TCN Releases Next Generation “Intelligent Skills-Based Routing” To Shorten Connection Time and Revolutionize Agent-Customer Matching

TCN Inc. today announced the release of its intelligent skills-based routing that again pushes the envelope of virtual call center technology development. In any call-center environment, matching the right agent to the right customer is crucial. Nowhere is this matching as imperative as in the credit and collections industry. High-scored accounts must get to the best collectors. Spanish speakers must connect with Spanish speakers. Agent skills must be matched to customer needs.

Problematically, call centers have had to function in a world of trade-offs: more detailed and complex skills inevitably increased customer wait time. In turn, this led to more abandoned calls and missed opportunities.

Now agencies can have their cake and eat it too. And one slice can be black forest, while the next can be angel food.

TCN has revolutionized the way skills are matched on the back-end, drastically improving connection times.

Most skills routing grows geometrically in complexity. For example: A simple call flow that features only three skills–English or Spanish, High or Low Scored, 30 days or 60 days—would typically require 2x2x2, or eight possibilities. Add one more skill and you now have 2x2x2x2, or sixteen possibilities. The result is a laborious matching process that takes time. Calls are lost.

TCN skills routing grows arithmetically in complexity. Therefore, the same script with four skills—sixteen possibilities traditionally—features only 2+2+2+2, or eight, possibilities. Perceive the implications of this difference in skills aggregation methodology: running thousands of these operations simultaneously, sometimes with up to ten skills each, amounts to an efficiency gain that has an imposing number of zeros behind it.

This next generation methodology relies on advanced matrix matching. TCN aggregates all required skills over the course of the call and finds the best match for the call using all the discovered skills against all available agents–and the agent’s aptitude in each skill. The resulting score will ensure that the right person speaks with the right agent.

What does this mean to an agency? It means more matching options, more accuracy, and more speed. TCN can match 100,000 skills in about 1 second. This means that if a call center has 10,000 agents with 10 skills each, TCN could put a call to the right agent in about 1 second; if an agency has 1000 agents with 100 skills each match would still take about 1 second.

Setup remains, true to TCN form, extremely easy. Management is real-time and easy to use. Reporting provides great visibility into what the skills-based routing is actually doing.

“Collecting is hard enough without leaving money on the table because of ossified technology,” TCN CEO Terrel Bird related. “TCN continues pushing the technology envelope, particularly in the credit and collections arena, in response to client demand—clients who lost calls every day because of slow or non-existent matching.”

TCN offers free testing of its Virtual Call Center technology, including skills-based routing, to all takers. Call 866.745.1900, email sales@tcn.com, or visit tcn.com.