ACD Skills

ACD skills are how you route contactsClosed The person interacting with an agent, IVR, or bot in your contact center. to agents. When a contact enters your system, it's categorized under a skill. The ACD then sends the contact to an available agent who is assigned that skill.

When a contact enters your system, it does so through a point of contactClosed The entry point that an inbound contact uses to initiate an interaction, such as a phone number or email address., like calling your customer support phone number. The point of contact has a skill assigned to it. Therefore, the contact is associated with the skill assigned to the point of contact they used.

Agents also have skills assigned to them. When the ACD requests an agent, it only looks for available agents that are assigned the appropriate skill. So, if a contact entered your system under the Sales-US skill, the system would only look for agents who are assigned the Sales-US skill.

Contact routing is managed by Studio scripts. A point of contact is also assigned a default Studio script. This controls how a contact routes through your system, among other things. For example, you could create an IVRClosed Interactive Voice Response. Automated phone menu contacts use via voice or key inputs to obtain information, route an inbound voice call, or both. menu system for phone calls. To prompt the ACD to route a contact to an agent, you can use a REQAGENT action.

Lastly, routing is impacted by system settings and configurations like bullseye routing and agents' proficiency scores.

Skills can be as broad or as specific as you want; you can create them based on any criteria. For example, you could create skills for certain languages, for different departments, agents' unique abilities, and so forth. Your combination of skills can be tailored to your organization's unique needs.

Skills are based on the channelClosed Various voice and digital communication mediums that facilitate customer interactions in a contact center., or media type, the contact comes through—when creating a skill, you decide which channel it will handle:

  • Chat
  • Email (inbound or outbound)
  • Phone (inbound or outbound)
  • SMS
  • Voicemail
  • Work item

Skills can also provide an agentlessClosed Contacts made without a live agent for tasks such as one-way delivery of information or messages. experience through Personal Connection (PC). PC includes automated Proactive Voice, Proactive SMS, and Proactive Email. PC skills are complex and interact with more features than other ACD skills do.

Skill Proficiency

Skill proficiency determines the priority of routing contacts to agents. Each agent assigned to a skill is given a proficiency level from 1 (highest) to 20 (lowest). When a contact enters a queue, the system looks for the first available agent with the highest proficiency for that skill. This ensures that customers are connected to the most qualified agents first, improving service quality and efficiency. Proficiency can also be adjusted dynamically through rules or performance metrics.

Bullseye routing uses proficiency levels to gradually expand the pool of agents for a skill when no one at the highest proficiency is available. It starts by targeting agents with the highest proficiency level, and if none are free within a set time, it “expands the bullseye” to include the next level, and so on. In other words, the ACD looks for agents with a proficiency of 1, and if it can't find an available agent, it expands the criteria to look for proficiencies of 1 and 2, and so on. This process continues until the contact is routed or the maximum level is reached. The goal is to prioritize the most skilled agents while minimizing wait times for customers.

Additionally, you can update the proficiency levels of agents in three ways:

  • Edit the skill.

  • Edit the user's ACD Users profile.

  • Set workforce intelligence (WFI) rules. WFI can automatically change the proficiency level when agent metrics reach specified thresholds.

Key Facts About ACD Skills

  • Instead of deleting a skill, you deactivate it. You can activate and deactivate skills as needed.
  • You can have up to 10,000 active skills per business unitClosed High-level organizational grouping used to manage technical support, billing, and global settings for your CXone Mpower system.. Inactive skills do not count toward this limit.

  • Each skill has an audit history tab. This tab displays a table of information about the creation and last modification of the skill.

  • ACD skill names must be unique. If you modify a skill that was created prior to this restriction was put in place, the system checks its name. If the name is the same as another existing skill, you must change the skill's name before you can save it.

  • You can assign skills to agents and apply proficiency scores in three ways:

    • In the ACD User profile

    • In the skill's settings

    • With an employee template

Mr. Collins calls the Longbourn contact center. He reaches an IVRClosed Interactive Voice Response. Automated phone menu contacts use via voice or key inputs to obtain information, route an inbound voice call, or both. and presses numbers to say he wants to ask a question about his account balance. He enters the queue through an inbound phone skill called EnglishBilling.

Four agents are assigned to this skill: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, and Kitty. They have proficiency levels in this skill of 6, 5, 4, and 3, respectively. Jane (level 6) is already on a call, but Elizabeth (5), Mary (4), and Kitty (3) are all available. The skill routes the call to Kitty because she has the highest proficiency level of the available agents in the skill.

Skills work together with other elements of CXone Mpower, including: 

Feature How It Works with Skills
Campaign Long lists of skills can become difficult to maintain. CampaignsClosed A grouping of skills used to run reports. help organize skills and simplify reporting. You must assign each skill to a campaign.
Point of Contact For inbound skills, you can assign a point of contact, or an entry point, for contacts to directly access the skill. For example, you can assign a phone number to an inbound voice skill or an email address to an inbound email skill.
Dispositions You can configure post-contact work for your agents to complete after each interaction related to the skill. One option is to have agents apply dispositionsClosed Result assigned by the agent or system at the end of a voice (disposition) or digital (status) interaction. to the interaction. Dispositions mark the interaction as having a certain result and allow the agent to enter related information, such as an amount paid or a date and time to call the contact back.
Tags Like dispositions, tags mark interactions a certain way. They are labels that you create and assign to a skill so that agents can mark an interaction with one or more as needed.
Do Not Call Each outbound phone skill is associated with a do not call (DNC) group. Contacts who interact with agents through the skill can request to not be contacted by your organization again. When the contact is added to the DNC group, outbound skills in the same DNC group cannot reach that contact again.
Call Suppression You can temporarily block outbound interactions to contacts based on criteria you choose. For example, you may want to block your outbound voice skills from dialing contacts in a certain region where a natural disaster has recently occurred.