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Tips to reduce call center shrinkage: II

1. Forecast down to appropriate intervals:

A particular number of agents is needed at different times of day to handle typical call volumes. This number is termed as “Base staff” and varies by time of day or day of the week. It is said to be a good practice to forecast down to about 15- or 30-minute intervals and to take into account variations in both volume and average handling time. This would help reduce call center shrinkage to a large extent.

Base staff
Base staff

2. Employ WFM application:

A WFM application with schedule adherence allows you to measure call center shrinkage at a granular employee level. It has the ability to track the exact time spent in planned and unplanned shrinkage. It can help manage shrinkage in a suitable manner in the season based environment. Moreover, it enables you to calculate the impact of absenteeism, late individuals etc on the service that you deliver to your customers.

WFM
WFM

 

3. Avoid flat lining or rounding off the shrinkage:

You should avoid flat lining the call center shrinkage across the year. Instead, consider analyzing the trends related to shrinkage. The reason being, categories such as sickness, training etc cannot always be the same every week or month of the year. Also, you need to make sure that you use decimal points and do not round off the figures in the respective calculations. This is because even 0.1% has the potential of adding up to a cost over the course of a year.

Shrinkage calculation
Shrinkage calculation

 

4. Consider individual calculations for different departments:

In a multi-department call center, shrinkage should be calculated individually rather than for the centre as a whole. This leads a better and more efficacious calculation.

Individual calculations of different departments
Individual calculations of different departments

5. Determine strategies that would reduce shrinkage for your business:

Based on the trends related to call center shrinkage and further calculations, base staff can be determined so as to facilitate a productive work schedule. Consider analyzing the data gleaned from monitoring the factors affecting shrinkage and discussing it with the entire team. Thereafter, you can determine and employ strategies that would work best to reduce shrinkage in your business

Strategies
Strategies

 

 

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Tactics to reduce your call abandon rate: IV

1. Know your customers:

This is one of the most important and effective strategies when trying to reduce your call abandon rate. In order to be able to provide your customers with good messages, good music, and everything else that would help you improve your call abandon rate, you need to know them thoroughly. Therefore, you need to go above and beyond to get the information that you would need to further improve your queue message, on- hold music etc.

Know your customers
Know your customers

2. Keep yourself updated with the latest trends:

In order to effectively reduce your call abandon rate, you need to keep yourself updated with new trends being used in the world of customer service. You need to be aware of the new trends in providing service. Moreover, you need to figure out those specific days of the week when there are a lot more calls as compared to other days. Once you have figured out the busiest days, take measures to lessen the burden and increase the call center’s capacity for those particular days. This would help lessen the call abandon rate and give your business more positive reviews from customers.

Keeping updated with the trends
Keeping updated with the trends

3. Train your agents appropriately:

Consistent training sessions should be held to improve the efficiency of training agents. They should be trained to handle even the worst of all customers. This would help you keep them updated with the latest trends and make them learn about the advancements in the technology. Moreover, these training sessions would help them perform better even during times when they are too pressured and stressed out. When trained appropriately, these agents can easily handle calls and provide solutions that are needed by the customers. This would effectively improve the quality of customer service and lower the call abandon rate.

Training your agents
Training your agents
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Lead generation strategies: Part I

Wondering what “Lead generation” actually means?

Well, in the simplest language, lead generation is the most important aspect of marketing which means initiation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business. It is basically a process of collecting names and contact information about qualified prospects which will be contacted by the salespeople for generating orders. It involves direct response advertising and telemarketing.

Leads may come from various sources or activities, for example, digitally via the internet, through personal referrals, through telephone calls either by the company or telemarketers, through advertisements, and events. A study from 2014 stated that direct traffic, search engines, and web referrals were the three most popular online channels for lead generation, accounting for 93% of leads.

We know that a steady stream of leads is an essential component of keeping a business afloat – but coming up with original and efficient ideas to attract and convert qualified leads is easier said than done. Here are some of the proven and actionable ideas to energize your lead generation efforts:

1. Write exceptional ads:

Stepping into the shoes of a searcher you will realize that most ads just suck. They’re boring, they’re indifferent, and one isn’t any more enticing than another. Betwixt such a chaos where everything looks the same, there’s a huge opportunity to come in with something exceptional and blow the competition away! Writing better ads can raise your CTR above the expected average, giving your quality score a hike.

2. Create a product video:

Researchers have proved that 65% of us are visual learners. As a matter of fact, product explainer videos can generate leads at a rate of up to 33%. When done correctly, videos can keep us engaged and can inspire us to take an action. So, videos do not need to be long and complex.

3. Give better offers and fewer choices:

The top 10% of landing pages have conversion rate 3x to 5x average the average. As an answer to “How do they make it possible?” – by giving better offers and fewer choices. Moreover, as per Hick’s Law – fewer choices mean less confusion, resulting in more leads. As an inspiration – “MySiteAuditor” decreased the options on a free trial sign up a page from six to one and saw 25% jump in their conversion rate.

4. Offer a lot of compelling opt-in opportunities:

You can present numerous opt-ins by turning every blog post into an opt-in page.  You can give away PDFs of your blog posts, worksheets, webinars, free reports, live demos, resource guides and what not! Instead of placing the opt-in in a sidebar, make a pop-up. You can’t make the visitors say yes, but there is no point making it easy for them to say no. According to a research, this tactic increased leads by 32 %!

5. Avoid mentioning SPAM :

Privacy is a major concern for all the visitors landing on your page. It is absolutely fine to reassure privacy but you should prefer doing it in a fun manner. In other words, assure privacy without using the word “SPAM”. In case of any doubts, you may run A/B tests to be sure your sign up forms are optimized for conversions.

6. Remarketing:

Remarketing is an efficient way to connect those visitors to your website who may not have made an immediate purchase or inquiry. It allows you to present targeted ads in front of a defined audience that had previously visited your website – as they browse elsewhere around the internet using YouTube, Google or even Facebook. Remarketing using the Google Display Network gives you 92% reach in the U.S., across millions of websites, videos, and devices.