Customer retention basically means customers of the product or business tend to return to, continue to buy or in some other way not defect to another product or business, or to non-use entirely. Selling organizations fear customer defections and hence try to minimize them by employing effective strategies to retain the customers.
Researchers have proved that acquiring new customers cost more than retaining the existing ones. Moreover, customer retention is directly proportional to profitability. So, companies need to implement certain customer retention strategies so as to grow their business. Here are the best strategies to curb customer defection and develop long-term relationships:
In a typical situation, customer queries are addressed when they arise. Though an instant query resolution would make them happy this reactive approach may not provide you with the desired customer satisfaction level. So, a better option for an inflated customer contentment rate is the “proactive approach”.Now, what exactly is a proactive approach? Well, it means, you solve problems before customers have to call you. With a proactive customer support, you can solve customer queries even before they become aware of them. Let’s see how you can accomplish this highly efficacious strategy.
ASA is a call center key performance indicator (KPI) typically referenced by managers while assessing their team’s performance, efficacy and degree of accessibility to their callers. It is a term pertaining to the service industry where it is also known as “Average Seconds to Answer” and “Average Time to Answer” (ATA). It is further defined as the average waiting time for a caller before he is acknowledged by a service representative.
The mathematical formula is:
Average Speed of Answer = Total Waiting Time for Answered Calls/Total Number of Answered Calls
ASA
Factors affecting ASA:
1. Customer satisfaction:
Customer satisfaction is associated with an average speed of answer. This is because the time spent queueing is one of the main factors that affect how customers judge the level of service. Low waiting times do not automatically indicate high CSat. Customer satisfaction is understood from the contact center’s perspective. It starts from the instant when the customer is placed in a queue after they have navigated IVR. As a matter of fact, long or confusing IVR processes can lead to a bad customer experience. This is because lengthy IVR processes cause frustration in the customers. Moreover, they make the customer experience much more drawn out than the ASA figures would ideally indicate.
2. Call abandonment rate:
Call abandon rate is yet another factor that affects the average speed of answer data. In the cases where customers end the calls before they are connected to an agent, their calls do not count towards the ASA figure. Various factors may be responsible for the agents abandoning a call. Of all the possible reasons, a prolonged wait has the highest probability of triggering call abandonment. As a result, the worst offenders, in terms of answer speed, are often discounted from the understanding of the actual figure.
We made you familiar with the concept of occupancy in our previous post. Now, let’s have a look at the most effective tips for improving call center occupancy:
1. Agent utilization during the quiet periods:
There might be days when the traffic at a call center is not much. These days are referred to as the quiet periods. Productivity and occupancy levels can be increased by asking agents to take on different tasks during these quiet periods. As an example, call centers that normally handle only incoming calls ask agents to make outbound calls during quiet periods or ontact customers to ask if they were satisfied with the service they received. These periods are even utilized to call customers who have recently purchased a product to offer them information on other products of interest. This ultimately improves the call center ocupancy.
2. Self service facilities:
You can consider offering customer self-service facilities through website, e-mail or voice mail. These facilities help reduce staffing levels and call volumes Providing customers with self-service options for services such as requesting service calls, placing and tracking order etc. ultimately reduces the call volumes and helps in optimizing the call center occupancy.
3. Call monitoring:
Call monitoring is yet another powerful strategy for improving call center occupancy. You can consider monitoring the call volumes at different times of the day and on different days in order to identify busy periods and quiet periods. Thereafter, you can schedule staff levels to reduce the time customers have to wait in a queue during busy periods.
4. Call center outsourcing:
You can provide additional resources for peak periods by outsourcing a part of your call center operations. Moreover, you can consider switching resources between the main call center and the outsourced call center instead of asking permanent staff to attend more calls during peak hours. Apart from improving the occupancy rate of each staff, it also ensures that their efficiency is not getting affected during peak hours.
According to a research, agents who have worked in the contact center for more than six months have these top three priorities namely:
i) salary
ii) progression
iii) nice environment
On the other hand, the top three priorities for those who have been in the role for less than six months are as follows:
i) nice environment
ii) salary
iii) company culture
Therefore, incentive planning needs to be done on the basis of these priorities in order to lower agent attrition levels in customer support centers. This further helps you can gain the most out of the rewards that are offered. Apart from this, customer support managers also need to focus on the salaries of jobs which require similar skills to the agent role. Also, they need to make sure that the rates of pay that you offer are competitive.
