Customers expect to have the same experience regardless of the delivery channel. Whether it is text, chat, or phone, customers want service to be fast, transparent, reliable, and convenient, a frictionless experience that puts the user in control of their journey.
Delivering a seamless experience requires an understanding of the digital-first customer. A digital-first orientation recognizes that customer expectations and the digital landscape are ever-changing. For contact centers, that means collecting data to ensure their operations are keeping pace with digital expectations.
Call Center Monitoring
Call centers are crucial to an omnichannel contact center. While consumers may prefer self-service options, not every customer concern can be handled using an online knowledge base or live chat. Sometimes, the best communication channel is the phone.
However, consumer dissatisfaction with call center responsiveness has grown in the last three years. According to Bloomberg, wait times have tripled in that time. Whether it is staff shortages or increased call volumes, call centers struggle to meet expectations. They need real-time data that comes from reliable monitoring of call traffic.
Monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Call center monitoring has grown beyond the basic quality assurance focus of assessing individual calls between agents and callers. Monitoring programs can record and transcribe calls. They can track wait times and abandonment rates. Depending on the solution, monitoring may include the following key performance indicators (KPIs):
- Average Wait Time
- Average Abandonment Rate
- Average Transfer Rate
- Average Hold Time
- First Call Resolution (FCR)
Having access to performance data ensures that organizations are meeting their KPIs and customer expectations. Let's look at how the monitoring data can help improve customer experiences.
Average Wait Time
The average wait time begins when an inbound call is received. It ends when the call is answered. The call may be answered by an interactive voice response (IVR) system or by contact center agents. This metric indicates how long a caller has been waiting in the queue. It does not include the time it takes to navigate an automated response system.
A recent study found that 60% of consumers feel that 10 minutes is the maximum wait time for an inbound call to be answered. As of 2022, the industry average is 13 minutes. Given that callers become frustrated after being on hold for two or three minutes, they have about 10 minutes of increasing frustration.
Interactive Voice Response
If your contact center does not have an IVR solution, consider integrating it into your contact center operations. When setting up an IVR system, remember that lengthy IVR sessions can be just as annoying to the caller as a long wait time. This irritation is especially high when the IVR session ends with being placed in another queue.
Knowledge Base
Another option is to improve a call center knowledge base. Providing center agents with searchable information can help answer customer questions at first contact. Faster resolution means faster response time and increased customer satisfaction.
Average Abandonment Rate
The lower the wait time, the fewer hang-ups or disconnects. Abandonment rate refers to the number of callers that choose to terminate the call after waiting on hold. The metric also includes disconnected calls.
Performance Constraints
The abandonment rate reflects the contact center's performance. The problem may be a combination of factors.
Legacy Systems
Older technology may have difficulty interfacing with newer applications. Custom interfaces can slow the exchange of information needed to solve a customer's concern. If agents are frequently asking customers to be patient because the system is running slow, it may be time to look at newer technology.
Inefficient Call Distribution
The faster a caller is connected to the agent who can solve the problem, the higher the customer satisfaction. Speed and convenience are the top two customer expectations. Having a contact center solution that can route calls efficiently can reduce abandonment rates and improve response times.
Insufficient Staffing
Labor shortages are only part of the problem when it comes to staffing. High turnover rates mean more training. Even if staffing levels improve, new hires are not as proficient as experienced agents, which only adds to the wait time and increases abandonment rates.
Possible Solutions
If your contact center infrastructure has been updated, but your call center continues to have a high abandonment rate, consider the following:
- Let callers know the estimated wait time.
- Offer callback or virtual queuing.
- Provide music, announcements, and trivia quizzes to engage callers.
- Implement an automatic call distributor.
Monitoring this metric can be an early indicator of increasing call volumes or internal performance concerns.
Average Transfer Rate
The goal of any call center is for the agent to resolve the issue without follow-up. If the first agent forwards the call to someone else to complete, that's considered a transfer. It may require a supervisor to resolve the problem, or it may need to go to a department such as engineering or IT support.
Automated Call Distributor
Using an automatic call distributor can help reduce the average transfer rate. From the beginning, the call center solution can route the call based on the caller's needs and the available personnel. Routing the customer to the most qualified person lessens the number of transfers and reduces the time to resolution.
Training
Making sure center agents are knowledgeable about your product or service increases the odds of a first-call resolution. Increased training is especially important as more call centers employ remote agents. If call centers want to address staffing shortages and high turnover rates, they will need to revisit their operational models to address a distributed workforce.
Average Hold Time
Knowing how long customers are on hold can provide insights into call center performance. On-hold times are the times during an answered call when the agent is not interacting with the caller. It is not the same as the average wait time, although some solution providers refer to wait times as on hold.
Business Processes
Reasons for long hold times When call handling time increases, it may not be because of agent performance. It may be internal processes. For example, interfacing call center software with other applications such as CRM solutions can give center agents access to a comprehensive view of the customer.
With access to customer data, agents can see prior customer interactions. They don't need to place customers on hold while they talk to the service department or technical resource to come up to speed on an issue. Giving contact centers access to enterprise-wide customer data can reduce hold times.
Agent Performance
When hold times increase, it's easy to focus on the agent, but performance may be a symptom rather than a cause. For example, information is not readily accessible. The data may be available but not in a form that agents can access. Make sure the information is structured in terms the customer will use, not the engineer.
Consider giving agents more autonomy to make decisions based on customer interaction rather than a prescribed script. When trying to resolve a customer concern, live agents should have preconfigured options that address common complaints. That change can reduce the time on hold that a live agent has to spend tracking down a supervisor for approvals.
First Call Resolution
First call resolution improves the customer journey by delivering a fast and convenient response to a caller's concern. However, tracking that metric can be misleading. Sometimes, it's impossible for the agent to resolve the problem on the first contact. That's why a comprehensive call center system is essential for continuous improvement.
Call centers using VoIP, such as Simplicity's solution, have access to massive amounts of data to help monitor KPIs. They track average wait times, abandonment rates, and call transfers. The data enables contact centers to drill down to know precisely where to apply resources. Whether it's investing in alternative technology or adding communication channels, Simplicity's VoIP can provide the data to ensure the decision is data-driven.
