case assignment

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Oct 24, 2022

The ultimate guide to case assignment, part 1: where does your method rank.

Martin Schneider

Support Experience proactive support Intelligent Case Assignment assignment

Today’s consumers have much higher customer service expectations than they did even a year ago. According to Zendesk , more than 60% of customers report their support standards have increased since 2021. Freshdesk also reported that 80% of customers said they want faster responses from organizations.

These quick replies depend on contact centers’ case assignment processes. For fast resolutions, support teams need a system that quickly sends cases to qualified, available agents. 

But which case assignment method is the best? We’re a bit biased here at SupportLogic, but we feel pretty strongly that AI-based intelligent case assignments are the way to go.

Before we dive into the methods though, let’s start with case assignment basics. 

Case assignment models

There are two main types of customer service ticketing models: tiered support and swarming support . The one you choose for your contact center depends on the number of agents on your team, the difficulty of your cases, and the size of your case queues and backlogs.

Tiered support model

Tiered support is considered the “classic” support structure and works by escalating cases through three tiers based on a case’s complexity.

• Tier 1: In this tier, support agents typically deal with customers’ basic questions and issues. All customer support inquiries begin here.
• Tier 2: Cases are moved to Tier 2 when agents in Tier 1 are unable to solve the issue at hand. Agents working in Tier 2 have more technical knowledge, skills, and autonomy than Tier 1 agents.
• Tier 3: This is the top level and consists of specialists and agents with the most technical skills and expertise.

With tiered support, you won’t have to worry about your most skilled agents wasting time on simple cases. Your specialists will be able to just work on complex issues. 

On the flip side, tiered support may lead to knowledge silos among agents. And if your company offers self-service resources, the first tier of agents may not have enough cases to handle while tier two and three agents are overwhelmed.  

Single-tier swarming model

With a single-tier swarming model, there’s no hierarchy or escalation. It’s an all-hands-on-deck approach that involves simultaneous collaboration among agents. 

All agents in a swarming model—or intelligent swarming—work together with experts from across the company on cases that fall within their expertise and responsibility, so cases are resolved as quickly as possible.

Different swarms—teams of agents and specialists who work together on cases—monitor the case queue for issues that fall within their scope of knowledge. Individual agents solve what they’re able to and leave the rest for others in their swarm.

In some large companies, support teams may include “local” swarms and “severity” swarms. Local swarms take care of cases that have simple solutions, while severity swarms typically consist of specialists. These swarm teams aren’t considered tiered because there’s no escalation from one level to the next—they split cases by difficulty right from the start.

This single-tier swarming model typically reduces case backlogs—by reducing time spent per case—because agents are working simultaneously. This model can also help agents bond as they work together in swarms.

On the other hand, highly qualified agents can get distracted by simple cases with the swarming model—which is especially problematic if you don’t have many specialists on your team. Swarming also may require training to get all agents up to speed on a variety of case issues.

Types of case assignment processes

Case assignment processes generally come down to two different methods: manual and automatic . Manual is essentially its own category, with the exception of “Free Case Assignment” (more on this later), while there are a variety of “automatic” methods. When we speak of processes and methods, “processes” is an overarching term used to describe a way of doing something; “methods” are the details that make up the processes. For example, brushing your teeth would be a process; using an electric toothbrush to brush your teeth would be a method.

To help you evaluate these processes, we’ll rank each one as “ Okay ,” “ Good ,” or “ Best .”

Manual case assignment

Our ranking: “Okay”

Manual case assignments involve customer service and CX managers assigning support cases to agents. Because manual assignments take time to complete, this process works well for organizations that have a low volume of support inquiries.

This process can also be beneficial for “high-touch” product and service scenarios. If you have an organization and offering that requires a lot of attention, manual case assignment may be the best choice for your team.

For teams with medium to high case flows, manual case assignment is a poor choice for a few reasons:

• The process will likely be too time-intensive for managers. 
• It can lead to human error since managers are controlling the assignments. Cases may end up on the desks of agents who aren’t equipped to handle them. 
• It can be a mental drain for managers, as they have to remember agents’ schedules and ever-evolving skill sets.

Free case assignment

With free case assignments, agents choose the cases they wish to work on from the queue.

