VDN vs Skill-Level Measurement

Our division is made up of several departments that field calls from our own sales staff. Some departments have many agents (hundreds), while others have relatively few (25). All of the departments are broken up further into teams that sign on to different skills. The larger departments tend to measure their overall call performance at the VDN level, while the smaller departments tend to measure overall performance at the Skill-based level. Does it matter that they're measuring differently, and if so, which way is best...VDN level or Skill-based level?

yAnonymous Posted at 12:00AM on Aug 10, 2009

I really would like if someone could comment on this question too. I am an internal auditor, and I have been listening to conflicting views from IT and the call center. IT clearly thinks it should be queue- (skill-) based, while the call center does it differently and reports by VDN. IT clearly thinks the call center is wrong. So, I would love if lots of people could comment on this question. Thanks!!!
yJeannie Torres Posted at 12:00AM on Aug 24, 2009

Let me start by explaining what a VDN is and what a split/skill is. The VDN is where ALL calls come in. The VDN determines where a call is going to terminate, and is responsible for queuing the calls into a split/skill. The split/skill is a group of agents to which the calls are routed. It really depends on how your VDNs are structured. If while in the VDN the caller has options to go to one group of agents or another, then having a department measure the VDN would be incorrect. However if the VDN is pointing to one split/skill, then measuring at the VDN level is ok. But again, it really depends on how the VDN is programmed because you can have callers taking an option other than the call center, like going to an IVR.
yAnonymous Posted at 12:00AM on Sep 8, 2009

Measuring from the VDN and skill set are 2 totally different measurements and often have a totally different set of metrics that mean much more depending on what you want to measure. For example, ASA can be measured from the VDN which would include your IVR time, which can increase overall ASA, especially if a message is posted to inform callers of any issues impacting their ability to work. When the call is delivered to a phone rep, it now becomes a skill set measurement but also keep in mind you have phone rep level metrics that would exclude skill set metrics since phone reps are not skill sets. You should have an insight as to what you would like to measure and how that will impact your team and phone rep individual stats. In most ACD systems you can break these out really into 3 areas. 1) VDN or Top Level IVR, 2)Skillset 3) Phone rep. For example, depending on your system used a phone reps Talk Time or AHT cannot be measured from the skill set and would need to be measured from their ACD Login which would include ANY phone Talk minutes (Outbound calls etc) but your overall Service Level would need to be measured from either the VDN or Skill set, that is the million dollar question;

again you dont want to be responsible for blowing your SL due to something that is not in your control (Outages that warrant IVR messages and increase ASA) Assuming your call center takes the same call types for different Regions lets say, If the team that supports Region 1 has a higher ASA than lets say Region 2 with similar size team and volume and one is measuring from the VDN while the other one is measuring at the skill set level, I would say that is a problem