule. You can choose between
Ticket Create
or
Ticket Update
, or
both
.
Click
Add target
.
On the
Add Target
page, do the following:
Specify the
Criteria
for the rule. The tickets associated with skills will be assigned to agents depending on the criteria specified here.
You can use the AND / OR operators to add more than one condition.
Select
Skill based Assignment
as the
Assigning Method
.
Specify who should be assigned to tickets based on their skills. You can select between:
Agents
: Select the assignees from the drop-down menu.
Team
: Select a team from the drop-down menu to add all of their agents.
You can exclude agents within a team by checking the
Exclude agents from this assignment
option.
Click
Save
.
Important:
Round Robin preferences like
threshold
per agent,
backlog limit
per agent, and backlog
assignment style
apply to the skill-based assignment method.
Managing Skills on Tickets
Let's look at how you can view, associate, remove and recalculate skills in tickets.
Viewing Skills
Whether you've added a skill or a skill type, the Skills field appears on a ticket's left panel. It is a non-deletable field; however, you can move it to the Unused Fields section of the layout if you will not use skill-based assignments. That said, if skills are matching the ticket, they are displayed in the Skills field.
To view the skills on a ticket:
Go to the
Tickets
module.
Choose the desired
Ticket list
view.
Open
the ticket to view its details.
Note
: Skills cannot be accessed on the
Add
form or the
Edit
page.
Locate the
Skills
field in the ticket's side panel.
The skills applied to the ticket appear here. You can click on the field to manage skills.
Associating and Removing Skills
You can associate or remove skills from within the ticket details page.
To associate a skill with a ticket:
Open
the ticket for which you want to associate a skill.
Locate the
Skills
field on the left panel and click on the drop-down menu.
The Skills panel opens.
Click
Associate Skills
and then click the skills you want to associate to the ticket.
Note
: You can associate a maximum of 10 skills with a ticket.
Click
Save
.
To remove a skill from a ticket:
Open
the ticket for which you want to remove a skill.
Locate the
Skills
field on the left panel and click on the drop-down menu.
The Skills panel lists the skills associated with the ticket.
Click the
Close
icon (
) corresponding to the skills you want to remove.
Click
Save
.
Reordering Skills
Tickets typically are assigned to agents who possess all or the maximum number of the required skills. When multiple agents have the same skill, the ticket is assigned to the agent who represents skills higher up the order. For example, if Agent A has 1, 3, and 4 skills and Agent B has 2, 4, and 5 skills, the ticket will be assigned to Agent A considering the ticket's skills' order. Zoho Desk allows you to reorder the skills of a ticket as you want.
To reorder skills:
Open
the ticket for which you want to reorder skills.
Locate the
Skills
field on the left panel and click on the drop-down menu.
The Skills panel lists the skills associated with the ticket.
Grab a skill by the
Reorder
icon (
) and drag-drop it, where required.
Click
Save
.
You may
reassign
the ticket by skills to reflect the change in their order.
Recalculating Skills
You can recalculate skills whenever the circumstances of the ticket change. This is particularly useful for tickets with long resolution times or when there are follow-up questions from the customer that are entirely different from the original issue.
To recalculate skills on a ticket:
Open
the ticket for which you want to recalculate skills.
Locate the
Skills
field on the left panel and click on the drop-down menu.
The Skills panel lists the skills associated with the ticket.
Click the
More
icon (
) in the top right corner.
Click
Recalculate Skills
from the menu.
Click
Continue
to confirm your action.
The ticket will have its skills recalculated.
Reassigning Tickets by Skills
Reassigning a ticket is the next step when you've recalculated its skills. You may also want to reassign a ticket when you have manually updated its skills. In such circumstances, you can reassign the ticket with a click of a button.
To reassign a ticket by skills:
Open
the ticket you want to reassign based on skills.
Locate the
Skills
field on the left panel and click on the drop-down menu.
The Skills panel lists the skills associated with the ticket.
Click the
More
icon (
) in the top right corner.
Click
Reassign ticket by Skills
from the menu.
Click
Continue
to confirm your action.
The ticket gets reassigned to an agent based on its skills.
Skills for Workflows
You can create workflow rules to perform the following automated actions on tickets:
Recalculate
skills
Remove
skills
Add
skills
Reassign
ticket by skills
These actions, along with the flexibility to choose when the rule should be triggered [
Execute On
] and for which tickets [
Criteria
], can help your team streamline tickets to the people who know how to handle them best.
Learn More
Note
:
Skill is also available as
criteria
in other
automation
rules and custom ticket
views
. The latter enables you to organize those tickets you are qualified to address quickly.
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