This process gives agents flexibility and control. They can choose the cases that match their skill sets, so they’re often able to resolve issues more efficiently. And if agents are on a small team, they can coordinate with others on their case choices.

However, some agents may only select the easiest cases. If many agents skip over complex issues, customers with these problems may have to wait a long time for a resolution. The free case assignment process could also cause friction among agents if it creates unequal workloads.

Automatic case assignment

Our ranking: “Good”

With this case management process, your ticketing software automatically recommends and sends customer issues to agents—typically based on some criteria, like their skills or workload. The following processes—round robin, skill-based, workload-based, keyword-based, and intelligent case assignment—are all considered “automatic” case assignment strategies.

Automatic case assignments are faster and more efficient than manual routing because the software can send cases to agents right away based on preset criteria. It’s also more accurate because the software is working off of standardized rules, not subjective manager judgments. 

The challenging nature of setting criteria for cases with complex needs can serve as a potential downside to this automation. For example, a customer may have a simple inquiry, but it could be about one of your niche products. Now the question is: Is this considered a simple or complex case? There might not be a straightforward answer as all contact centers deal with cases differently, but we would say that this issue requires a tier two, three agents, or expert within a swarm.

Round robin case assignment

This case management process involves assigning cases to the next available agent within a sequence. All agents get an equal amount of cases to work on over time.

Round robin assignments help minimize bottlenecks when agents are out of the office. If agents are sick or on vacation, the workload will still be equally allocated to available agents. 

Because round robin case assignments don’t factor in skill sets, agents may work on cases that they’re not suited for. And agents working on difficult cases will still be assigned additional cases if it’s their turn in the queue, potentially leading to backups and long resolution times.

Skill-based case assignment

This process involves distributing support cases to agents based on their skill sets.

Skill-based case assignments help agents stay productive because they’re working on the issues they’re most experienced in. Your contact center won’t need to spend time triaging a case or passing it off if the initial assigned agent isn’t able to resolve the issue.

On the other hand, skill-based case assignment doesn’t take customer history or sentiment into account. Even if an agent has the knowledge to handle a particular issue, they may not have the soft skills—empathy, for example—to support specific customers.

Workload-based case assignment

Workload-based case assignment or load-based routing is a process that distributes customer issues based on the amount of cases agents currently have. When a new case comes in, the agent with the fewest number of open cases will receive it.

This approach helps teams maintain prompt response times, even when cases require different amounts of effort. If a single case is taking days or weeks, agents don’t have to worry about getting backed up and can focus on resolving the issue.

But like skill-based routing, this process doesn’t account for customer history or sentiment—which could be perceived as alienating if an agent doesn’t acknowledge former contacts made by the customer, or it could make customers feel like they’re interacting with a bot.

Keyword-based case assignment

Keyword-based case assignment is a process in which ticketing software rules send cases that contain specific keywords to specific agents. 

With this approach, agents can receive cases about the topics they specialize in. Say a case for an accounting software’s support team contains the phrase “personalize invoices.” An agent who knows about this feature would receive a ping about this case based on the keyword.  

At the same time, this process doesn’t take into account other key case factors—like customer sentiment and workload. If a large number of “personalize invoices” cases come in, the agent with that specialty will have a lot of work on their plate. 

Intelligent case assignment

Our ranking: “Best”

Intelligent case assignments are like the automatic processes mentioned above but slightly more complex. 

Ticketing software uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to make case assignments based on a variety of factors—not just one. With this multifaceted approach, intelligent case assignments help teams prioritize urgent cases and find qualified available agents. 

Our intelligent case assignment workflow distributes cases based on five factors: 

• Time overlap: Agent availability based on their assignments, working hours, and scheduled availability (e.g., vacation, meetings, etc.).
• Skills match: The skills required to resolve a specific case matched to your available agents’ skill relevancy.
• Case complexity match: Machine learning (ML) predicts the duration and response frequency of the support case and compares it to agent trends.
• Company experience: An algorithm scores each agent’s previous support interactions with the customer.
• Bandwidth: Each agent’s current backlog—weighted by complexity, priority, and proximity to resolution.

Based on these factors, SX Assign calculates case compatibility scores for each agent to find the best available person for each case. 

To avoid overwhelming the strongest agents with difficult cases, SX Assign is configured to “stretch” support agents just beyond their current comfort zone and route slightly more complex cases to them.

