In January, Directly released a feature, known as “bucketing”, that lets you quickly categorize questions and assign business rules to customize how experts receive and handle different categories of questions.

For instance, using question categories, you can customize:

• Different reward amounts
• Routing categories to specialists
• Whether questions are public/private
• Different escalation times
• If experts and/or customers can escalate questions
• Different reward percentages for escalations
• If experts can flag answers
• A minimum answer length.

Companies are using customizable question categories, along with Directly’s built-in rating and routing, to improve performance. For instance, one company varies the reward amount by product tiers to incentivize priority responses for higher tiers. Most companies are using the minimum answer length to improve the quality of customer/expert interactions. Many set partial rewards – typically 15 to 20 percent of the total reward amount – to incentivize experts to appropriately escalate tickets when needed. See Why Reward Experts for Escalations?

In all these instances, Directly’s rating and routing technology works within the categories to optimize performance even more.

In short, categorizing questions is a manageable way to customize how experts receive and handle tickets, and, along with the routing engine, to improve productivity and overall results.