Priorities
2. Consider benchmarking against good agent skills:
The act of benchmarking the skills of new agents against their well-skilled counterparts will help benefit the quality of calls and provide the required guidance. In order to reduce agent attrition, benchmark advisors against their colleagues instead of alongside metric based targets. Further, suggest them what to pick up from them in call quality monitoring sessions.
Benchmarking skills
3. Monitor customer-centric metrics:
As a matter of fact, the most effective call center agents are typically the ones that make a personalized connection with their callers and derive the most satisfaction from their job. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor customer-centric metrics such as contact quality, customer satisfaction, and first contact resolution. Thereafter, measures need to be taken to enhance them. Also, the contact center managers need to ensure that quantitative metrics such as average handle time or calls per hour are not overvalued. This will help increase customer satisfaction and curb agent attrition.
Implementing peer recognition and rewards program is yet another powerful method of curbing agent attrition. It involves ensuring that each agent receives feedback that is directly tied to their performance and that they receive rewards when they meet key milestones. This enhances an agent’s motivation and helps build engagement with their work. On the other hand, filling open positions within call centers by promoting internal candidates can also help motivate them to work better. This can actually be used as an incentive for agents to work harder at their job and be sure to promote top performers.
Rewards and recognition
2. Strive to tackle your advisors’ grievances:
Exit interviews are the ones conducted to gather information on why an advisor is leaving and to learn how a customer support center can stop attrition. Instead of these exit interviews, conducting internal interviews, after an employee’s first few weeks of joining, can help tackle their grievances and know their pain points before it is too late. Thereafter, strategies can be employed to exempt these grievances. These interviews convince the employees that the company cares and supports for each of them. It further boosts their morale and job satisfaction and leads to a lowered agent attrition rate.
Coaching culture
3. Ease down the shift swapping process:
The rigidness of the schedule in a customer support center can result in staff missing important external events and lower job satisfaction. As a matter of fact, customer support centers are hesitant to allow shift swaps due to the negative impact it may have on workplace cohesion, contact between supervisors and advisors and service quality. However, working towards lowering the rigidness of the schedule and providing an easy swapping of shifts can greatly enhance employee morale. This can eventually result in a reduced agent attrition.
As mentioned earlier, ANI is a feature of a telecommunications network for determining the origination telephone number on toll calls for billing purposes. This amazing feature provides a number of benefits to the customer support centers employing it. We have mentioned some of those benefits below:
1. Call forwarding without operator intervention:
An operator call forwarding will become aware of the caller’s phone number and automatically thank them for forwarding their lines as well as give them the option to go to an operator and arrive in check-in mode ready to get their messages. This will reduce the live operator time and subsequently the billable time.
Call forwarding
2. Call blocking:
Your answering service can block all the unwanted, irritating calls with the help of automatic number identification.
Call blocking
3. Exemption of call screening bills:
Call screening is the process of evaluating the characteristics of a telephone call before deciding how or whether to answer it. The screening process can be excluded from your answering service bill by employing an ANI system. This highly effective technology can help identify their caller ID and dump these calls before an operator ever has to speak with them.
Call screening
4. An increase in agent efficiency:
ANI ensures that the most appropriate number is always displayed. With automatic caller ID, the agents will never have to manually select a number. This exempts all the chances of errors. Moreover, it saves them time and effort, thus, increasing their efficiency.
Increased agent efficiency
5. Boosts call backs and connection rates:
ANI helps in increasing call backs and connection rates as using a familiar number will increase the probability that the recipient will return the call. Moreover, recipients are more likely to answer calls from familiar phone numbers or phone numbers from similar area codes.
Call back
6. Increases first call resolution on callbacks:
Using ANI recipients can be immediately connected with the most appropriate agent when they have missed a call and thereafter call back.
ANI is an abbreviation for Automatic Number Identification. It is a service that provides the receiver of a telephone call with the number of the calling phone. The method of providing this particular information is determined by the service provider (such as AT&T, MCI, Sprint, and so forth). Mostly, the service is provided by sending the digital tone multi frequency (DTMF) tones along with the call. This technology is commonly used by emergency center dispatchers to save the caller having to report the information and. It can further be used to help locate callers. Moreover, the telephone company’s 9-1-1 service to a public safety point usually includes the automatic number identification feature. It is extensively used in call centers.
In call centers, it displays the number of the calling party to the call center agent in real time. The call center can use the provided information to forward calls to different people for different geographic areas. Automatic number identification is also employed to describe the functions of two-way radio selective calling that identify the transmitting user.
