Plan requirement
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Skills describe what an agent can handle, so work reaches somebody able to do it rather than whoever is next.
How they work
You create a skill type, add skills to it, then assign those skills to agents. Tickets are given the skills they need, by rule. Routing then only offers a ticket to agents who hold the matching skills and who also have an eligible status and spare capacity.
One built-in safeguard: a skill must be assigned to at least one agent, so you cannot create one that nobody can satisfy. What the platform cannot prevent is that person later leaving.
There is room for 10 skill types with up to 30 skills in each, which is far more than most teams should use. And a skill need not be an ability: a location or a time zone works the same way, and is often the more useful thing to route on.
Skills or groups
The distinction worth getting right before you build anything.
- Groups are organisational. Who someone works with, what queue they belong to.
- Skills cut across groups. A language, a product, a certification, held by people in several teams.
Modelling a team as a skill produces two systems doing one job. Modelling a language as a group produces people in five groups.
The three that are almost always worth it
- Language. The clearest case. Either someone can answer in Dutch or they cannot.
- A specialist product that only a few people know.
- A certification or authorisation that legally or contractually matters.
Where it goes wrong
Too many skills. Each one narrows who can take a ticket, and several combined can narrow it to nobody. A ticket needing three skills held by one person waits until that person is free, and if they are on holiday it waits all week.
The failure is silent: work sits in the queue and everyone looks available.
Start with one
Language, usually. Run it for a month, look at what waits and why, then decide whether a second is worth its cost.
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