Agent skills represent and define the ability of an agent to handle calls that require the skills. You can assign skill numbers to agents based on characteristics such as training or knowledge, access to systems or information, language ability, and interpersonal traits. Examples of agent skills include the following: speaks Spanish, knows about widget X, can handle complaint calls, has access to a database.

You can assign up to 120 skills with EAS-PHD or four skills without EAS-PHD. You can designate a skill level between 1 and 6 (EAS-PHD) or 1 and 2 (EAS), with 1 being the highest skill level, which is the highest-priority skill.

If an agent has multiple skills, you can create a single skill group for each set of skills. Administer the agent skills on the Agent Login ID screen.

Create a separate skill hunt group for direct agent calls. Direct agent calls are queued to the skill that is administered as the direct agent skill on the Agent LoginID screen. If an agent is not able to log in to the direct agent skill, direct agent calls are queued to the first-administered highest-level skill.

The following table shows the assignment of agent skills.

Example of agent skill assignments
Agent	Skills assigned
Jan O’Hara	22 (L1)	44 (L2)
Sam Lopez	99 (L1)
Sue Carlson	22 (L1)	11 (L1)	44 (L2)	33 (L2)
Mark Davis	44 (L1)
Amy Brown	44 (L1)	22 (L2)

Without EAS-PHD, you can assign a maximum of four agent skills to any one agent with one of the two preference levels. With EAS-PHD, you can assign up to 120 skills to each agent with one of 16 preference levels. The skill assignments table shows that four agent skills (22, 11, 44, 33) are assigned to Sue Carlson. The assignments indicate that Sue is bilingual and can service callers who require emergency road service or information on route planning. Only one agent skill, 99-Supergroup, is assigned to Sam Lopez. This means that Sam is serving as a backup.

An L1 or L2 next to the skill number indicates whether the agent skill is assigned as a level 1 or level 2 skill. For example, Jan O’Hara has Emergency Road Service-Bilingual as a level one skill and Route Planning-Bilingual as a level two skill. When Jan O’Hara is available for an ACD call, provided Call Handling Preference is set to skill-level, the ACD software first looks for English-speaking callers who are requesting information on the emergency road service. Only if there are no callers requesting emergency road service does the ACD software look for English-speaking callers who are requesting information on route planning. If Call Handling Preference is set to greatest-need, Jan O’Hara receives the highest priority, oldest call waiting for either Emergency Road Service or Route-Planning-Bilingual each time Jan is available.

For any given application, EAS puts no restrictions on which agent skills can be assigned to an agent.