When you sign up with a UCaaS and call center solutions provider like 8x8, you’ll be able to choose from a range of customizable rules and IVR services (among other things)
When you sign up with a UCaaS and call center solutions provider like 8x8, you’ll be able to choose from a range of customizable rules and IVR services (among other things)
Boost communication within your business with advanced call routing capabilities
As a business, it’s not unreasonable for you to expect high call volumes on a daily basis—phone calls, after all, are essential to an organization’s operations. It doesn’t matter if you’re running an agency, a firm, a call center, or a manufacturing facility. Your clients, customers, vendors, and sometimes even the media are bound to dial your number, and they expect to speak to the employees who can best help them.
That’s why call routing systems are such an important part of business telephony. They make sure calls end up where they need to be.
But what exactly is call routing and how does it work, especially for companies that have call centers? Use the jump links below to learn more.
Call routing refers to the process of sorting and distributing phone calls to individuals or team members, departments, and/or different phone lines based on a set of predetermined rules and criteria. You can base the routing system’s behavior on different factors (more on these later) to manage and streamline call flows effectively and ensure that operations run efficiently.
This particular business phone system capability can be applied to companies in all sorts of industries, but it’s especially useful for the call center setup.
Call routing has become increasingly advanced in recent years. You may have heard of the term Automatic Call Distribution (or ACD for short). ACD systems use machine learning to intelligently send calls to agents on the most appropriate extension. With inbound calls automatically forwarded in this way, companies can reduce the number of callers getting placed on hold, sent to voicemail, or— worse—met with either a “busy” tone or perpetual ringing.
As previously mentioned, call routing is a common fixture in call centers. Most of us will have already interacted with this type of system at one point or another.
But how does it actually work? These days, it’s primarily based on software.
Routing software works by distributing calls based on either:
Let’s explore these two options.
Pre-set rules are conditions with little to no input on the part of callers that determine the system’s call routing behavior. Examples of criteria often considered in this setup include:
This approach to managing phone calls isn’t just useful for call centers, they’re great for other types of companies too. For instance, calls coming in after business operating hours will be sent to voicemail—alternatively, they’ll be sent to a branch or department that’s still open to addressing concerns.
To understand how calls are routed based on this, we first need to understand how an IVR system works.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology works by providing customers who call into a business with a menu of options and routing them to the most appropriate phone number or extension based on the customer’s choices.
Here’s how the standard sequence goes:
The main purpose of an effective call routing system is to successfully manage call volumes. Your call distribution method determines how quickly, appropriately, and efficiently interactions with your contacts are handled—especially when there’s an uptick in the demand for your company’s attention.
So it’s safe to say that the ability to route calls is an advantage for any organization.
Let’s take a look at more specific benefits of call routing:
There are different types of routing a call center or contact center can choose from. They address specific call routing strategies for distributing calls to individual agents.
Here’s a quick list of the most common approaches deployed by customer support organizations:
Let’s look at each of them more closely.
Information provided by the caller via your IVR menu is used to connect them to an agent with the most relevant skill set so they can get the best assistance for their query or problem.
Also called “most idle routing,” this method connects incoming callers to the agent experiencing the lowest call volume at the time, ensuring a more equitable distribution of work—and minimizing the risk of agent burnout.
Calls are automatically routed to the call center agent who has been idle for the longest period of time. This makes the pace of work more manageable for teams of operators and agents.
Incoming calls ring on multiple agents’ phones at once. The first to pick up will take the call.
Round robin routing distributes incoming calls evenly amongst available call center agents. Also called “rotary” routing, it makes it so that no single agent is required to pick up another call until all other agents in the team have been assigned a call.
This lets managers set ratios of incoming calls to be routed to each individual call center representative. Weighted routing can be set up so more experienced reps receive more calls and new hires receive fewer calls.
Also called “predictive behavioral routing,” intelligent call routing uses customer data (based on current and previous interactions) to ensure that callers are connected to the agents best suited to their needs—it can even route them to a rep they’ve already developed a relationship with.
