Can lead routing send each lead to the best salesperson across channels, vendors and field teams?

Two decisions hide inside "across channels"

A business with an in-house phone floor, one or more outsourced sales vendors and a field team is making two choices for every lead:

1. Which channel or vendor gets the lead. Phone or a visit, in-house or outsourced, vendor A or vendor B.
2. Which person inside that channel works it. The agent on the floor, the agent at the vendor, the field rep.

Routing often makes the first choice by rules already, and the second by turn or availability. Your CRM’s rules decide who may take a lead; the question is how much of the rest can be decided from results.

What crosses channels easily

• The rules you already run. Product, licence, territory, language and lead ownership apply in every channel, and they stay the first cut.
• A shared lead ID. Each channel tends to know a lead by its own identifier. Call Centre Helper’s guide to a single view of the customer (2013, written with contact centre technology vendors) makes the same point for service: each channel and system uses its own identifier, and they have to be linked in one record. For routing, the lead ID has to be the same wherever the lead goes.
• The definition of a sale. One written definition, applied to every channel. What counts as a sale covers the choices.

What does not cross easily

• Outcomes from outsourced vendors. A vendor may report in its own format, on its own timetable, and by campaign rather than by agent. Without outcomes per lead and per agent, you can compare vendors with each other but you cannot match leads to their people.
• Field teams. A field rep can work only a few appointments a day, inside a diary and a travel area. The choice of person is limited by geography and free slots, and outcomes can be logged late or away from the CRM.
• Systems that do not share data. Call Centre Helper lists systems that don’t share data among the common routing mistakes in contact centres (2016, again drawn from vendors). A lead that is quoted by phone and closed in the field needs both halves joined before anyone can say who sold it.
• Different leads in different channels. Channels often get different kinds of leads. If the field team gets the warm referrals, its higher close rate says as much about the leads as about the team. Compare channels only on the same kinds of leads, or after a random split.

Where to start

1. One lead ID everywhere. Every channel and vendor records the same ID for the same lead.
2. Outcomes per person. Each channel sends back, for each lead, who worked it and what happened, on the shared definition of a sale.
3. Start with one channel. In our view, pick the one with the most history and several salespeople working the same kinds of leads. For many businesses that is the in-house phone floor.
4. Compare vendors before matching inside them. Split leads between vendors at random for a period, so each gets the same mix, and compare sales per contact. That answers the channel question with evidence.
5. Bring field teams in last, or treat the field as a channel decision rather than a choice of rep, until their outcomes come back reliably.
6. Test each step. Run matched and current routing in the same weeks on a random split of leads. How to prove a lead routing change worked.

Where agent matching fits

Agent matching makes the second decision: which person inside the allowed group works the lead, decided from the floor’s own call and sales history. It works inside the rules the business sets, so a lead that must go to a licensed agent or to one territory still does. How the main ways of allocating leads compare.

BestPair works from lead IDs, lead details and outcome history keyed to each agent, so a channel or vendor can be matched at the level of the person only once its outcomes arrive that way. People make every call, and BestPair never dials, calls, texts or contacts anyone. If you use outsourced vendors, how a BPO’s contract affects who gains is worth reading before you ask them for data.

Sources

• How do I... get a single view of the customer? (Call Centre Helper, November 2013): Megan Jones’s article, with advice from contact centre technology vendors, on linking each channel’s identifiers in one customer record.
• Mistakes to avoid: call and contact routing (Call Centre Helper, October 2016): Robyn Coppell’s list of routing mistakes, drawn from contact centre vendors, including systems that don’t share data.