The most exciting feature of the much anticipated Salesforce Summer '15 release is Omni-Channel service. This is because it solves a fundamental problem that is ubiquitous for contact centres: routing cases to the right agent at the right time.

Before Omni-Channel, Salesforce offered two ways to route service cases:

1. Route cases to a queue and let agents cherry pick cases out of said queue. A problem with this is that some cases will be left longer than they should because agents choose not to work on them.
2. Route cases to a queue and have a manager pick cases and distribute them to individual agents. This is also less than ideal, as it involves an extra step in the process, which creates inefficiency. It also adds additional overhead expense.

As you can see, there was an unnecessary bottleneck in both of these processes which increased the lag time to get cases resolved. Now with Omni-Channel, cases are routed to agents based on skill, priority, and availability. The great thing about Omni-Channel is that it is built off of the back of queues, so if you already have these implemented, you won't need to rebuild these from the ground up. Here is a comprehensive overview to get you up to speed on Omni-Channel:

1. Presence
   Every agent is assigned to a Presence Configuration that details the maximum number of work items an agent can be pushed at a time, as well as whether or not the agent automatically accepts the item, or has the ability to reject it.
2. Routing Configurations — Least Active or Most Available?
   There are two ways to determine how cases will get distributed to agents based on workload. The "Least Active" configuration pushes cases to the agent who has the least number of work items open, whereas the "Most Available" configuration will push items to agents who have the greatest difference between the work item capacity they can handle and the capacity of the items they’re actually working on. 
3. Work Item Capacity 
   Each item being pushed from a queue has a measure of capacity that helps to manage agent workload. For example, if the case priority is High, then you might set it to take up 100% of the agent's capacity, and the agent will not be pushed additional cases until this one is closed. 
4. Managing Skill
   In an enterprise contact center, it’s likely that not all agents are suited to work all case types. To manage skill sets, use queue membership to determine which subset of agents will be routed those cases. For example, if only your most experienced agents can work cases that have a type of complaint, make sure you have a queue just for complaints. Create a public group called Complaint Agents and add this group to the queue.
5. Reporting
   Finally, once you get your cases flowing, you’ll quickly want to measure workload. When you activate Omni-Channel, you can create a custom report type called "Agent Work." Each time a Omni-Channel pushes out a case to an agent — depending on whether the agent accepts the case or declines it, a new record in an object called "Agent Work" is created. 

   This report will give you insights such as the average Speed to Answer a case and the Agent Capacity when a case is declined. Analyzing this report type can help you balance your expected agent capacity versus measured capacity.

As you can see, Omni-Channel is a powerful tool that can revolutionize productivity in your contact center. I can’t wait to see my clients gain value from this exciting technology. Want to learn more about how Omni-Channel can catalyze customer service excellence in your contact center? Get in touch with our Service Cloud experts to get started.