Routing
Routing is the automated assignment of an incoming message to the right agent, team, or bot. Routing rules decide in fractions of a second who picks up a request — by channel, language, topic tag, availability, or load.
What is routing?
Routing is the automatic distribution of incoming messages or conversations to the right work queue. For a service team with 10 agents, three channels, and two languages, routing is the difference between "functional" and "chaotic."
Routing criteria
Rules can be simple or rich:
- Channel: WhatsApp requests to team A, email to team B.
- Language: Detected contact language decides which language team owns the case.
- Topic/tag: Tags like "Invoice," "Tech," "Sales" route to specialized teams.
- Business hours: Outside opening hours, route to bot or central mailbox.
- VIP status: Certain contacts get prioritized to senior agents.
- Availability: Only agents currently online and not overloaded.
- Load: Who has the fewest open tickets? See round-robin.
Routing strategies
| Strategy | How it works | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed assignment | Channel/tag → fixed team. Simplest rule. | Small teams with clear ownership. |
| Round-robin | Next request goes to the next available agent, taking turns. | Even load across the team. |
| Load-based | To the agent with the fewest open conversations. | Consistent response quality. |
| Skill-based | Conversation topic matched against agent skills. | Specialized teams with clear skills. |
| AI-driven (smart routing) | Model classifies the request and routes based on past success patterns. | Large service teams with many topics. |
Routing vs. bot handoff
Routing is the initial assignment: who takes this conversation? Bot handoff is the follow-up mechanism: when the bot can't proceed (e.g., confidence score too low), it hands off to a human agent. The two work together: routing decides which team the bot hands off to.
What bad routing costs
- Slow first reply: Without routing, everything lands in one central inbox and waits until someone happens to look.
- Wrong skill: An invoice question at the tech team doubles handling time.
- Context loss on handoff: When conversations get passed around because initial routing was wrong.
- Customer frustration: "You're the third person I'm explaining this to …"
Routing at SendSeven
SendSeven routing works on several layers: channel-to-team mapping, tag-based sub-routes, business-hours rules, bot handoff paths. Conversations retain their full history at every routing step — the unified inbox ensures every recipient sees the context. Language routing uses the platform's built-in language detection.