Skills-based routing

As a consequence, the separate large queues that were characteristic of the ACD-driven call centre have disappeared.

Manufacturers claim that this technology improves customer service, shortens call-handling time, makes training shorter and easier, and thus increases agent utilisation, productivity, and, hence, revenue.

However, independent analysts and consultants argue that the extra complexity of a skills-based routing system might not return the claimed benefits.

[5] Theoretical work on skills-based routing system tends to be more limited, with researchers trying to identify suitable queueing theory and operations research models to represent the problems that are raised by skills-based routing systems.

[13] Others claim that the traditional queueing theory formula, such as Erlang-C, are no longer relevant for determining staff schedules, because they are inaccurate.