Using Agent Affinity

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Using Agent Affinity

    Agent Affinity is an Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) feature in ServiceNow that enhances the assignment of work items by considering an agent’s prior interactions and relationships with customers or tasks. Beyond the standard AWA criteria of availability, capacity, and skills, Agent Affinity customizes assignments to ensure continuity and improved customer experience by assigning work to agents familiar with the customer or related tasks.

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    Agent Affinity does not override existing AWA assignment eligibility or constraints but works alongside them to identify the best-suited agent for each work item.

    Key Features

    • Affinity Types:
      • Historical Affinity: Selects agents based on their history with the same customer.
      • Related Task Affinity: Considers agents who have handled related tasks previously.
      • Account Team Affinity: Assigns based on an agent’s role or responsibility within the customer’s account team (available only for Customer Service Management customers).
    • Configurable Affinity Rules: Up to three affinity rules can be associated with each AWA queue, prioritized by affinity order to rank agents during assignment.
    • Integration with AWA: Agent Affinity works within the AWA framework to assign work items efficiently without bypassing existing assignment rules.

    How It Works in Practice

    Agent Affinity evaluates agents based on the configured affinity order to assign the best candidate for a work item. An example scenario demonstrates this process:

    • A customer, George Warren from the Boxeo company, reports a router issue.
    • AWA first checks related task affinity: since agent Ned previously handled a related case, Ned is assigned if available.
    • If Ned is unavailable or at capacity, AWA checks account team affinity: agent John, the primary support for Boxeo, is assigned if available.
    • If John is also unavailable, AWA checks historical affinity: agent Beth, who recently interacted with Boxeo, is assigned if available.

    This tiered approach ensures customer service continuity by preferentially assigning agents with relevant prior engagement.

    Agent Affinity is an Advanced Work Assignment feature that lets you assign work items by an agent's work history, related task, or account team affinity.

    Advanced Work Assignment assigns work items to agents by their availability, capacity, and skills. You can use Agent Affinity to customize this AWA assignment process and identify the agent best suited for the work item. Agent Affinity ensures that the same agent is assigned to a similar work item instead of orienting a new agent every time.

    Note:
    Agent Affinity rules do not override assignment eligibility or constraints that are specified on AWA assignment rules.
    The types of affinities are:
    Historical
    Identifies the best agent based on the agent's history of serving the same customer.
    Related task
    Identifies the best agent based on the agent's past assignments of related tasks.
    Account team
    Identifies the best agent based on the agent's responsibility or role in the account team.
    Note:
    Account team affinity is available only to Customer Service Management customers.
    Affinity rules are associated with AWA queues. Up to three rules can be associated with each queue. The affinity order determines how the assignment engine ranks the agents. The agent with the higher order affinity rule is considered as the best agent first.

    The following example shows how AWA uses Agent Affinity to determine the best agent for a work item. In this example, AWA is configured to use all three affinities in this order: related task affinity, account team affinity, and historical affinity. George Warren, who is a customer at the Boxeo company, has a router problem. George previously contacted support to report an issue. That case was assigned to agent Ned. The primary support agent for Boxeo is agent John. Within the past seven days, another agent, agent Beth, addressed a chat with Boxeo.

    The next time George initiates a customer service chat from the case page, the case is automatically added as a related task to the chat interaction. Agent Affinity uses the related task affinity to look for an agent who has fulfilled past assignments for a related task. Because agent Ned was assigned to a related task on the record, AWA assigns the work item to agent Ned if available with capacity.

    Figure 1. Example of related task affinity
    Agent Affinity configured to use related task affinity.

    If agent Ned is unavailable or doesn't have the capacity, AWA uses the account team affinity. AWA looks for another agent based on an agent's responsibility or role in the account team. Because agent John is the primary support agent for the Boxeo company, AWA assigns the work item to Agent John if available with capacity.

    Figure 2. Example of account team affinity
    Agent Affinity configured to use account team affinity.
    If agent John is not available, AWA uses the historical affinity and looks for an agent that has recently interacted with the company. This information is stored on the Agent Affinity screen. Because agent Beth addressed a chat with Boxeo within the past seven days, AWA assigns the work item to agent Beth if available with capacity.
    Figure 3. Example of historical affinity
    Agent Affinity configured to use historical affinity.