Routing Guidance: Choosing the Right Strategy

Routing Strategies

Salesforce offers several routing strategies to direct work to service reps. Let's explore each strategy in detail.

Unified Routing: Centralized Control with Salesforce

Omni-Channel Unified Routing streamlines your operations. It handles routing from all service channels, except Bring Your Own Channel for CCaaS. It manages all rep capacity and status directly within Salesforce Omni-Channel. This approach eliminates the need for synchronization with external systems so you get a stable and consistent experience for both reps and supervisors. Unified Routing support varies based on partner implementation. Check with you telephony or CCaaS provider to see if they support Omni-Channel Unified Routing. 

Here are some key characteristics.

• Centralized routing management. Omni-Channel acts as the single point of control that enables you to define uniform routing logic across all service channels. Omni-Channel is the single system that maintains rep capacities and statuses.

• Channel blending. Because there’s only one routing engine, you can seamlessly blend work across service channels while ensuring a consistent customer experience. For example, reps can interact with customers in both Voice and Messaging channels.

• Consistent routing decisions. Omni-Channel can route work items from all service channels, except Bring Your Own Channel for CCaaS, which must be routed by a partner provider. Unlike partner providers, Omni-Channel supports routing voice calls with skills-based routing. 

• Comprehensive supervision. Supervisors can see all of their team’s in-progress work and monitor the backlog.

• Seamless reporting. You can access all rep performance and activity reports from within Salesforce.

For general availability of this feature, see the Release Note: Route Voice Calls with Other Channels by Using Omni-Channel.

See Also

Salesforce Help: Route Calls with Omni-Channel Unified Routing

External Routing: Delegating to a Partner Provider

With External Routing, Omni-Channel delegates routing to a third-party provider, such as a telephony or CCaaS provider. Similar to Omni-Channel Unified Routing, this approach eliminates the need to synchronize rep statuses and capacities between Salesforce and the partner provider. 

• Provider-managed routing. The partner provider routes work from all service channels. Rep statuses and capacities are maintained solely within the partner provider system. 

• Routing capabilities vary by vendor. For example, Amazon Connect doesn’t do skill-based routing.

• Supervision. Supervisors can monitor service channels from the partner provider in Omni Supervisor but don’t always see the backlog of work items.

• Seamless reporting. You can access all rep performance and activity reports from within the partner provider system.

To integrate third-party routing with Omni-Channel using Salesforce standard APIs and streaming APIs, see External Routing for Omni-Channel.

See Also

Salesforce: Bring Your Own Channel for CCaaS Guide

Salesforce: Interaction Service API Guide

Blended Routing: A Hybrid Approach

Blended Routing involves routing from both Salesforce Omni-Channel and a partner provider, such as Amazon Connect. Omni-Channel manages most channels, while the partner provider manages the rest. This strategy requires synchronizing rep statuses and capacities across both systems. Because of the blended routing engines, it’s more challenging to set up and blend channels.

• Shared resource management. Reps are treated as shared resources between both systems. You must manage the queues and users in both systems and keep them in sync.

• Separate routing. Omni-Channel can route all work, except voice calls and Bring Your Own Channel for CCaaS work items. Although Omni-Channel routing logic can decide where to route voice calls and Bring Your Own Channel work items, the partner provider ultimately routes those work items to the routing targets defined in the partner provider system. If needed, the partner provider can override Omni-Channel’s suggested routing target. Unlike with Omni-Channel Unified Routing, with Blended Routing, you can’t use skills-based routing for voice calls. Partner providers route voice calls using queues-based routing only.

• Split supervision. Supervisors can use both Salesforce and the partner provider’s system to monitor work and reps if it’s too difficult or impossible to retrieve all information from one system. For example, because Omni-Channel isn’t aware of abandoned calls, you must use the partner provider system to report on them.

• Synchronization overhead. Keeping rep status and capacity in sync between both systems can be challenging and lead to potential issues, such as misrouted work or incorrect reporting.

Key Considerations for Choosing the Right Routing Strategy

While Salesforce offers multiple routing strategies, select the one that best fits your company's needs for a smooth and efficient service operation.

To select the right routing strategy, consider these characteristics.

• Channel blending. Consider the routing strategy that enables your reps to work seamlessly across channels. For example, with Omni-Channel Unified Routing, because there’s only one routing engine, you can seamlessly blend work across service channels to ensure a consistent rep and customer experience.

• Skills-based routing. Not all routing strategies support skills-based routing for all service channels. For example, unlike Blended Routing, Omni-Channel Unified Routing supports skills-based routing for voice calls. 

• Comprehensive supervision. Choose a routing strategy that enables your supervisors to monitor all of their team’s in-progress work and the backlog.

• Stability and user experience. Blended Routing manages rep capacity and status across two systems, which can cause instability if these systems are out of sync. This can lead to unexpected results for both reps and supervisors. In contrast, Omni-Channel Unified Routing avoids this issue by managing all rep capacity and status solely within Omni-Channel.

• Supervisor monitoring. Supervisor monitoring varies by routing strategy. With Blended Routing, supervisors must use both Salesforce and the partner provider's system. In contrast, Omni-Channel Unified Routing allows supervisors to monitor all service channels directly from Salesforce Omni Supervisor.

• Rep capacity management. Salesforce Omni-Channel typically manages rep capacity, where each rep has a 100% capacity that is aggregated from all service channels. With Omni-Channel Unified Routing, Omni-Channel can see all work across all channels, which enables accurate capacity calculations.

• Reporting. Depending on the routing strategy, evaluating rep performance and activity sometimes requires two reporting systems. However, with Omni-Channel Unified Routing, all reports are prepackaged and available in Salesforce.

• Synchronization issues. Integrating multiple routing systems can cause synchronization issues, leading to discrepancies and impacting rep performance. For instance, if a rep is online in Salesforce but offline in Amazon Connect, Amazon Connect doesn't assign the work to the rep and Omni-Channel routing fails. The rep remains idle until the sync issue is resolved. 

To help you understand the routing strategies, this table summarizes the differences among the routing strategies for each characteristic. 

Unless you’ve made significant investment in another routing strategy, we recommend that you use Omni-Channel Unified Routing. It provides a centralized, stable, and efficient environment for managing service channels and service rep work. You can route work to reps with specific skills, specific reps, and queues consistently across all service channels. Supervisors can monitor all service channels and listen in on conversations from Omni Supervisor. Rep capacity and statuses are maintained solely in Omni-Channel, which eliminates the need for synchronization between two systems. This setup also streamlines the reporting process. Salesforce provides prepackaged rep performance and activity reports.

See Also

Salesforce Help: Choose Your Routing Strategy