Create A Routing Plan

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Whilst Gnatta works perfectly well with a simple routing approach (1:1 mapping channels with queues i.e. sending all email queries into an Emails queue), using a more bespoke routing approach can give a range of business benefits:

1. Routing based on critical customer data can help you de-risk - whether that’s VIP customers, fraud detection, or a PR risk on social media.

2. Routing based on reason for contact unlocks skills-based routing - claims queries reach the claims team, website issues reach the technical team, and so on.

3. Routing based on customer segments such as their review rating means you can apply different processes and automations. Automatically close 4 and 5-star reviews - but route the 1-3 stars to a supervisor!

How routing works

For each media account you’ve connected in Gnatta, you can decide whether to direct incoming messages directly into a queue of the same name, or split them based on useful criteria - such as the reason for contact, whether it’s a public or private message, or whether the customer is a VIP. The options are virtually limitless!

Routing is built in Gnatta’s Workflow engine. At a high-level, to turn on your routing you’ll need to:

• Create the queues you need

• Define a New Message Received Event for each media account in Gnatta Workflow

• Build a routing Flow to connect interactions to the relevant queue, based on your chosen routing logic

• Attach your routing Flow to your Event

Before you can dive into the workflow engine, however, you need to come up with a plan.

Routing options

To create a routing plan, you need to map out the media accounts in your domain and think about how you’d like to get conversations from those accounts to your agents. The options here are fairly wide, but the most common routing options include:

• Simple Routing - Apply no decision logic at all, and simply assign all inbound messages to a single queue. This works well for small domains with low volume. You’ll need just one queue for this approach. Skip to the routing overview if this is your goal.

• Account-Based - Split inbound conversations into queues based on the account it’s received on. For example, if you have multiple Instagram accounts connected to your domain, you may split messages on each account into distinct queues. You’ll need a queue for each media account. Check out this Workflow template.

• Sender-Based - Split inbound conversations into queues based on the sender. For example, you could check if the email address is a supplier before sorting into a queue, to keep 3rd party interactions separate. You'll need a queue for each sender (or group of senders) in your decision logic. Try this Workflow template.

• Keyword-Based - Split conversations based on keywords detected in the subject or body of the message, such as ‘Delivery’ or ‘Tracking’ or ‘Refund’, and divert interactions into relevant queues. You’ll need a queue for each group of keywords. Try this template here.

• Public vs Private - Split conversations depending on whether they’re from a private account stream (such as your Facebook DMs) or a public stream (such as comments on your Facebook wall posts) into distinct queues, so you can ensure public interactions are prioritised higher! You’ll need a queue for each stream. Try this Workflow template.

• Data-Based - Split conversations depending on a piece of contextual data, such as the Trustpilot Rating on a new review, and sort interactions into queues for each star rating. You’ll need a queue for each option in your data field. Check this template.

• IVR Routing - Split calls depending on caller input during an IVR journey. Check this template.

Building a plan

For larger contact centres with lots of accounts, channels and teams to consider, it can be useful to record your plan on a spreadsheet or in a table first, as we’ve demonstrated below. This gives you something tangible to discuss and agree with your team, before you invest time in building queues and workflows in Gnatta.

Your routing plan can be as straightforward or as complex as needed - for example, you might choose to split Facebook queries by Public vs Private, and then also by keywords detected in the message. The complexity you need here will likely depend on your contact volumes. If you’re not sure, we’d recommend starting with something simple, so you can build out iteratively based on agent feedback and reporting insights.

You can choose to mix multiple channels and media accounts into the same queue, but note that they will share priority and escalation levels and be routed to your team with no preferential ordering.

What’s next?

If you’ve decided your routing plan and know how you want to split channels into queues, it’s time to create your queues: