Background

A company that sells fax machines has two skills: Sales and Service. All agents can handle calls to both the skills, but five agents excel at closing sales deals.

The company wants top agents to handle more sales calls. Therefore, the company decides to allocate the work time of top agents.

Service level targets

Agents must answer 85% of all Sales calls within 25 seconds and 80% of all Service calls within 40 seconds.

Call handling target

Agents must complete each call and all activities related to that call within 300 seconds. Therefore, the administrator sets the expected call handling time as 300 seconds.

Skill assignment

For the top sales agents, the administrator allocates 50% of the work time to the Sales skill and 50% to the Service skill.

The administrator assigns the Sales skill as the primary skill of the top agents and the Service skill as the secondary skill.

For other agents, the administrator allocates the work time and assigns both the skills, that is, Sales and Service, as the primary skill.

The following table shows the agent skill assignment.

The administrator reserves the top sales agents as secondary-only for the Service skill. Therefore, Communication Manager places the top sales agents on standby for the secondary skill.

Agent selection

The administrator selects pad as the agent selection method. Therefore, during agent surplus conditions, Communication Manager routes a call to the agent with the lowest ratio of adjusted work time to the target allocation for the skill.

As the company encourages agents to complete all call-related activities during the call, Communication Manager adds the time spent in After Call Work (ACW) to the idle time calculations.

Call selection

The administrator selects percent-allocation as the call handling preference for agents. Therefore, during call surplus conditions, Communication Manager selects a call that meets the allocation target of the available agent.

The administrator reserves the top sales agents as secondary agents for the Service skill. Therefore, the top sales agents are idle when the current allocation for the Service skill exceeds the administered allocation.

Top sales agents are unavailable for calls to the Service skill but are available to receive calls to the Sales skill.

Automated agent staffing

The administrator uses the Dynamic Percentage Adjustment feature to match the target allocation and the service level for a skill.

For example, if call volumes for a skill are higher than the forecast, Dynamic Percentage Adjustment changes the target allocation to meet the administered service level.

Summary

Percent Allocation and PAD balance the time that an agent spends in each skill during call surplus and agent surplus conditions.

With these features, Communication Manager selects calls or agents after comparing the agent work time and the target allocation for a skill.

The administrator uses Auto Reserve Agents to ensure that the top sales agents are idle for Service calls if the current allocation exceeds the target.