Automatic Number Identification
In cases where the caller ID blocking is activated, the caller’s telephone number and line type are captured by ANI service. The destination telephone company switching office can relay the originating telephone number to ANI delivery services subscribers. Toll-free subscribers and large companies normally have access to to this information as follows:
i) instantly via installed equipment
ii) from a monthly billing statement.
In case of residential subscribers, access to ANI information can be obtained through third party companies that charge for the service. ANI is generally not transmitted when a call is operator assisted. In such cases, only the area code of the last switch to route the call is sent. If a call is placed through an outbound-only VoIP service or some calling cards will cause a non-working number to be sent as the ANI. It is also not supported adequately for calls originated from four-party lines.
Customer service at a call center is defined as the process of waiting for people to call in with a question and then answering the question or solving the caller’s problem. A high-touch customer service can be regarded as an advanced version of the traditional approach. In this kind of approach, the basic aim is to anticipate what questions or issues callers will have at different instants of time. A high-touch customer service also means evaluating ‘first-call resolution,’ which is resolving the callers’ issue the first time they call. Simply put, high-touch customer service is a category of contact center interaction that requires human interaction. Some contact centers train specific agents to deal with high-value customers and complex problems in order to achieve maximum customer satisfaction.
High touch customer service
Software technical support systems employ a grading system for customers. According to this system, the low-touch requests may be handled through mediums such as an online community FAQ section or a customer self-service portal. Such that low-touch customer service often enlists FAQ sections or knowledge bases of articles with how-to answers. On the other hand, the complex issues may require the high-touch approach of a customer service agent who is well-trained in resolving these kinds of problems. In other words, high-touch solutions almost always require human intervention and guidance from a customer service agent for query resolution.
Customer service agents
In order to anticipate the problems or issues that customers may have, a thorough study of the data accumulated over time needs to be done. This data is generally based on the types of questions for which the customers contact the call center. This can help identify areas of the program that require more detailed descriptions and information. This data can also be used by the call center employees for reaching out and educating members or customers in a more personalized and proactive way.
“Longest delay in queue” (LDQ) describes the longest time period that a customer in a queue waits before either connecting with an agent or hanging up. LDQ is tracked through two categories in call center metrics:
i) Longest delay to answer:
This is the longest delay for a caller before being managed by a call center agent.
ii)Longest delay to abandon:
It refers to the maximum time a caller waited for agent interaction before hanging up.
Queue
Delay, whether long are short is not at all good for a company’s success and reputation as well. So, the managers handling the customer care section of a company need to identify and employ effective strategies to curb these issues. In this post, we have mentioned some of the most effective strategies that can be employed to keep customers happy during unexpected service delays, such as being short on staff:
1.Transparency:
The managers should give customers clear and conservative information that will help them estimate their wait time. This reduces their anxiety level caused by the uncertainty of the situation
2. Deliver more than you promise:
Delivering more than what you promise is a clever strategy. Let’s take an example of a restaurant where the host can give customers a longer than expected waiting time, say 25 minutes. If customers end up waiting just 15 minutes, they will be delighted as they expected a longer delay.
3. Try to keep your customers busy while they wait:
You can consider giving customers something to do while they wait. It can help cover the issue and keep them distracted and can seem like time goes by faster. Some examples of this strategy are offering magazines or free wifi access to your customers
4. Admit delays rather than apologizing:
When you inform the customers about the expected wait time beforehand, they can be mentally prepared for it. This is far better than apologizing to the customers time and again about additional delays as it will only piss them off.
It is a known fact that customers hate waiting when they want to get their queries resolved. The best solution to this problem is modern contact center software. It offers various features to optimize call queues, reduce the wait time and thus exempt FCD. Some of its features are:
i) Queue to voicemail:
Using this feature, customers can leave a voicemail instead of waiting in the queue. This helps in reducing FCD to a large extent as it exempts the need of waiting a single minute in the queue. This further helps improve the quality of customer service and agents’ efficiency as well.
ii) Queue callback:
This feature allows the customers to exit the queue and leave behind their details such as contact information so that they can be contacted back. Whenever the agents are available, they refer to the details provided and call back the customers so as to provide them the required information or solve their queries.