Why choose one when you can have it all?

Even if your organization isn’t using intelligent case assignments, SupportLogic SX Assign can still help you. It can give your current case routing approach a boost using intelligence and doesn’t require you to replace any of your current systems or software. SupportLogic’s intelligent case management can simply integrate with the process you’re already using—and make it better.

Check this week’s webinar to learn more about case assignment and slash your resolution in half.

Join us on Thursday, October 27th

Learn how SupportLogic’s technology helps you get the right cases to the right agents with minimal effort

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Using Case Studies to Teach

Why Use Cases?

Many students are more inductive than deductive reasoners, which means that they learn better from examples than from logical development starting with basic principles. The use of case studies can therefore be a very effective classroom technique.

Case studies are have long been used in business schools, law schools, medical schools and the social sciences, but they can be used in any discipline when instructors want students to explore how what they have learned applies to real world situations. Cases come in many formats, from a simple “What would you do in this situation?” question to a detailed description of a situation with accompanying data to analyze. Whether to use a simple scenario-type case or a complex detailed one depends on your course objectives.

Most case assignments require students to answer an open-ended question or develop a solution to an open-ended problem with multiple potential solutions. Requirements can range from a one-paragraph answer to a fully developed group action plan, proposal or decision.

Common Case Elements

Most “full-blown” cases have these common elements:

• A decision-maker who is grappling with some question or problem that needs to be solved.
• A description of the problem’s context (a law, an industry, a family).
• Supporting data, which can range from data tables to links to URLs, quoted statements or testimony, supporting documents, images, video, or audio.

Case assignments can be done individually or in teams so that the students can brainstorm solutions and share the work load.

The following discussion of this topic incorporates material presented by Robb Dixon of the School of Management and Rob Schadt of the School of Public Health at CEIT workshops. Professor Dixon also provided some written comments that the discussion incorporates.

Advantages to the use of case studies in class

A major advantage of teaching with case studies is that the students are actively engaged in figuring out the principles by abstracting from the examples. This develops their skills in:

• Problem solving
• Analytical tools, quantitative and/or qualitative, depending on the case
• Decision making in complex situations
• Coping with ambiguities

Guidelines for using case studies in class

In the most straightforward application, the presentation of the case study establishes a framework for analysis. It is helpful if the statement of the case provides enough information for the students to figure out solutions and then to identify how to apply those solutions in other similar situations. Instructors may choose to use several cases so that students can identify both the similarities and differences among the cases.

Depending on the course objectives, the instructor may encourage students to follow a systematic approach to their analysis.  For example:

• What is the issue?
• What is the goal of the analysis?
• What is the context of the problem?
• What key facts should be considered?
• What alternatives are available to the decision-maker?
• What would you recommend — and why?

An innovative approach to case analysis might be to have students  role-play the part of the people involved in the case. This not only actively engages students, but forces them to really understand the perspectives of the case characters. Videos or even field trips showing the venue in which the case is situated can help students to visualize the situation that they need to analyze.

Accompanying Readings

Case studies can be especially effective if they are paired with a reading assignment that introduces or explains a concept or analytical method that applies to the case. The amount of emphasis placed on the use of the reading during the case discussion depends on the complexity of the concept or method. If it is straightforward, the focus of the discussion can be placed on the use of the analytical results. If the method is more complex, the instructor may need to walk students through its application and the interpretation of the results.

Leading the Case Discussion and Evaluating Performance

Decision cases are more interesting than descriptive ones. In order to start the discussion in class, the instructor can start with an easy, noncontroversial question that all the students should be able to answer readily. However, some of the best case discussions start by forcing the students to take a stand. Some instructors will ask a student to do a formal “open” of the case, outlining his or her entire analysis.  Others may choose to guide discussion with questions that move students from problem identification to solutions.  A skilled instructor steers questions and discussion to keep the class on track and moving at a reasonable pace.

In order to motivate the students to complete the assignment before class as well as to stimulate attentiveness during the class, the instructor should grade the participation—quantity and especially quality—during the discussion of the case. This might be a simple check, check-plus, check-minus or zero. The instructor should involve as many students as possible. In order to engage all the students, the instructor can divide them into groups, give each group several minutes to discuss how to answer a question related to the case, and then ask a randomly selected person in each group to present the group’s answer and reasoning. Random selection can be accomplished through rolling of dice, shuffled index cards, each with one student’s name, a spinning wheel, etc.

