Routing: three schemes that work
- A queue. Enquiries rotate between reps. Simple, fair, blind to workload.
- Rota by day or by channel. Each channel has its own owner. Good when channels differ in difficulty.
- First to grab it. Fast, but the strong reps take everything and the weak ones never learn.
Any of the three works. The only thing that does not work is having no scheme.
Deadlines
under 5 minutesstandard for a first reply during working hours
under 15 minutescallback on a missed call
by end of dayrecording the contact in the system
What the rep does on first contact
- Says hello and names the company.
- Establishes the customer's job before talking about the product.
- Quotes a price, or a range, once the job is clear.
- Agrees a specific next step with a date.
- Records all of it in the system.
Outside working hours
- an automatic reply stating when a human will answer
- the enquiry lands on a morning list with its timestamp
- the first action of the next day goes to those enquiries, ahead of new ones
- in the report they are counted separately
On a furniture project this split changed the picture: it turned out most of the people who waited more than an hour had written outside working hours. That is not the reps' fault, and the fix is a rota rather than a review.
Outbound leads
- Where the contacts come from and who prepares them.
- How many people a rep calls per day, and how much time the schedule gives them for it.
- The minimum number of attempts before a contact gets parked.
- How long before a parked contact can be worked again.