Voicemail
2. Optimize your staffing:
This does not mean hiring a lot of agents but planning the entire process adequately. Optimizing your staffing in order to reduce FCD calls for adjusting your team size based on predicted call volume, especially during the peak time. Workforce management and efficient call center software can be used to do this. Moreover, the historical data can be analyzed to better understand the peak times, and staff accordingly. You also need to consider making contingency plans for those times when employees call in sick.
Optimized staffing 2
3. Offer self- help service:
In today’s era, customers prefer to get help themselves. A self-service feature on your website or social media profile will help to cut down FCD. By reducing the call flow to your contact center, it will further increase the productivity and efficiency of the agents.
As we mentioned in our earlier post, FCD refers to a scenario where a caller hangs up the call after listening to the notice that ‘our customer care agents are currently busy, your call is important to us, please hold the line’. Fast clear down is a result of the fact that such customers are not ready to wait even a minute or two. This makes it a little harder to tackle FCD in an effective way but by making use of the following tips, it can be curbed to a large extent:
FCD
1. Consider employing advanced call center software:
All your call center needs can be met using the different types of advanced call center software available in the market. They help achieve productivity and benefit you in the long run. Using highly efficacious software, your agents will be able to provide exceptional customer service and resolve the customer’s issue in a very short time. This is because advanced software enables the agents to have all the information at their fingertips. So, the moment they start their interaction with the customer, they can refer to the available information and provide the fastest query resolution. Moreover, the software will help to optimize the after-call work of an agent hence, further increasing customer satisfaction and reducing FCD.
Call center software
2. Train your agents adequately:
When the agents are not adequately trained, they are not completely familiar with a process and this impacts the call. In such cases, the agents are not able to troubleshoot properly. Also, they may have to get help from the seniors on the call which would prolong the overall call time. As a result, the customers may get frustrated with the inefficiency of the agent and ask for the supervisor. In order to avoid all this, and reduce FCD, you need to train your agents thoroughly.
A fast clear down is a call center term for a caller who hangs up upon hearing a delay notice. FCD is basically used for callers who hang up immediately after they come to know about the delay in reaching a customer care agent. This is a scenario where a caller hangs up the call after listening to the notice that ‘our customer care agents are currently busy, your call is important for us, please hold the line’. Fast clear down is a result of the fact that such customers are not ready to wait even a minute or two.
Fast clear down
In such cases where a caller hangs up before the agents get a chance to talk, the call centers are likely missing the opportunity of making them satisfied and happy. For an exceptional experience, a customer should be able to reach an agent and get his/ her queries resolved without any delay. But this is not possible when the call volumes are high and customers have to wait in queues. There can also be many other reasons responsible for a lengthy or even short call center queues. Some of them, are:
i) Sub-optimal staffing: If there are not enough agents, it could lead to the calls getting piled upii
ii) Agent incompetence: It means, the agents may not be competent enough to finish the calls on time.
Unhappy customers
FCD has an adverse impact as it is directly related to call abandonment rates. Since customers call into a contact center to get immediate support and answers to their queries, so, they are less likely to be in a mood of wasting their time waiting in the queue. Also, due to a negative experience, they hang up and never call back. Hence, abandonment rates are related to customer churn.
Customers today, have been provided with multiple channels through which they expect to be able to reach and interact with call center agents. The data flowing in from each of these channels contains valuable insights. This call center analytics enables organizations to identify and evaluate the data so gauged and choose the best channels for interaction with customers. Cross-channel analytics provides a way to determine what channels any of their customers are using at a given moment, and tailor their service options accordingly. Agents can provide a personalized and exceptional customer interaction if they have the required information at their fingertips.
Cross-channel analytics
2. Self-service analytics:
This is yet another call center analytics that enables the users to access and analyze corporate data even if they are not trained as a data scientist and do not have any working experience with business intelligence and data mining. Self-service analytics helps to do so through the use of tools that simplify the ease of understanding. It further enables organizations to solve the problems and needs of a large number of businesses that too without the need for data professionals. Self-service requires minimal human involvement and helps cater a larger number of customers efficiently.
Self-service analytics
3. Performance analytics:
Performance analytics exempts the dependency of call center managers on daily reports and roll ups so as to know how well things are going. It basically offers online reporting and dashboard views of critical performance data, both real-time and historical, in context. This call center analytics enables the organizations to gauge and update relevant information and insights. Based on this information and insights, it further enables the organizations to take pro-active steps to ensure the best possible service to their customers. Thus, it actually helps enhance the customer experience to a large extent.
