Why transfer skills require preference level equal to primary

In the past, I’ve also seen logic that attempts the opposite, where folks set transfers at a higher preference level, thinking that this is the right thing to do for the customer, since they’ve been in queue once already. While placing a higher preference in transfers may work in a controlled environment ( transfers must be very minimal), I would not recommend it in our current environment. As for setting transfers lower, this should be never be considered the correct way to skill agent templates.

To illustrate why, I plotted two weeks of data from the ASC for SFL CHSI calls, both the primary and transfer skill.

Transfer Skill Study, ASC SFL primary and xfer Skill, December 1-15, 2010

To further demonstrate the impact, we examine days leading up to a re-skill for WPB billing, where again, transfer skills were set to a lower preference. A change was put in place Thursday afternoon, and we see on Friday, the impact to ASA on transfer skills:

WPB Jan 2-8 Before and After Xfer Skill Preferencing Change - note, PM Thursday missing, however change in place and results can be viewed in Friday data.