Configure Priority for a Skill for Static Delivery

Configure Priority for an ACD Skill

Required permissions: Skills Edit

If your email skill has Email Parking enabled, the priority of an email interaction accelerates +1 each time an agent unparks it, even if Acceleration and Maximum Priority are each set to 0.

You can control the priority of interactions associated with a particular skill. You choose the initial priority when the interaction enters the queue and the rate the priority increases over time. This gives you control over which interactions route first when the queue is full.

Classics, Inc., has a contact center on the Longbourn Estate. The center handles accounting calls from employees and from merchants and vendors with whom Classics does business. Mr. Bennet, the center supervisor, wants to make sure that vendor calls always have priority over other calls.

When he creates the voice skills for the center, he assigns an initial priority between 101-200 to skills for vendor calls. He assigns an initial priority of 001-100 to his other skills. Here's how this would impact two calls in different types of skills:

  • Call #1 comes in on the Vendor skill, which has a priority of 110.
  • Call #2 comes in on the Employees skill, which has a priority of 10.
  • When an agent becomes available, Call #1 will be delivered first since it has the higher priority.

Mr. Bennet also wants to control how the priority changes for calls over their time in queue. To do this, he uses acceleration. With this setting, the formula becomes Overall Priority = (Time * Acceleration)+ Initial Priority. Here's how this setting impacts two calls that have been in queue for the same amounts of time:

  • Call #1 comes in on the Vendor skill, which has a priority of 110. The call has been in queue for 4 minutes. It currently has a priority of 110.
  • Call #3 comes in on the Merchants skill, which also has a priority of 110. Because Mr. Bennet wants calls from merchants to be answered in the shortest time possible, he has also assigned an acceleration of 10 to the Merchants skill. The call has been in queue for 4 minutes. It currently has a priority of 150.
  • When an agent becomes available, Call #3 will be delivered first since it has the higher priority.
Priority management while in queue settings

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to Contact Settings > ACD Skills.

  3. Click the inbound ACD skillClosed Used to automate delivery of interactions based on agent skills, abilities, and knowledge you want to edit.

  4. Click Edit.

  5. Set the Initial Priority, Acceleration, and Maximum Priority. If you're creating a Personal Connection skill with priority blending enabled, set the Initial Priority, Priority Initial Priority, and Reschedule Priority instead.

    Field

    Details
    Initial Priority Enter a numeric value you want to set as the base level priorityClosed Skill-based designation of the importance of contacts that determines delivery order. for all contacts in an inbound skill or for fresh records and retries in an outbound skill (callbacksClosed Holds a customer's place in queue and automatically calls the customer when they move to the front of the queue. always take priority and are not affected by this setting). The default value is 0.

    Acceleration

    Enter a numeric value to determine how quickly the priority of the skill increases. For every minute a contact stays in queue, the priority increases by the value you configure for Acceleration.

    The default value is 1. The minimum value is 0 and the maximum priority is the value configured in the Maximum Priority field.

    For example, if the Initial Priority is 4, and you set Acceleration to 1, then with each passing minute that the contact is not handled, the priority increases by one. In this example, if the contact has been in queue for three minutes, then the priority will be raised to 7.

    Priority increments in seconds. For example, when Acceleration is 1, a contact's priority increases by 0.5 after 30 seconds in queue.

    For Personal Connection skills, set this value to 0 because there is no queue of contacts.

    You can set Initial Priority for one skill lower than another skill, but if you set Acceleration for that skill higher, it can jump spots in the queue. For example, you set Initial Priority for Skill A to 1 and Acceleration to 5. You set Initial Priority for Skill B to 3 and Acceleration to 1. Initially, a contact for Skill B will be first in queue because it has a priority of 4, but after one minute, Skill A will take its place at the top because its priority will be 6.

    CXone combines the acceleration value with the time the contact has been in queue and the initial priority using the formula Overall Priority = (Time * Acceleration) + Initial Priority.

    Maximum Priority Enter a numeric value to determine the maximum priority a contact can have. If you choose not to use Acceleration, this value should match the Initial Priority. The default value is 1000.

    If you're creating an email skill with email parking enabled, the priority of an email interaction accelerates +1 each time an agent unparks it, even if Acceleration and Maximum Priority are each set to 0.

  6. To test the priority of the skill relative to others, Configure Priority for a Skill for Static Delivery.

  7. Click Done.