Traditionally Vonage Contact Center routes calls to the longest waiting agent. With skills based routing, if two agents have identical skills, the longest waiting of those agents gets the call. Equal call distribution is a type of skills based routing.
What is equal call distribution?
With equal call distribution, Vonage Contact Center distributes calls more equally between the available agents.
Equal call distribution is ideal for outbound contact centers. In an outbound contact center, agents might perceive inbound calls as being more valuable than outbound calls. Without equal call distribution, the agents making the most outbound calls may miss out on these inbound calls; with equal call distribution, Vonage Contact Center allocates inbound calls more fairly.
We cannot guarantee full equality because equal call distribution only considers available agents—that is, the agents who are not working on a call. If an agent spends all day unavailable—for example, on outbound calls—Vonage Contact Center has no opportunity to deliver them an inbound call.
If equal call distribution is enabled for your account, the following call distribution methods are available:
- Agent waiting longest since any interaction. This method is the default method of call distribution and works the same as if equal call distribution is not enabled for your account. If two agents have identical skills, the longest waiting of those agents gets the call. If you don't want to use equal call distribution, use this method.
Agent waiting longest since last inbound interaction. Vonage Contact Center selects the agent who has been the longest without an inbound call and is available to answer the call. If enabled for your account, Vonage Contact Center disregards personal calls in the calculation.
The time since an agent's last inbound call is never reset. So, when an agent logs in, their last inbound time from when they were last logged in applies. If an agent logs out for a significant period of time—for example, if the agent goes on holiday—Vonage Contact Center is quite likely to route the next inbound call to them when they next log in as their last inbound call will be longest ago.
When you create a new agent, the time since the agent's last inbound call is set to the time of agent creation. As a result, the agent will have to wait until all other agents have received an inbound call before Vonage Contact Center routes an inbound call to them.
- Random. With random call distribution, Vonage Contact Center allocates the calls on a random basis to available agents.
For information about setting up equal call distribution, see Configuring equal call distribution.