Genesys Cloud - Main

Our agents handle calls and emails at the same time, and we've set Genesys to allow calls to interrupt emails. We found this setup to lead to uneven assignment of calls across agents in some cases. An extreme example is agents A and B are on the same queue, but agent A has an email interaction open, while agent B does not. If we have only few calls coming in, they will always be assigned to agent B, so at the end of the day, agent B might have handled 10-20 calls, and agent A none. This is because for agent A, the "time since last interaction" is always 0, as they have a running interaction.

This extreme case has happened a few times. What happens more often is that statistically, agents that handle emails will get less calls than those that don't. 

Do you also have this issue? Are there any ways to only consider interactions on certain channels when calculating the time since last interaction (most likely not).

We are considering the following alternatives:

1. Completely split email from telephony, so agents only work on one channel at once. This way the calls are distributed "fairly" among agents, but it also means that any free time between calls has to be spent on work outside Genesys (which defeats the purpose of Genesys)
2. Don't allow calls to interrupt mails. This means however that callers may wait very long in the queue, as handling a complex email may take a couple of hours.

Do you see any other way of improving the situation? Thank you for any ideas.

#Routing(ACD/IVR)

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Andrei Socaciu
Architect
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Hi Andrei, You could test Utilization Labels to separate voice and digital capacity. This should help keep agents available for voice calls even when they're working on digital interactions.
That said, I wouldn't expect Utilization Labels alone to fix the call balancing issue, because they don't change how routing priority works.
For better distribution, it might make sense to split the agents into two groups:
- Voice-focused agents
- Blended agents
Then voice calls would go to the voice-focused group first, with blended agents acting as overflow.
So basically, Utilization Labels can help with availability, but the routing/group strategy should have a bigger impact on call distribution.

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Att,
Breno Canyggia Ferreira Marreco
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Hi Andrei,

Following this post as I find it quite interesting.

My understanding is that allowing calls to interrupt emails makes agents eligible to receive voice interactions, but the queue routing evaluation method may still influence which eligible agent receives the interaction.

I wonder whether the behavior you're seeing is related to the routing method and how metrics such as "time since last interaction" are being evaluated when agents have long-running email interactions.

Interested to hear other thoughts on this as well.

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Phaneendra
Technical Solutions Consultant
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Hi Andrei,

Our business has a group where staff take Email Interactions and Voice Interactions blended.  We however have these as separate queues (One for Voice and One for Email).  I think based off your description your queue is blended with Voice and Email Interactions.  Have you can considered splitting the interaction types across two queues? That way through the day if there's more calls, you can deactivate them from emails to clear through the calls.

There's definitely a lot of other factors in the background that could be influencing who is getting what interactions.  Skill Levels and Queue routing config (Evaluation Method and Scoring Method).

In the past I've suggested to our Leaders to have a Skills Matrix setup so they can ensure that everyone has the same Skill priorities.  I've seen it where a staff member has gotten 2 calls in a day, verses their colleague with 20 all because their star rating was lower.  This wasn't setup intentionally either, it was just an error when applying their skills.  Something else to consider especially if you're wanting to make sure workload is evenly distributed.

Could be worth looking at that too.

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Robert Niblock
Contact Centre Technology Analyst
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I have to correct myself. Though I am very sure of having tested this behavior as described above, I've just tested it again and what actually matters is the point in time of the email assignment or disconnect. This matches what the documentation says at https://help.genesys.cloud/articles/genesys-cloud-acd-processing .

It means the issue has way less impact, as simply having an email open for a long time does not affect the call distribution.

I am not sure if this behavior has changed, or is affected by other settings on queue level.

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Andrei Socaciu
Architect
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