IVR analytics is a highly effective end-to-end call assessment solution that is a part of customer experience strategy. As a matter of fact, the customers who are greeted by linear thinking IVR systems instead of human voices already assume that their self-service experience is going to be less than favorable. Conducting IVR data analysis helps produce valuable insights that answer many important questions. With insights to these questions, organizations can improve their IVR systems, make them more clear, efficient and user-friendly in responding to callers. Thus, IVR analytics contributes to the success and profitability of companies of all sizes by helping to reduce costs, increase and enhance self-service options, improve first contact resolution, and boost customer satisfaction by providing an exceptional customer experience.
IVR analytics
2. Predictive analytics:
Predictive analytics consists of a number of statistical techniques from predictive modeling, machine learning, and data mining that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events. Using in-depth review of past performance in call volume, service level, handle time, and customer satisfaction, the predictive analysis makes it possible to apply past solutions to upcoming problems. This information can also be used in training to boost call agent effectiveness and enhance the customer experience. Predictive analytics help organizations determine which operational changes would be the most effective at improving the call center’s overall performance. As an added bonus, it also reduces handle time and operational costs by providing more effective communication.
Predictive analytics
3. Call center desktop analytics:
Call center desktop analytics enables companies to capture inefficiencies, improve security, and explore potential coaching opportunities for phone agents. By viewing the phone agent’s activity during the call and capturing all activity on the agent’s desktop, a company can ensure that the agent is using their systems most effectively, and that the systems themselves are functioning properly. Using comprehensive desktop analytics, an analyst can find and remove redundant tasks that increase call handle time and frustrate both agents and customers alike. This would further help in providing exceptional customer service.
In order to measure the performance of a call center’s customer service representatives individually and as a whole, call center analytics is used. Also, this is used to gauge a call center’s overall approach to customer relationship management (CRM) in a quick and responsive manner. Call center management uses this analytics to evaluate interactions, spot patterns, identify knowledge gaps, and make corrections through more training or other means.
Call center analytics
1. Text analytics:
The term text analyticsrefers to a set of linguistic, statistical, and machine learning techniques that model and structure the information content of textual sources for business intelligence, exploratory data analysis, research, or investigation. It is extensively used to respond to business problems, whether independently or in conjunction with query and analysis of fielded, numerical data. Also, the communication with customers these days is not limited to just the written documents. It is also carried out through email, secure messaging, Facebook, Twitter, and other text-centered media. Text analytics, as call center analytics, can review and monitor not only the messages sent to customers but also the message they send to the company. This helps in having a thorough knowledge of customers’ issues.
Text analytics
2. Speech analytics:
The process of analyzing recorded calls to gather customer information to improve communication and future interaction is known as speech analytics. This process is used by customer contact centers to extract information buried in client interactions with an enterprise. Using speech analytics, companies can monitor calls in real time and unearth inefficiencies in their current model, and make process improvements, such as moving to a call script or developing systems for call center agents to utilize in order to achieve the desired outcome. Moreover, the technology can pinpoint cost drivers, trend analysis, identify strengths and weaknesses with processes and products.
The term “Cross-media queuing” refers to a call center methodology in which all incoming messages, be it a phone call, an e-mail, fax, interactive voice response (IVR) message, website submission or an instant message, is routed in the same way. As per a resource, Intel provided a whitepaper which states that the cross-media queuing application needs five components. Cross-media queuing is achieved with the help of technology tools that help in creating a queue engine, media interaction modules, agent application modules, configuration and administration modules and a statistical and reporting module.
Incoming queries
The specified components and their functions have been described in detail below:
1.Aqueue engine:
The cross-media queuing requires a queue engine to act as a central coordination point. A system manager configures business rules. This coordination point negotiates all interactions with customers based upon these business rules.
2. Media interaction modules:
Customer queries may be received through a number of channels. In order to accept incoming customer queries from media channels and send the queries to agent applications as directed by the queue engine, media interaction modules are needed.
3. Agent application modules:
Customer queries arrive every now and then at call center agents’ desktops. Therefore, in order to enable automatic management of these queries, agent application modules are needed. The modules could be built by the system developers. Agent application modules can even be modified to be integrated into specific desktop applications.
5. Configuration and administration modules:
Configuration and administration modules are the ones that system administrators can use to establish business rules for routing media configure and manage queuing features.
6. Statistics and reporting module:
This type of module is required for recording and reporting purpose in a cross-media queuing system. A statistics and reporting module records and reports upon the flow of communication. It also lets you measure the system’s performance and record it as well.
