Hybrid Behavioral Pairing for Contact Center Agent Routing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Contact centers face challenges in evenly utilizing agents, leading to higher-performing agents being overworked and lower-performing agents being underutilized, which can impact morale, productivity, and training opportunities, while traditional assignment methods like FIFO and PBR do not effectively balance agent utilization or improve overall performance.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a hybrid behavioral pairing system that combines balanced agent utilization strategies with performance-based routing, using a weighted sum or hybridization functions to determine agent orderings, resulting in a skewed agent utilization that prioritizes higher-performing agents while ensuring balanced distribution of contacts.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If performance-based routing is used to maximize contact center performance, then higher-performing agents receive more contacts, but agent utilization becomes unbalanced and higher-performing agents become overworked
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts the routing parameter (performance weighting) to balance two objectives: maximizing contact center performance by routing to high-performing agents and maintaining balanced agent utilization. The hybridization factor serves as a controllable parameter that modulates the degree of performance-based routing applied.
Solution Approach 2:
The routing strategy transitions from static FIFO to dynamic hybrid behavioral pairing, where the agent ordering is continuously adjusted based on real-time performance metrics and utilization states. The system adapts the routing behavior by changing the hybridization factor and reordering agents dynamically.
2Ease of operation
If traditional FIFO assignment is used to balance agent utilization, then agent workload is evenly distributed, but contact center performance does not improve
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges two previously separate routing strategies (FIFO for balance and PBR for performance) into a unified hybrid behavioral pairing approach. This combination allows the system to achieve both balanced utilization and improved performance simultaneously by integrating the ordering mechanisms of both strategies.
Solution Approach 2:
The routing strategy uses a composite approach by combining multiple ordering criteria (FIFO ordering and PBR ordering) with different weighting factors. The hybridization function creates a composite ordering that leverages the strengths of both individual strategies to achieve dual objectives.
3Productivity
If higher-performing agents receive more contacts to maximize performance, then contact center outcomes improve, but lower-performing agents receive fewer contacts and idle longer
Solution Approach 1:
The system incorporates feedback loops that monitor agent utilization and performance metrics in real-time. This feedback informs dynamic adjustments to the routing strategy, allowing the system to respond to changing conditions and prevent extreme imbalances in agent workload distribution.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies periodic reordering and reweighting of agents based on their current utilization state and performance metrics. By periodically adjusting the hybridization factor and agent ordering, the system prevents sustained overwork of high-performing agents and ensures adequate work distribution to lower-performing agents.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for hybrid behavioral pairing in a contact center system are disclosed. In one embodiment, the techniques may be realized as a method for hybrid behavioral pairing in a contact center system comprising: determining a first ordering of a plurality of agents according to a behavioral pairing strategy with a balanced agent utilization; determining a second ordering of the plurality of agents according to a performance-based routing strategy with an unbalanced agent utilization; determining a third ordering of the plurality of agents according to a combination of the first ordering and the second ordering having a skewed agent utilization between the balanced agent utilization and the unbalanced agent utilization; and outputting a hybrid behavioral pairing model based on the third ordering for connecting a contact to an agent of the plurality of agents in the contact center system.