We’ve hinted at this before—with this, you can have your calls routed based on an individual agent’s time zone or according to pre-set business hours.
Call center agents are organized in lists, with specific agents being assigned as the primary representatives at specific times, with other agents only receiving calls if the main representatives are not available to provide service..
Based on saved caller IDs, a business’s most important clients are pushed forward to the front of any given call queue so that they receive immediate assistance.
With so many call distribution options to choose from, it can be hard to know what call distribution setup is right for your business. But do you want to know the truth? It's unique for every business!
The type of distribution system you’ll need depends on the kind of operation you’re running, not to mention your unique business needs.
Small businesses may only need basic routing engines like business hours routing, for example. Larger-scale organizations like contact centers will probably need more advanced routing protocols to distribute calls effectively between operators and extensions.
Let’s look at this quick summary of differences between the call routing needs of standard offices and contact centers.
| Contact center phone systems | Phone systems for business calls |
|---|---|
| Include more advanced capabilities like automated call distribution (ACD) software with skills-based routing and interactive voice response (IVR) technology to provide exceptional customer experience through first call resolution. | Involve simple routing protocols only and typically won’t need to use complex rules for delivering calls throughout the business phone system. |
| The call routing strategy for call centers determines which call distribution capabilities are essential for managing the high call volumes and workflows expected in the organization’s daily operations. | This relies more heavily on call routing rules criteria like business hours and VIP caller IDs to keep business calls organized, and top-priority clients prioritized. |
Proper call distribution helps businesses (especially call centers) manage incoming and outgoing calls more effectively. Customized call routing ensures agents get fairly-distributed workloads based on preselected criteria such as relevant skills and availability. The result? Better service, increased productivity, and soaring customer satisfaction.
Experience truly efficient call routing with 8x8. You can take advantage of this feature with the X Series whether you’re only looking for a business communications solution (check out our X2 and X4 plans) or want to add in contact center functionality (see our X6, X7, and X8 plans).
Call routing software pricing varies. Most call center software offers routing as part of their solution. Prices tend to range between $75 and $200 per user per month.
Call auto-routing is just another name for automatic call distributor, (ACD). As previously mentioned, it’s an automated call distribution tool that takes all incoming calls and directs calls to the most relevant extension based on a predefined set of call forwarding rules.
They work similarly to how we’ve described call routing above. One important thing to note, though, is that there are two modes of call distribution used in telecoms. These are outbound (typically used for sales teams) and inbound (typically used for incoming customer calls).
Call routing technology is a standard capability of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems for commercial use. Business VoIP phone systems, much like most enterprise-level voice communications solutions, automate the call routing process, allowing small businesses and call centers to determine how their calls will be routed based on a range of potential criteria. The key difference is that the technology primarily works via the internet.
VoIP vendors make it super easy to set up call routing protocols in your business or call center. For example, 8x8’s ACD capabilities offer automated skills-based routing, which helps direct calls to the agent most capable of handling the caller’s queries.
The 8x8 Contact Center solution is also compatible as a simple integration with numerous popular CRM systems available (see our app marketplace) meaning you’ll be able to sync all of your existing customer data with your ACD capabilities—among other powerful support tools.
Call forwarding is a call management functionality used to transfer a live call from one person to another. Call routing is focused on organizing, queuing, and distributing all incoming calls to relevant departments or call center agents.
There are two ways to answer this question, depending on what’s meant by it.
If we’re talking about routing a call that’s already arrived at your business phone’s extension, then the answer is: you can’t. The closest thing you can do is to select an option to forward that call to another extension—and that’s only if you have a business phone solution that allows that.
But if we’re talking about setting up a routing protocol for your incoming calls, then that’s a bit easier especially if you’re using a cloud-based phone system.
Generally speaking, you only need to:
The level of customization you can get depends on your vendor and the plan you’re paying for. Make sure you speak to your service provider if you want very specific behaviors out of your call routing capabilities.