Routing rules define how conversations are routed to your reps and how the system functions based on rep availability.
In this article, we'll cover how routing rules work within Qualified and how to configure them to work within your existing business rules.
Getting Started
When a routing step is reached in an Experience, such as routing for conversation or routing for pouncing, configured routing rules will alert all your available reps to start a conversation.
There are two types of routing steps you can add to an Experience:
- Route for Pounce
- Route for Inbound Chat
Routing for Pounce
Routing for Pounce ensures that you can route visitors to the appropriate sales rep as soon as they land on your website, even before the visitor has asked to chat. Use this routing step at the very top of your Experience to ensure that all visitors are landing within a Live Stream and are available for your reps to engage with.
For example, you might want to alert your sales reps immediately to visitors who are being given your open opportunity Experience. Set a "Route for Pounce" node at the top of your Experience and configure your routing reason, routing rules, and set the step to run immediately.
Routing for Inbound Chat
Routing for Inbound Chat will take place typically after you've qualified your visitors to talk with your sales team. This can be right away if the visitor has already been identified as a high-value prospect or after a series of qualifying questions, such as company size or industry.
You can customize various options when a visitor is routed, such as the routing reason, the routing rules used in that instance, and when to trigger that step.
Once a visitor hits either route step within an Experience, they'll be routed based on the rules you've outlined. There are two different types of routing rules that you’ll configure to ensure your visitors are being sent to the correct sales reps:
- Default routing rules
- Custom routing rules
Default Routing Rule
The default routing rule in Qualified is used when no custom routing rules are put in place above it or when a visitor does not fall into any custom rules. When a visitor hits a routing rule in an Experience, the visitor is shown to the sales reps in their Live Streams. If the visitor has actively asked for chat, all routed to reps are alerted (by notification and sound) and your sales reps will see an additional countdown to start a conversation before the meeting booker is shown.
The default routing rule should be configured as a ‘catch all’ when the visitor has not matched any other custom routing rules put in place.
Custom Routing Rules
Custom routing rules can be used to match visitors based on certain filter criteria that we know about them, such as:
- Location
- Target account information
- Salesforce ownership
- Data enrichment information provided
Custom routing rules are prioritized in their listed, top-to-bottom. As a visitor matches the criteria set in the rules, they will be alerted to the correct sales reps within the top-most routing rule they match.
Salesforce Ownership
If your sales reps own specific accounts, contacts, and leads in Salesforce, send visitors to their assigned rep. Create routing rules that take into account ownership within Salesforce, and define backup routing rules should the Salesforce owner be unavailable.
You can use any ownership fields within these objects to define who the visitor should be routed to. If the owner is not available or does not use Qualified, alternative routing can be defined within the fallback methods.
As soon as a visitor hits the website, Qualified will run all enabled routing rules and place the visitor in Live Streams for either the Salesforce owner (if they are online), the Salesforce owner and the other reps you’ve designated (for example an Account Executive and the BDR or SDR aligned with their accounts), or only the group of sales reps you’ve designated as a fallback. Similarly, when a visitor requests a live chat, reps able to pick up that chat are defined by the routing rules.
When Reps are Unavailable
What happens when a visitor is routed for a conversation with a rep but no one is available? This becomes a great opportunity for your Experience to continue the conversation with your website visitor. At this time you may have used the chatbot to gather information about the visitor and pushed that information into Salesforce.
If you have not already done so, we recommend grabbing their email address and asking some additional questions. This allows your team to follow up with the visitor in detail. Common options at this point in the Experience include (a) booking a meeting with a rep, (b) having the visitor leave a message for your team to follow up, (c) asking additional qualification questions, or (d) something custom to your business process.
Summary
Routing rules define how conversations get routed to specific reps, groups of reps, and how the system functions based on rep availability. In this article, we have covered the basics of conversation routing with routing rules.
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