Using Agent Affinity
Summarize
Summary of Using Agent Affinity Extend ServiceNow AI Platform capabilities
Agent Affinity is a feature within the Advanced Work Assignment (AWA) module that optimizes the assignment of work items based on an agent's past experiences and responsibilities. This functionality enhances efficiency by ensuring that the same agent handles similar work items, improving continuity in customer service interactions.
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Key Features
- Affinity Types:
- Historical: Assigns agents based on their history with the customer.
- Related Task: Assigns agents based on their past work on similar tasks.
- Account Team: Assigns agents based on their roles within the customer’s account team (available only for Customer Service Management customers).
- Queue Association: Up to three affinity rules can be linked to AWA queues, determining how agents are ranked for assignment.
- Configuration: Agents can be assigned based on the order of affinities—related tasks first, followed by account team and historical affinities.
Key Outcomes
Using Agent Affinity allows ServiceNow customers to:
- Enhance agent efficiency by consistently assigning work items to agents familiar with the customer or task.
- Improve customer satisfaction by ensuring continuity in service through familiar agents.
- Quickly configure and modify affinity rules to meet specific business needs, ensuring the right agent is available to address customer requests.
Additionally, customers have the option to deactivate Agent Affinity if desired, preventing it from influencing work assignments.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.