How to Get Calls to the Right Agent, First Time

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In busy contact centres, every second counts, and agents are under pressure to handle calls quickly and efficiently, while customers expect fast answers and minimal waiting.

But too often, calls end up with the wrong agent. The result? Long transfers, repeated explanations, and rising costs.

To find out what contact centres can do, we asked Pierce Buckley, CEO & Co-Founder at babelforce, to explain how AI can help route calls more accurately and improve overall efficiency.

Video: Optimize and Reduce Call Transfers: Build Context

Watch the video below to hear Pierce explain how building more context from the customer up front can help reduce call transfers:

With thanks to Pierce Buckley, CEO & Co-Founder at babelforce, for contributing to this video.

This video was originally published in our article ‘Need to Reduce Call Transfers? Try These Approaches’

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The Problem With Traditional Call Routing

Calls are often misrouted because contact centres don’t have enough information at the start, as Pierce explains:

“Routing calls to the wrong agent, and then having to transfer them to the agent who can deal with their query, is very expensive. And it doesn’t have to be that way any more.

One of the main reasons you can’t route the right agent the first time is because you don’t have enough information. And there’s two reasons you don’t have enough information.”

This usually happens for two key reasons:

Limited IVR

Many centres use either no IVR or a basic one.

“One reason is that you’re putting the caller through no IVR or a just a simple traditional IVR, which means you just don’t get enough information from the user, because all they’re doing is pressing 1 for this, and 2 for that.”

These set-ups only allow simple choices like “press 1 for sales.”, but they don’t collect enough detail about the caller’s need.

No Data Lookup

Contact centres often ignore journey data, but without looking at customer history or behaviour, it’s hard to predict which agent should handle the call, according to Pierce:

“The second reason is that you’re not doing a data dip, meaning you’re not digging into the journey data, you don’t have any predictors to say how you should route the callers.”

The AI-Powered Solution

Both problems above can be solved using modern AI agents – voicebots that are AI enabled, allowing:

Rich Conversations

AI bots can talk to callers naturally, which means they gather more useful information early in the call.

“You can have a rich conversation, you can do a data dip, and you can make a data-driven decision with all of the information that you have. That can dramatically increase the number of times that you route the calls first time to the right agent.”

Data Dips

Voicebots can also access journey data in real time. This gives a fuller picture of the caller and helps decide the best agent to handle the call.

With better input from the caller and a deeper view of their data, contact centres can route calls to the right agent the first time.

Added Benefit: Automation

AI voicebots can also automate routine calls, meaning agents are free to handle complex or urgent issues, and as a result, they are more likely to be available when needed.

“A knock-on benefit is that, given that technology, that AI enabled technology, plus the data processing that you can do, you can also automate some of your calls.

Now if you automate your calls then of course you are going to more frequently have the situation that when you do know which agent type you need, they will be available.

Why? Because they won’t be tied up doing the routine tasks that you’ve now automated away.”

If you are looking for more great insights from the experts, check out these next:

Author: Robyn Coppell
Reviewed by: Xander Freeman

Published On: 10th Jul 2025 - Last modified: 11th Jul 2025
Read more about - Video, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, babelforce, Call Handling, Call Routing, IVR Solutions, Pierce Buckley, Videos