Introduction to Routing Rules

You probably have thousands of website visitors every month from around the world, with different company sizes and industries.

You don’t want enterprise customers speaking to a new SDR, nor do you want an enterprise AE wasting their time with a small business.

ServiceBell routing rules connect the right visitor, to the right rep, at the right time.

Whether you’re routing a realtime alert for an instant video conversation, or offering a rep’s calendar to book a meeting, ServiceBell routing rules connect the right visitor to the right rep at the right time.

Types of Routing Rules

Routing rules fire when a routing step is reached in Journeys. Available reps are alerted of a realtime conversation, or have their calendars automatically offered while they’re offline.

There are two types of routing:

  • Route for Pounce
  • Route for Inbound Chat

Here’s the difference:

Route for Pounce

ServiceBell notifies agents when high-value visitors are on the site at prime opportunities for a “pounce”, so they can proactively engage them and initiate a conversation.

Pounce attempts convert 2-3x more visitors into conversations and opportunities than passively letting visitors initiate conversations on their own.

Pouncing is the new way to field inbound leads. We like to call it “proactive inbound”.

Pouncing on website visitors is the best way to convert inbound leads, because it reduces lead response time and removes friction from the buying process.

Lead response time has a direct impact on your inbound lead conversion rates.

For example, calls made after 30 minutes of lead submission are 21x less likely to turn into a conversation than even 5 minutes. When you respond quickly to leads, you’re catching them at pique interest.

They’re more likely to respond, book a meeting, and buy. Striking while the iron’s hot boosts conversions, but the average B2B lead response time is 47 hours.

The sooner you reach out to leads, the better - so instead of reaching out after they’ve left your site, catch them at the perfect time!

ServiceBell pounces reduce lead response time to ~0 seconds, which skyrockets inbound lead to qualified meeting held conversion rates.

Moreover, you’re not just collecting their email and booking a meeting for later. You can move from website visitor to meeting held in seconds, a new sales motion that converts visitors into opportunities at lightning speed.

Considering the impact a 5-minute response time has on conversions, imagine the impact a proactive call - before the visitor has left your site - has on conversions.

Depending on the page on your site and the visitor you’re calling, we see a 12% average pickup rate.

The average B2B site only converts 2.5-5% of traffic into form submissions, and only 30% of those form submissions turn into meetings booked, not to mention no-shows and reschedules, you’re looking at incredibly low inbound low conversion rates and long sales cycles.

On the other hand, ServiceBell turns those visitors into meetings held on the spot, reducing drop-off and moving prospects through your pipeline faster to close.

Route for Inbound Chat

Visitors can chat or call agents during hours of availability. ServiceBell automatically qualifies visitors with chatbots, and routes them to the right rep.

Inbound chats are even hotter leads than pounce attempts, because the visitor raised their hand asking to speak with sales.

Try to answer inbound requests as often as possible, because these visitors are primed to buy. Inbound visitors often close at higher rates and faster than anyone else in your pipeline.

When visitors request a chat, they’re expecting an agent to reply within 30 seconds. After 30 seconds with no answer, the visitor is offered a meeting booker. They usually book a meeting for later, if they’ve not yet grown impatient and bounced.

It’s worse to set the expectation of a realtime conversation and miss the request, than not offering anything at all.

Make sure to configure hours of availability, connect your calendar, and set up fallback routing rules, so you never miss an inbound chat.

Default Routing Rule

Default routing rules in ServiceBell fire when no custom rules are triggered. When a visitor hits a routing rule in a Journey, without meeting any custom routing rule triggers, the visitor is routed with default routing logic.

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They’ll appear in Live Feeds, and when the visitor triggers an alert, all reps in the default routing rule are notified.

Think of the default routing rule as a ‘catch all’ when the visitor hasn’t matched any other custom rules that take higher priority.

Custom Routing Rule

Custom routing rules are triggered when visitors meet any of the following criteria:

  • URL
  • Location
  • Target account
  • HubSpot ownership
  • Reverse IP data enrichment from ClearBit or 6Sense (Industry, Company size, etc)

Custom routing rules are prioritized top to bottom. If a visitor matches criteria in multiple custom rules, they’ll be routed to the reps in the top-most active routing rule.

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HubSpot Ownership

ServiceBell was purpose-built for HubSpot. If you have named contacts or companies in HubSpot, ServiceBell can route those visitors to the right rep in realtime.

Once HubSpot is configured, ServiceBell can look at contact owner, company owner, and target account data to route visitors to the right rep.

Conclusion

ServiceBell routes every visitor to the right rep in realtime, whether for a live conversation, or a meeting booked for later. You can route alerts for pounce, along with inbound chat requests to reps based on URL, location, HubSpot ownership data, target account data, Reverse IP data, and more.

In the next tutorial, we’ll walk through configuring routing rules from scratch.