A screen pop is an enticing feature of a computer telephony integration (CTI) application. It automatically displays all of the relevant caller and account information on a call center agent’s screen during a call. In order to match the incoming call against a customer database, caller ID , voice response or an automatic call distributor (ACD) may be used. This is done to identify the caller before the connection is made to the agent.
Screen pops
In other words, a screen pop is a feature that automatically displays caller information on call center agent screens when a call rings into the system. It is also known as automatic screen pop, automated screen pop.
How it works:
i) A customer or prospect reaches out via a phone call
ii) As soon as the call center software receives the call, it alerts the agent.
This alert includes information that there is a caller on the line and other relevant caller information found in the system. A screen pop can pull the data from a number of sources. As an example, some of this information can be pulled from public databases like data.com. However, the main information present in a screen pop should come from a company’s robust database as accessed through their call center software and helpdesk systems.
Screenpop
A number of advanced call center software solutions allow for customized screen pops, where companies can choose specific information to be displayed. Generally, this may include the caller’s name, phone number, address, email address, company, job title, information entered in your IVR, and other relevant information.
The screen pop feature is of utmost importance for a customer support center as it is a way to ensure that call center agents are primed to help customers even before the call is answered. Also, it is easy and automatic. Moreover, it allows agents to personalize conversations from the get-go, which improves customer satisfaction. This personalized service speeds up call resolution and helps your company stand out of the crowd.
In call centers’ context, ITS stands for issue tracking system. It is also known as trouble ticket system, support ticket, request management or incident ticket system. An ITS is a computer software package that manages and maintains lists of issues, as needed by an organization and is used in its customer support center. They are basically used to create, update, and resolve reported customer issues, or even issues reported by that organization’s other employees. As a matter of fact, support ticket should include vital information for the account involved and the issue encountered.
Issue tracking system
In most cases, an issue tracking system also contains a knowledge base containing information on each customer, resolutions to common problems, and other relevant data. An ITS is similar to a “bug tracker”, and often, a software company will sell both. In fact, some bug trackers are capable of being used as an issue tracking system, and vice versa. Consistent use of an issue or bug tracking system is considered one of the “hallmarks of a good software team” as it enhances the quality of customer service.
Knowledge base software
A ticket element, within an issue tracking system, refers to a running report on a particular problem, its status, and other relevant data. They almost always have a unique reference number, also known as a case, issue or call log number which is used to allow the user or help staff to quickly locate, add to or communicate the status of the user’s issue or request. Also, they are commonly created in a help desk or call center environment
Support ticket
As far as issues are concerned, they can have several aspects to them. An urgency value may be assigned to each issue in the system, based on the overall importance of that issue. Of all the issues, low or zero urgency issues are minor and should be resolved as time permits. Other details of issues include the customer experiencing the issue (whether external or internal), date of submission, detailed descriptions of the problem being experienced, attempted solutions or workarounds, and other such information.
Skills-based routing refers to a call-assignment strategy used in call centers to assign incoming calls to the most suitable agent, instead of simply choosing the next available agent. It can be considered as an advancement to the ACD systems found in most call centers. Call centers these days have become larger and have to deal with a wider variety of call types. Skills-based routing comes as a perfect solution to this problem. A successful skills-based routing strategy enables you to increase agent productivity by allowing agents to draw on their personal knowledge and experience base to answer questions faster. this further reduces call-handling time, increases the likelihood of first-call resolution and increases customer confidence and satisfaction.
Skill based routing
A simple automatic call distributor (ACD) system might do nothing more than route calls to the next available agent irrespective of that agent’s expertise and skills. On the other hand, skills-based routing allows contact centers to designate agents as specialists in certain products or issues. Basically, skills-based routing is used to assess the skills needed for a particular call by the dialed telephone number and the calling number or caller’s identity, as well as choices made in any associated IVR system. Thereafter, this highly efficacious system attempts to match the call to a suitably trained agent. The basic idea behind the functioning of skills-based routing is that an agent with matching skills will be able to provide a better service and enhance the customer experience.
Enhanced customer service
According to manufacturers skills- based routing provides the following benefits:
i) it improves customer service
ii) shortens call-handling time
iii) makes training shorter and easier
iv) increases agent utilization,
v) boosts productivity
vi) increases revenue growth
Thus, skills-based routing has become a major selling point, over the simpler ACD that it replaces efficaciously!
