Attach skills to conversations in Omnichannel Administration

Omnichannel for Customer Service offers a suite of capabilities that extend the power of Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise to enable organizations to instantly connect and engage with their customers across digital messaging channels. An additional license is required to access Omnichannel for Customer Service. For more information, see the Dynamics 365 Customer Service pricing overview and Dynamics 365 Customer Service pricing plan pages.

Important

Understand skill-based routing

When a customer initiates a conversation, the following happens:

  • Based on the skill attachment rules, the system attaches the skills to the conversation.
  • Based on the routing rules, the system routes the conversation to the appropriate queue.
  • Now, the assignment system starts matching the agents' skills with those skills attached to the conversation. After finding a match as per the match criteria (exact or closest), the assignment engine assigns the conversation to the agent.

In the portal, when a customer fills in the prechat survey questions, the system receives them as context variables. The system attaches these variables to the incoming conversation as a skill. The assignment engine matches the skills of the agents. The skill is matched on exact or closest match. If the agent and conversation skills match, the assignment engine assigns the conversation to the agent.

For example:

Bert Hair, is a customer from Spain, who uses Xbox product. Bert goes to www.contoso.com portal to initiate a chat with the Contoso customer service. In the pre-chat survey question, Bert chooses Xbox. Because Bert's geolocation is Spain, the system attaches Xbox as the product and the Spanish language as the skill to the conversation. Then, the assignment engine assigns the conversation to an agent who matches the skill and language.

Note

The system attaches the skills to a conversation based on the skill attachment rules.

Match skills

When the skill attachment rules attach skills and proficiency levels, the assignment logic matches the required skill with the skills of the agent. The system assigns the conversation to an agent based on the skill criteria that is chosen.

Admins can achieve the skill matching based on the business requirements:

  • Exact skill matching
  • Closest or nearest skill matching

Exact skill matching

In exact skill matching, the assignment logic searches for an agent with the required skills and proficiency and lists them in the order of highest available capacity by default. The default order can be set to round robin by the administrator.

If no agent is available with all the required skills and corresponding or higher proficiency, then the conversation remains unassigned in the queue.

Exact match will filter all matching agents whose proficiency is greater than or equal to the required proficiency.

The following table describes how exact skill matching works for a single or multiple-skill scenario.

Skill scenario Skill & proficiency criteria Description
Single Xbox = 4 The system searches for all agents with Xbox greater than or equal to 4.
Multiple Xbox = 4
Spanish = 5
The system searches for all agents with Xbox skill rating greater than or equal to 4 and Spanish skill rating greater than or equal to 5.

Closest skill matching

If no agent is available with any of the required skills, then the conversation might be assigned to an agent without the required skills.

The closest skill match will order all agents based on their closeness to the required skill and proficiency. For example, if the required skills are four, then agents with four skills will be put on top (exact qualified), then agent with five skills (overqualified), and then agent with three skills (under qualified). In this scenario where closest match is chosen as the skill matching algorithm at workstream level; if more than one agent with same skill score are there; the system won't order them by round robin or highest capacity. The system will continue to assign all the incoming work items to the same agent until other constraints like capacity and presence are met.

Note

If you don't intend to use skills based routing model, choose None in the Default skill matching algorithm option in the workstream settings.

The following table describes how exact skill matching works for a single- or multiple-skill scenario.

Skill scenario Skill & proficiency Description
Single Xbox = 4
  • Agents are first ordered by exact qualified match (Xbox equals 4), followed by overqualified match (Xbox is greater than 4), and then underqualified match (Xbox is less than 4)
  • If none of the criteria are met, then the work item might be assigned to an agent who doesn't have the Xbox skill.
Multiple Xbox = 4
Spanish = 5
  • Agents are first ordered by exact qualified (Xbox equals 4, Spanish equals 5), then overqualified (Xbox is greater than 4, Spanish is greater than 5) and then underqualified (Xbox is less than 4, Spanish is less than 5).
  • If none of the criteria are met, then the work item might be assigned to an agent who doesn't have the Xbox and Spanish skills.

Note

The system provides a score for the agents against each skill based on the scenarios mentioned and rating model. The system calculates the normalised score of the agent by considering the skills and then, based on the score, assigns the conversation to the agents.

Prerequisites

To attach skills, you need a workstream record. You can either create or use an existing workstream configuration.

Create rules to attach a skill in Omnichannel Administration

  1. Sign in to the Omnichannel Administration app.

  2. Select Work Streams under Work Distribution Management.

  3. Select a workstream from the list.

  4. Select the Skill Attachment Rules tab.

  5. Select a skill-matching option for the Matching Logic field. You can select one of the following:

    To learn more, see Match skills.

  6. Select Add to create a new skill rule. The SKILL ATTACHMENT RULE page opens.

  7. Specify the following in the New Skill Attachment Rule page.

    Field Description Value
    Name Provide a name for the skill rule. Xbox product and Spain location
    Description Describe the skill rule. This is a skill-matching rule for the Xbox product and Spain location.
  8. Set up the conditions. Select an Entity, Related Attribute, Attribute, Operator, and Value. For an entity, you can define rules based on related level 1 attributes.

    An example is as follows.

    Entity Related Attribute Attribute Operator Value
    Account (Conversation) Primary contact (Contact) Address 1: Country/Region Equals Spain
  9. Select Save to save the record. After you save, the Skill section appears.

  10. Select Add Existing Skill. The Quick Create: Attach Skill pane appears.

  11. Select a skill from the lookup menu, and select a proficiency level from the list, and then select Save and Close to save and add the skill to the grid.

    Attach skill to a conversation.

    If the condition (criteria) matches, then the omnichannel system attaches the skill.

  12. Select Save. After you save, the rule appears in the Attachment Rules section of the workstream.

    Add skill rule to workstream.

See also

Overview of skill-based routing
Allow agents to update skills
Set up skills and assign agents