A company with fourteen branches wants enquiries to reach the right one without a person deciding. Everybody agrees this is sensible and nobody has written down the rules.
The rules exist. They are in the heads of people who have worked there for years, and they involve coverage areas that do not follow postcode boundaries, two branches that share a town, and three services offered at only some sites.
Writing them down is the whole project. Everything after that is straightforward.
Step 1: write down which branch covers what
Geographically, by whatever unit the business actually uses, including the places where two branches overlap and how that is decided.
Step 2: write down which branch does what
Services, specialisms and anything offered at some sites and not others, which is the information customers most need and can least find.
Step 3: decide the tie break rule
Where two branches could serve somebody, decide once whether it goes by distance, by capacity, by specialism or by rotation, rather than case by case.
Step 4: establish the customer's location properly
Ask rather than guess. A postcode or a town name from the customer is more reliable than any automatic detection, which is frequently wrong.
Step 5: establish what they actually need
Since capability matters as much as geography, and the right branch depends on both, which is the failure in which branch do i need questions across locations.
Step 6: answer the general questions centrally
Anything true across the whole business should be answered immediately rather than routed, which removes a large share of the volume before routing happens.
Step 7: answer the branch specific questions from branch data
Hours, address, parking and what that branch offers, which is the drift problem in opening hours that differ by site.
Step 8: hand over with the conversation attached
Everything the customer has already said goes with the enquiry, so the branch continues rather than restarting.
Step 9: decide what happens out of hours
When the branch is closed, whether the enquiry waits, goes to a central team, or is held with a stated response time.
Step 10: decide what happens when a branch does not respond
A time limit and an escalation, so an enquiry routed to a busy branch does not simply disappear.
Step 11: handle the customer who wants a different branch
People have preferences and reasons, and the routing should be a recommendation that can be overridden rather than a decision imposed on them.
Step 12: report the volume by branch
What arrived, what was answered and what converted, which most multi site businesses cannot currently produce at all.
Step 13: review the rules quarterly
Coverage changes, services move and new branches open, and rules written once and never revisited become wrong within a year.
Step 14: put the routing in front of the enquiry
An assistant that asks where somebody is and what they need, applies the written rules, answers the general questions itself and hands the rest to the right branch with the conversation attached removes a decision customers were never able to make. Set it up through install the widget and train your bot. The same pattern appears in multi site gym chains and location questions and how to route leads to the right salesperson automatically. The sector view sits under b2b.