Round-robin functionality
IN THIS ARTICLE
Sales Manager needs to distribute the Leads, Opportunities and Accounts evenly to all the available sales representatives. To achieve this, round robin functionality is used in a scheduling algorithm that distributes leads/opportunities/accounts evenly among all available resources. This ensures that no single resource is overworked, which can lead to errors and other issues down the line.
How round-robin functionality works?
The below flowchart explains how a simple round-robin functionality works.
Scenario 1
Let's consider there are four participants, John, Michael, Nicholas and Kate in the round-robin list. 20 leads have to be distributed among these 4 sales representative. According to round-robin algorithm, the system will allot the leads in the following pattern.
All the 20 Lead records will be distributed among these four members equally. But this is an ideal scenario. Fullcast takes into consideration many factors, before allotting the lead to the participant.
Fullcast's round-robin functionality
The factors considered while allotting participants in round-robin are
- Weightage: Sales Managers give different weightage to each sales representative according to their performance. The number of cases routed to the person depends on the weightage given to the person by the sales manager. If a person is given more value in the weightage column, then the person gets routed with more number of cases. If everyone gets the same value then every person gets an equal share of the leads.
Example : In the above example, John has 5 years of Sales experience and has extraordinary communication skills. Sales Manager considers him as most eligible person to strike a deal and so gives a weightage score of 4. Michael has joined the company 4 years back and performs to his best and he gets a weightage of 3. Nicholas has 2 years experience and still in the learning curve and so Manager gives him weightage of 2. Kate is new employee and in her training period and so given weightage score of 1.
The round-robin algorithm will allot the leads to the participants according to the weightage score. With the given weightage, the allotment will be like below:
- Skillset: If a participant is equipped with a skill that matches the skill required for the lead, then skills will be given priority while assigning that particular lead. The skill of the representative is given as an input value (inputVal2) in the routing process builder.
Example: Consider there are many leads coming up from an area where the language spoken is French. Nicholas has excellent French speaking ability. So when French speaking ability is available among the participants, the skill level is given priority while assigning the leads. In the above example, lets consider, Lead 3,7,11,14,18 and 20 are in the area where French language is spoken. In that case, since Nicholas is proficient in French, all those six leads will be allotted to Nicholas and rest of the leads will be assigned to other participants according to the weightage rules.
- Limits: The number of cases routed to particular participant can be restricted using the Limits field. You can set a limit to any participant, on hourly, daily, weekly and total limit basis. Once the set limit is reached for the particular person the case gets routed to the next eligible person. The leads get assigned only till the limit reaches zero. We can start assigning the limits again when the particular time is reached and limit is reset.
Example: Lets consider 10 leads has to be distributed among John, Michael and Nicholas. The limit set for each person and the distribution is as follows
- Vacation: The vacation details of the person can also be managed while creating the policy by selecting the vacation start date and vacation end date from the corresponding columns. So when the participant is on vacation then the lead is assigned to next eligible participant in the queue.
- Status: Some participants may be available in the list but their status might be inactive. The status column helps us identify whether the particular person is active or inactive to handle the particular case. When the status of the person is inactive, the lead gets assigned to the next eligible participant.
Fullcast considers all the above five criteria to assign the lead/case/contact/account to the respective participant available in the round-robin queue. To know how to assign these values inside the policy and related articles follow the below links
How round-robin functionality with exceptions work?
The below flowchart explains how a round-robin functionality with exceptions works.
Scenario 2
In the above scenario, lets consider, Michael is in redo list and Kate is in skip list. The algorithm will now first check who is there in the redo list. The lead 1 will now be assigned to the person who is there in the Redo list and his name will be removed from the redo list after allotment. So in this case, Lead 1 will go to Michael. Lead 2 will go to the usual round-robin queue and so it gets allotted to John and Lead 3 to Michael and Lead 4 to Nicholas and ideally lead 5 should go to Kate. But Kate name is listed in Skip list, so she should not be allotted any lead and after that her name will be removed from the skip list. Hence again the round-robin queue will continue and lead 5 will go to John again. So the distribution of work will be
- Lead 1 - Michael (Since his name in redo list)
- Lead 2 - John
- Lead 3 - Michael
- Lead 4 - Nicholas
- Lead 5 - John (Since Kate name in Skip list)
- Lead 6 - Michael
- Lead 7 - Nicholas
- Lead 8 - Kate (Since Kate name was removed from skip list after the skip)
- Lead 9 - John ....... (and the queue continues till lead 20)
To know how to Manage the exceptions in round-robin functionality follow the link.