More goes on behind the curtain at a contact center than speaking on the phone and chatting on social media platforms. If only there was a way to make sure the background activity never choked the main objective of valuable time…
Enter call center automation!
Automation is top of the list among strategies that boost productivity and key call center metrics. It’s a proven way to make sure the core activities always get the attention they demand.
We’re going to discuss the following ideas and automation areas in pursuit of boosting productivity across the entire call center floor.
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
- Automate the outbound support call schedule
- Automate wrap-up activities
- Automate frequently asked issues resolution
- Customize call routing
Let’s shed more light on each of these points.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Conversational IVR is a quick way of dealing with simple calls that you can resolve without involving an agent. Put simply, this automation method takes a caller’s voice requests as input, processes it, and responds accordingly.
Once you’ve set up conversational IVR, the number of agent-handled calls will start to decline. It also boosts customer satisfaction, for two reasons. First, service gets super-fast. Second, the wait time for a human agent shrinks to almost nothing (if ever that becomes necessary.)
Automate the outbound support call schedule
Call center agents spend most of their time on incoming and outgoing calls. We’ve already talked about automating part of the incoming calls; now, let’s look at the calls going out to customers.
Automatically scheduling calls to customers at predefined periods of low volume helps to maintain occupancy in the slow hours. It can also be a relation-defining service for your customers.
To them, it’s a random call from you making sure they have no issues with the product they bought. It keeps them happy and less likely to call you with complaints.
Automate wrap-up activities
Each time a call is completed, be it in or outgoing, agents have to record notes about it. They may also need to send emails, update your CRM. These tasks make up after-call wrap.
Automating wrap-up activities saves a chunk of time from the routine. You can do this by integrating natural language understanding (NLU) systems with your VoIP phone system.
This makes it easy for agents to go from one call to another while their conversations are recorded and analysed. Relevant and capable actors are notified in the background automatically.
Automate frequently asked issues resolution
Give a call center agent one year’s experience with a company and they’ll most likely get used to answering a fixed set of questions. Imagine the monotony!
Automating the resolution of issues such as creating an account, and checking status of tickets will go a long way optimizing service delivery. Creating and routinely sharing product knowledge bases with all stakeholders is one way of achieving this. You might also want to consider using an answering service.
Customize call routing
Call routing is a smart way of filtering incoming calls to make sure the recipient matches the caller. You can create rules and conditions to help with the filtering process.
A common routing path automatically assigns calls coming from French speaking countries toward french speaking agents. In addition to making life easier for the caller, it creates opportunities to offer specific services to high priority (or high risk) customers.
Keeping your call center working at an optimal level ensures you keep customers happy with less effort.
babelforce is a global cloud communications platform focused on No-Code integration and automation. It allows non-technical people to build even the most complex integrated processes for customer-facing teams, particularly in the call center.
