Efficient customer follow-up is essential for providing seamless support experiences. To enhance this process, Unified Routing introduces the concept of Stickiness, allowing organizations to route returning customers to the same agent with whom they have interacted last time. This assignment is normally governed by Stickiness Timeout, defined in the work queue, which refers to the timeframe in which the customer follows up. Based on this time, it is decided that whether the follow up case should be assigned to the last engaged agent or not.

With the enhanced capability, the assigment of the follow up can now also be checked by the real time availability status of the last engaged agent. If the agent is not available, we can now choose whether the customer should wait for the agent to get available or the case should be transferred to any other agent.

Illustration of Stickiness Status

Let's consider a scenario where a customer, Alex, reaches out to a support center regarding an issue with their recent purchase. Alex had previously interacted with Agent Sarah, who handled their initial inquiry. If Alex follows up the support center within the stickiness period (1 Day), the case would be preferred for assignment to Sarah. The stickiness settings in the work queue are define as in the figure below. Let's look at how the availability status of Sarah will govern the case assignment.

Scenario #1

Availability Status of Sarah : Available

Here Alex's case will be assigned to Sarah if her capacity is free since Sarah is available. If Sarah has full capacity, then the case would be transferred to holding queue of Sarah, where it will wait till Stickiness Wait timeout (30 minutes). If the consumed capacity of Sarah does not get free within 30 minutes, the case would be transferred to any oher agent in the queue.

Scenario #2

Availability Status of Sarah : Busy/Unavailable

Here, Alex's case will be transferred to the holding queue of Sarah even if her capacity is free. If Agent Sarah changes their availability status to any of the available statuses defined in "Agent Status when Available", i.e. "Available", within the Stickiness Wait timeout (30 minutes), the customer follow-up case is immediately assigned to Agent Sarah if here capacity is free. This ensures that Alex's case is handled by the agent who possesses the relevant knowledge and context.

Scenario #3

Availability Status of Sarah : On Leave

Here, Alex's case won't be considered for assignment to Sarah evwn if her capacity is free. The case will be assigned to any other available agent in the work queue.

Benefits and Impact

By incorporating agent availability status, organizations can optimize resource allocation and workflow management. Agents who are actively available and ready to handle new cases are assigned follow-up inquiries, minimizing customer waiting times and ensuring efficient utilization of agent capacity.