Everything You Need to Know About Call Routing

Every day, thousands of businesses—including HVAC stores, mattress stores, auto dealerships, med spas, and jewelry shops—fail to efficiently direct and route calls to the right departments, weakening trust and losing easy sales. But with the right platform, you can make sure this never happens to you again.

Read on to learn what call routing is and how to make it work for your business.

What Is Call Routing?

Call routing is the process of directing incoming telephone calls to a specific employee based on predefined rules. The goal is to efficiently and effectively manage incoming calls, ensuring they are directed to the appropriate person, department, or system to achieve maximum convenience.

Call routing isn’t just for large businesses. It can significantly increase the efficiency of local businesses too, especially if you handle a large volume of incoming calls daily. Call routing offers added convenience for both you and your customers, saving everyone time. It also increases customer satisfaction by showing your customers that you care about them and getting them the help they need in real-time, no matter their time zone.

How Does Call Routing Work?

We’re glad you asked. There are several different criteria for call routing. Here is a general framework:

• Call Initiation: The process begins when a caller dials a phone number. This could be a business’s main line, a specific department, or a toll-free number.
• Telecom Carrier Routing: The call is first directed to the telecom carrier that provides the phone service. The carrier routes the call based on the dialed number and other relevant information.
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR) System: Many systems use an IVR to interact with the caller. The IVR presents a series of options through recorded messages, and the caller responds by pressing keys on their phone or using voice commands.
• Caller Input: Based on the caller’s input, such as pressing a specific key or speaking a command, the IVR system determines the appropriate routing for the call.
• Rules-Based Routing: The system applies predefined rules to determine where the call should be directed. These rules could include time of day, caller input, the availability of your employees, or other criteria.
• Skill-Based Routing: If the call needs to be directed to a specific department or agent with particular skills, the system may use skill-based routing to match the caller’s needs with the most suitable resource.
• Destination Assignment: Once the system determines the appropriate destination, it routes the call accordingly. This destination could be an individual’s extension, a specific department, a voicemail box, or another endpoint.
• Call Delivery: The call is then delivered.

When considering routing and handling calls for business phone systems, several important factors should be taken into account to ensure efficiency, customer satisfaction, and optimal use of resources.

• Clear menu options: Design an IVR with clear and concise menu options to guide callers effectively.
• User-friendly interface: Ensure that the IVR system is easy to navigate, whether through touch-tone inputs or voice recognition.
• Maximum human interaction: Wherever possible, give the interaction a human feel.
• Caller identification and verification: Implement caller authentication processes to verify the identity of your callers, especially in sensitive or confidential matters.
• CRM integration: Integrate your phone system with customer databases to provide excellent, personalized service and history.
• Fair distribution: Implement fair distribution of calls among your employees.

Benefits of Call Routing

The benefits of call routing are limitless–increased efficiency, customization, personalization, cost savings, valuable data and analytics, and more. Here are a few particularly useful benefits:

1. Improved Response Times

With efficient call routing in place, calls are directed promptly to the appropriate destination, reducing hold times and providing a faster response to customer inquiries. This saves time for both you and your team members, allowing you to allocate time and resources to more important matters.

2. Optimized Resource Allocation

Efficient call routing ensures that calls are directed to agents with the relevant expertise, preventing unnecessary transfers and allowing organizations to make better use of their workforce.

3. Enhanced Customer Experience

Call routing ensures that calls are directed to the most appropriate department or agent, leading to quicker issue resolution and improved customer satisfaction. Your customers know that they are important to you and that you’ve taken the time to set up a system where they can actually get the help they need.

4. Scalability

As a business grows, its call routing system can scale to accommodate increased call volumes and additional departments, ensuring that the communication infrastructure remains effective and responsive.

5. Integrated Communication

Call routing systems can be integrated with other communication tools and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, providing a seamless and holistic approach to customer interactions.

