A contact center employee that manages consumer connections across various channels is known as a blended agent. Initially, this meant taking both incoming and outgoing calls. However, in the omnichannel world of today, it can also refer to managing social media, chats, emails, and text messages (SMS). In reality, a mixed agent may terminate an incoming call and then be given the option of responding to a chat conversation or placing an outbound call.

Efficiency is the main advantage of employing blended agents. Blended agents can chat with customers or answer to emails when there is no inbound call queue, so they are not idle. It takes the proper software tools, ones that are intelligent enough to route interactions to agents regardless of channel, based on agent skill sets, to achieve these efficiencies. Additionally, the appropriate reporting and analytics tools must be in place, and workforce management technologies must be able to schedule blended agents.