The type of call that a particular agent can handle. With EAS, you can assign up to four skills to each agent, with a primary (level 1) or secondary (level 2) skill level. With the following releases of Communication Manager for EAS-PHD:

• Prior to 2.0, an agent can be assigned as many as 20 skills

• With releases higher than 2.0, an agent can be assigned up to 120 skills

The reasons why customers call your call center. Caller needs are determined by the VDN number that the caller dialed, by Call Prompting, or by Automatic Number Identification (ANI) database lookup.

You define caller requirements in the vector in order to route calls to an ACD agent with particular skills to match the needs of the caller. The caller needs, which translate to skills, become active for an ACD call whenever a queue to the main skill or check backup skill vector command is executed and the threshold condition is met.

A specific caller or business need of your call center. You define your skills based on the needs of your customers and your call center. You specify skills by skill numbers, which are assigned to agents and are referenced in vectors to match caller needs with an agent who is skilled to handle those needs.

When configuring your call center for skills, a particular skill number always has the same meaning, whether it is an agent skill, VDN skill, or skill hunt group.

Calls are routed to specific skill hunt groups that are usually based on caller needs. Agents are not assigned to a skill group. Agents are assigned specific skills that become active when the agents log in.

An administrator can assign a skill level for each agent skill. With EAS-PHD, skill levels can range from 1 to 16, with 1 being the highest skill level (also known as the highest-priority skill). Without EAS-PHD, skill levels can be defined as primary (level 1) or secondary (level 2), with the primary being the highest-priority skill. When calls are queued for more than one of the agent’s skills and the agent’s call-handling preference is by skill level, the agent receives the oldest call waiting for the agent’s highest level skill. If an agent’s call-handling preference is by greatest need, then the agent receives the highest-priority, oldest call waiting for any of that agent’s skills, regardless of skill level.

Agents in a given skill who have that skill assigned as their top skill, which is the highest-level skill of all the skills assigned to an agent. If an agent has more than one highest-level skill, the top skill is the first highest-level skill that an administrator assigns to the agent.

For EAS-PHD, top skill is an agent’s first-administered and highest-priority or highest-level skill. For EAS, top skill is an agent’s first-administered primary skill or first-administered secondary skill if the agent has no primary skill. With call handling preference by skill level, an agent is most likely to receive a call for the top skill.