7 Types of Call Routing

There are several different types of routing options when it comes to setting up a routing process. The trick is finding the right automation and call center software that can handle your business calls, improve your call flow, and integrate with your workflow. Your call routing software should prioritize the wellbeing of your customers and your team. Here are a few types:

1. Skills-based Routing

With skills-based routing, calls are routed to people or departments based on their specific skills, expertise, or qualifications. This ensures that the most suitable person (and available agent) handles each call, improving issue resolution and customer satisfaction.

2. Time-based Routing

Calls are directed differently based on time of day, day of the week, or specific dates. For example, during business hours, calls might go to a live employee while after hours, they may be routed to voicemail or an answering service.

3. Geographic Routing

Calls are directed to specific destinations based on the geographic location of the caller. This is often used to connect callers to the nearest branch or office.

4. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Routing

Calls are initially directed to an IVR system, where the caller interacts with recorded menu options. Based on the caller’s input, the IVR system routes the call to the appropriate destination.

5. Percentage-based Routing

Calls are distributed among agents or departments based on predefined percentages. This type of routing helps balance the workload evenly among available resources.

6. Round-robin Routing

Calls are distributed in a rotational fashion among a group of your employees. This method ensures that each person receives an equal number of calls over time, promoting fairness and even distribution of work.

7. Destination-based Routing

Calls are routed based on predefined criteria related to the caller or the nature of the call, such as routing sales calls to a sales department and customer support calls to a customer service department or contact center.

Call Routing with Podium

Now that we’ve covered the basics, it’s time to let you in on a secret: not all call routing platforms are built equally. Some are far ahead of the crowd in terms of service, functionality, queuing organization, and convenience. Some cater to your sales teams, prioritizing your skill set and making call transfers a breeze. So, who’s leading the charge? Podium.

Podium offers the best phone system for small businesses when it comes to intelligent call routing. It’s an all-in-one solution to route calls and drive revenue and leads. With Podium’s VoIP system for small businesses, you can save time and connect with leads much faster by routing all of your incoming calls to the same inbox that receives your texts, social media messages, and more. You’ll never miss a call again.

Podium Phones also gives you a complete overview of a customer’s history (cloud-based caller ID) every time they make contact with you. Every time you interact, you’re able to see their entire conversation history, leading to a highly customizable, personalized, and impactful experience.

“By adding Phones, everything is in one spot. I don’t have to start email, then go check voicemails, then texts – it’s all right there. It presents huge time savings, especially for our management team.” Spencer White, Nature Lawn Care

“Since adding Phones, the whole staff is on the same page. We can look back through texts, calls, and notes that other staff members left. Having it all in one place is huge for us.” Kinlee Nalley, Romance Diamond Company 

By having a single place to manage all of your customer communications, no one slips through the cracks. With the right automatic call distributor, you reduce wait times and provide higher level service with less effort. So, are you ready to optimize? Try Podium Phones today and learn how automated call routing can revolutionize the way you do business.

Call Routing FAQs

Have more questions? Want to know more about call routing rules, call routing strategies, and every call management feature? We’ve got you.

Q: What is the difference between call routing and call forwarding?

A: Call routing and call forwarding are related concepts in telecommunications, but they refer to different aspects of managing inbound calls. Call routing is a broader concept that involves the systematic distribution of inbound calls based on various criteria while call forwarding is a specific feature within call routing that allows users to redirect customer calls from one number to another.

Call forwarding is a tool used within the broader strategy of call routing to ensure effective call management and responsiveness. For more info, check out this article.

Q: What is call routing in VoIP?

A: Call routing in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) refers to the process of directing and managing voice calls over the internet. VoIP technology converts analog voice signals into digital data packets, allowing voice communication to occur using internet protocols. Call routing in VoIP is essential to determining how direct calls are handled, ensuring that they reach their intended destination efficiently.

Q: What’s the best call routing system?

A: Good question. When choosing an automatic call distribution system, it’s important to consider factors such as scalability, ease of integration, customization options, support for multiple communication channels, and the specific business needs of your organization.

It may be beneficial to consult with businesses, review customer testimonials, and conduct thorough testing to ensure that your chosen system aligns with your business requirements. You also want to check pricing models to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck.