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The customer service world has changed a lot. Speed and efficiency in response to each incoming call these days are becoming increasingly crucial. Seamless experiences are what customers expect from companies today, and every unsatisfactory touch can lead to costly churn or negative word-of-mouth.
Fortunately, contact centers can make full use of analytics and smart routing capabilities to maximize inbound call capabilities. This will ensure that a customer query is answered effectively and at the same time maximizing first-contact resolutions.
At NobelBiz, we take pride in providing solid omnichannel solutions that put these technologies together to achieve maximum performance and high customer satisfaction in call centers.
Leverage Analytics to Track, Adapt, and Succeed
The analytics coming from call centers present the necessary data that enables firms to interpret their performance and customer behavior.
It is in this regard that contact center managers can trace the key metrics around average call handling time, wait times, call abandonment rates, and customer satisfaction.
They drive informed decisions from the data to ensure continuous improvement across operations.
Schedule Your Team Around Customer and Prospect Demand
One of the biggest advantages with utilizing analytics is being able to predict call demand and consequently schedule agents accordingly.
Advanced analytics solutions, such as NobelBiz’ reporting services, give you real-time information rather than mere speculation or an outdated model on when your team will be busiest. Contact centers are therefore examining the patterns of past calls and factoring in extraneous variables like time of day, holidays, or promotional campaigns to create a dynamic workforce management system.
For instance, NobleBiz analytics can predict the times of day when calling volumes spike, hence informing managers to bring extra staff on board at peak hours and scale down when it is a slow time. In this regard, this leads to better utilization of resources, employee satisfaction, and quality customers. This is because people spend less time holding in queues.
Build a Data-Driven IVR and Call Routing Setup
Analytics also play an integral role in bringing more effective IVR systems and smart call routing protocols. More often than not, IVR stands at the very first point of contact between a customer and a business. When optimized with data, the IVR can route customers through to the correct department or find a solution quicker, thus reducing frustration and minimizing call abandonment.
A data-driven IVR-like one offered by NobelBiz, uses historical call data to refine menu options based on common customer inquiries. If the majority of callers over the last month were calling in for support about questions regarding billing, for example, the IVR can be updated to place the option for billing inquiries near the top of the menu to route the customer to the proper department quicker.
Skill-based routing takes this a step further by assigning calls to agents dynamically based on customer data, agent skillsets, and availability.
‘Smart routing is a game-changer for inbound call efficiency. By connecting customers with the right agent at the right time, we can dramatically reduce wait times and maximize first-call resolutions, leading to a better overall customer experience.’ – Mike McGuire, Senior Software Consultant at Nobelbiz
Understand What Your Customers and Prospects Need
Understanding what your customers and prospects need is essential. Call center analytics give businesses the power to track call reasons, customer satisfaction levels, and overall trends, helping them to adapt their services to changing demands.
Adapt to Trends in Prospect Calls
Prospects or customers call your business for any number of reasons, and determining those reasons is crucial to converting leads into lifelong customers. Call pattern tracking is one of the ways in which call centers are able to determine the repetitive themes that drive customers to call, whether due to product availability, price, or feature.
For example, if analytics show that a large percentage of inbound prospect calls revolve around the same product feature, that may indicate an opportunity for your marketing team to call more attention to that feature on your website or develop targeted sales campaigns. You will also, by observing the trends of the calls from prospects, be in a better position to train your agents more effectively on how to respond to frequent queries. In turn, you may achieve better first-contact resolution rates and higher conversion rates.
Adapt to Trends in Customer Calls
Just as understanding prospects is important, tracking and adapting to the trends in customer calls can really enrich the experience of the customer. Businesses can find out frequent issues or areas where customers need assistance and thus can resolve pain points preemptively by findings. NobelBiz’s analytics tools provide insight into what matters most to your customers-whether it’s technical support, billing questions, or product usage.
For example, in the event of an uptick in calls concerning a particular bug or feature of a product or service, proactively develop resources for customers to independently troubleshoot-a knowledge base or self-service portal, perhaps. Alternatively, route those calls directly to agents who are well-versed on that subject via a tweak in your IVR to limit call transfers and reduce friction in the customer experience.
‘Understanding what your customers need is more than just answering calls; it’s about leveraging data to stay ahead of their expectations. With our analytics-driven approach, companies can identify trends and proactively resolve issues before they escalate.’ – Christian Montes, Nobelbiz
Balance Speed and Quality with Smart Routing
Smart routing serves as the backbone to modern efficiency at call centers. In using data-driven insights like agent skillsets, availability, and customer history to route calls, it ensures that each caller can reach the best possible agent as soon as possible. This not only reduces the average time taken to resolve issues but also increases the quality of the customer service provided.
Speed Up Time to Answer
In contact centers speed is often everything to the majority of people. Minimization in time taken to answer every call is something that any contact center should aim for. Smart routing systems, like NobelBiz, ensure that an incoming call is directly assigned to the best-suited agent without wasting any extra time on waiting. The calls can be routed depending on the availability and skillset of the agents feeding into the system, avoiding bottlenecks and making sure customers will not have to wait too long.
Advanced routing algorithms can even identify high-value or repeat customers and route them to ensure expedited service. The outcome might be a growing level of customer satisfaction, which in turn reduces the probability of abandonment of calls, hence a rise in loyalty.
“Smart routing is a game-changer for inbound call efficiency. By connecting customers with the right agent at the right time, we can dramatically reduce wait times and maximize first-call resolutions, leading to a better overall customer experience.”- Michael McGuire
Reduce Unanswered Calls
One of the primary challenges faced by call centers is the risk of missed calls, especially during high-volume periods. Unanswered calls are a missed opportunity, whether they come from a prospect with buying intent or a customer needing support.
With NobelBiz’s intelligent call routing, the system ensures that calls are distributed evenly among available agents, minimizing the chances of a call going unanswered.
If an agent is unavailable, the system can redirect calls to another agent or department, further reducing the likelihood of a customer being left unattended. This ensures that your contact center never loses a call due to insufficient staffing or inefficient call distribution.
Maximize First-Touch Resolution
First-touch resolution is one of the most critical metrics for a contact center; thus, it is the ability of an issue to be resolved with a customer during their first interaction and not having follow-ups made. NobelBiz’s smart routing systems help customers maximize FTR by pairing them with agents who would best be suited to solve their query at the very beginning. This is attached to skill-based routing where the system can forward calls to agents with expertise in areas of customer issues.
For example, when a customer calls about a technical problem with their software, they will get routed directly to an agent who has the appropriate technical training. This minimizes the need for call transfers, reduces overall resolution times, and improves customer satisfaction.
Efficient, Smart Support
Efficiency and intelligence go hand in hand when it comes to providing exceptional customer service. NobelBiz’s solutions combine cutting-edge technology with real-time data analytics, allowing contact centers to streamline their processes while enhancing the customer experience.
By integrating omnichannel support, companies can handle customer interactions across multiple platforms—be it phone, chat, SMS, or social media—seamlessly.
The ability to track and analyze performance across channels provides a holistic view of the contact center’s operations. Managers can easily spot inefficiencies, areas of improvement, and opportunities for automation, allowing them to fine-tune their operations and ensure that customers always receive the best possible service.
Ready to Build Better Conversations?
The customer environment of today demands an operation that can provide quick, efficient service while offering a personalized touch.
Analytics and smart routing are some of the most effective means by which businesses can ensure maximum inbound call efficiency while continuing to provide high levels of customer satisfaction. NobelBiz presents state-of-the-art solutions for contact centers to tap into the power of data in order to take their operations to the next level.
With NobelBiz’s wide-ranging omnichannel solutions, your contact center can rethink performance by taking analytics on board, improving call routing, and finally offering better experiences to its customers.
Are you ready to build better conversations and optimize your inbound call efficiency?
Let NobelBiz take the lead.
Michael McGuire is a contact center industry expert with almost two decades of experience in the space. His experience includes roles as Director of Contact Center Digital Transformation at NobelBiz, and as Director of Operations at FLS Connect, managing multiple call centers. As President of Anomaly Squared and Targeted Metrics, Michael successfully transitioned companies into remote operations and significantly boosted revenues. With a strong background in customer service, leadership, strategic planning, and operations management, Michael excels in driving growth and innovation in the call center space.
Mike is also a proud Board Member for R.E.A.C.H Trade Group, promoting consumer protection and satisfaction and Co-host of the Off Skripted Podcast – a show about Life, Call Centers and everything in between.