Tips on the Penn State U. website: https://sites.psu.edu/pedagogicalpractices/case-studies/

If you are interested in using this technique in a science course, there is a good website on use of case studies in the sciences at the National Science Teaching Association.

8 Case theory

A first look at case, the basic purpose of case, case government, synthetic versus analytic case marking, case features, case licensing, spec-head licensing, head-spec licensing, head-comp licensing, further issues, nonstructural conditions on case licensing, the dative-accusative distinction, case agreement, exercises and problems, exercise 8.1, exercise 8.2, exercise 8.3, exercise 8.4, exercise 8.5, exercise 8.6, exercise 8.7, exercise 8.8, problem 8.1, problem 8.2, problem 8.3, problem 8.4.

United States District Court

Northern district of iowa, honorable c.j. williams, chief judge | paul de young, clerk of court, search form, you are here, how are federal judges assigned to cases.

The basic considerations in making assignments are to assure equitable distribution of caseload and avoid judge shopping. By statute, the chief judge of each district court has the responsibility to enforce the court's rules and orders on case assignments. Each court has a written plan or system for assigning cases. The majority of courts use some variation of a random drawing. One simple method is to rotate the names of available judges. At times, judges having special expertise can be assigned cases by type, such as complex criminal cases, asbestos-related cases, or prisoner cases. The benefit of this system is that it takes advantage of the expertise developed by judges in certain areas. Sometimes cases may be assigned based on geographical considerations. For example, in a large geographical area it may be best to assign a case to a judge located at the site where the case was filed. Courts also have a system to check if there is any conflict that would make it improper for a judge to preside over a particular case. 

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Conference Acts to Promote Random Case Assignment

Published on March 12, 2024

The Judicial Conference of the United States has strengthened the policy governing random case assignment, limiting the ability of litigants to effectively choose judges in certain cases by where they file a lawsuit.

The policy addresses all civil actions that seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, “whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief.” In such cases, judges would be assigned through a district-wide random selection process.

“Since 1995, the Judicial Conference has strongly supported the random assignment of cases and the notion that all district judges remain generalists,” said Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr., secretary of the Conference. “The random case-assignment policy deters judge-shopping and the assignment of cases based on the perceived merits or abilities of a particular judge. It promotes the impartiality of proceedings and bolsters public confidence in the federal Judiciary.”

In most of the nation’s 94 federal district courts, local case assignment plans facilitate the random selection of judges. Some plans assign cases to a judge in the division of the court where the case is filed. In divisions where only a single judge sits, these rules have made it possible for a litigant to pre-select that judge by filing in that division. 

In a November 2021 letter, Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont senator who since has retired, raised concerns about a concentration of patent cases filed in single-judge divisions. 

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., referenced this letter in his 2021 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary , calling for a study of judicial assignment practices in patent cases.

“Senators from both sides of the aisle have expressed concern that case assignment procedures … might, in effect, enable the plaintiff to select a particular judge to hear a case,” Roberts said. During the patent-case study, the Court Administration and Case Management Committee (CACM) determined that similar issues might occur in bankruptcy and other types of civil litigation. Public debate grew when several highly controversial lawsuits, seeking nationwide injunctions against federal government policies, were filed in single-judge court divisions.

In submitting the proposed policy to the Judicial Conference, the CACM Committee said that some local case assignment plans risked creating an appearance of “judge shopping.” The committee also noted that the value of trying a civil case in the nearest court division becomes less important when the impact of a ruling might be felt statewide or even nationally.

The amended policy applies to cases involving state or federal laws, rules, regulations, policies, or executive branch orders. District courts may continue to assign cases to a single-judge division when they do not seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief.

In addition to the Judiciary policy, the CACM committee will disseminate guidance to all district courts regarding civil case assignment.

The  26-member Judicial Conference  is the policy-making body for the federal court system. By statute, the Chief Justice of the United States serves as its presiding officer and its members are the chief judges of the 13 courts of appeals, a district judge from each of the 12 geographic circuits, and the chief judge of the Court of International Trade.

The Conference convenes twice a year to consider administrative and policy issues affecting the court system.

Related Topics:  Judicial Conference of the United States