🦈How to Distribute Calls Between “Sharks” and Newbies: Setting Up Smart Routing in UniTalk
You are losing profit not because there are no calls, but because you aren’t managing who receives them. Chaotic distribution is a lottery: your best “sharks” might be sitting idle while a newbie tries to process a vital lead and “burns” it due to a lack of experience.
The UniTalk Virtual PBX cannot predict a customer’s mood, but it allows you to manage the probability of success. You can set everything up so that your most experienced managers take on 90% of the traffic, ensuring high conversion, while trainees receive exactly as many calls as they need for practice without risking your budget.
Let’s break down how this works in practice and how to configure the system for maximum sales.
⚙️ Level 1: The Scenario is a Chain of Events (Waterfall Logic)
Forget about simple forwarding “to everyone.” In UniTalk, you build logic step by step. If no one answers at the first stage, the system doesn’t drop the customer but moves them to the next step.
Example of an ideal scenario:
- Step 1 (Personal): The call goes to a specific manager (e.g., the person responsible for this client in the CRM). Wait for 5-10 seconds.
- Step 2 (Backup): If they are busy, the call goes to their team lead or a colleague. Another 10 seconds.
- Step 3 (Scaling): If there is still silence, the call rings for the entire sales department simultaneously.
This guarantees that the customer always gets an answer, but we first try to connect them with the most competent person.
🎯 Level 2: Distribution Within the Department. Priorities vs. Percentages
The UniTalk Virtual PBX offers 4 strategies for exactly how a call will be distributed within a group of managers. You choose the algorithm in advance, and it is this choice that determines the team’s efficiency.
1. Everyone Simultaneously (Speed)
The phone rings for all available operators. Whoever answers first takes the lead.
- Who it’s for: For aggressive sales where reaction speed is the main KPI.
2. Random Operator (Lottery)
The system chooses any available manager. This is a basic option for an even workload without considering individual skills.
3. By Priority Order (Hierarchy of “Stars”) ⭐
This mode is for those who want to give the best leads to the “sharks.” In the settings, you assign a priority to each employee (number of stars).
- How it works: The call always goes first to the operator with the highest priority (e.g., 4 stars). Only if they are busy or don’t answer will the call go to an operator with 3 stars, and so on.
- Business Goal: Profit maximization. The most experienced handle 90% of the traffic; newbies get the leftovers.
4. Random with Priority (Managed Training in %) 📊
The ideal tool for training interns without risking the business. You distribute the load in percentages.
- How it works: You set it so that a Senior manager receives 75% of the traffic and a trainee receives 25%.
- Business Goal: The trainee gets real practice but in doses. they don’t get overwhelmed with calls, and you don’t lose sales on key clients.
⏳ Level 3: Call Queue
If all managers are busy, the customer enters a waiting queue. Here, specific laws of fairness apply so that the customer doesn’t wait forever and operators don’t burn out:
- To all available: The call goes to all free operators.
- In turn: Classic “Round Robin.” Distribution in a circle.
- To whoever has been free the longest: The system finds the person who has been “resting” the longest. This balances the workload.
- To whoever has talked the least: Balancing based on the total talk time during the shift.
🚀 Bonus: Advanced Routing
If you need maximum flexibility, UniTalk offers Advanced Scenarios. These are settings for those who want to manage calls based on customer data and advertising sources.
You can build routing based on the following parameters:
- UTM tags: (Source, Medium, Campaign, Content, Term) — direct traffic from Facebook to one group and from Google Ads to another.
- Customer Status: New customer vs. repeat call.
- Contact Book: Whether the number is already in the UniTalk contact database.
- Website: The URL of the page from which the call was made (first or last visit).
- Referrer: Where the user came from.
- Customer Call: The ability to check if the customer has spoken with us recently.
This allows, for example, VIP clients or leads from an expensive ad campaign to be immediately connected to the best managers, bypassing the standard queue.
Summary: Which strategy to choose?
- Need speed? Turn on “Everyone simultaneously”.
- Want to train a newbie? Choose “Random with priority” (10-20% of traffic).
- Want maximum sales? Choose “By priority order” (stars for tops).
- Need detailed segmentation? Use Advanced Scenarios.
Set up smart logic today together with a UniTalk manager.
