We’d be delighted if you’ve raised an eyebrow somewhere in the first 3 parts. We’ve reviewed and examined some excellent strategies where you can win the productivity challenge. Here’s where we’ll show you the potent leverage call centre features offers single and multi-site enterprises alike. Terminology aside, it supercharges contact centre productivity.
High Volume Incoming Customer Calls
Let’s look at a very common yet frustrating situation experienced by almost every business. That is ‘Meeting the demands of incoming customer calls while retaining respectable customer satisfaction levels’. This is impossible to pick, and usually ends up with either poor customer service or excessive staffing for actual call demands. Sound familiar?
I’ll explain….
Whether you’re a busy single site business or a multisite enterprise the staff resources in your business will never running a peak capacity all of the time. Let’s say you’re experiencing a flood of customer calls outstripping the allocated staffing. There may be several staff available to receive additional calls however most are idle or occupied with non-critical duties. Typically this results in delays and lower customer satisfaction.
Bolt on the supercharger we mentioned earlier, instantly predefined idle or administration staff are presented with incoming call traffic no matter where they are. This is where you see an enormous reward from a smart well guided effort. Let’s face it, how frustrating is it when you are rolling around in a call queue waiting to be answered?
It’s worth noting here, the over flow calls can be directed to any worker no matter where they are located. This includes local remote workers or perhaps interstate or overseas.
The cost of Poor Service
Customers vote with their feet, bad service invariably means a lost sale and potentially the loss of a lifelong customer. Consider the potential value of this loss opposed to the elegant and simple fix.
The Wallboard – Just plain good business practice for high call volume companies
The wallboard simply displays real time information about the operation and status of contact centre to the workers on a computer screen. In some cases multiple large televisions broadcast these vital statistics. This is just like the screens you see in airports, large volumes of real time data constantly changing. Let’s not get bogged down in analysis paralysis here, focus on some key fundamental data that provides you with the tools to take your customer service levels to dizzy heights. Having world class customer service is not expensive and nor is it hard.
Let me explain…
Here’s an example in practice. A small enterprise company has their head office in Brisbane Queensland with two additional smaller offices in Melbourne and Perth. Brisbane has three sales staff manning the phones whereas Melbourne and Perth have two.
Sales calls into main office in Brisbane are in the order of 580 – 640 per day, with the secondary offices taking 370 – 430 per day. Customers too often experienced delays or simply abandoned the exercise. The frustrated general manager was prepared to hire one more sales person to expand the Brisbane office along with the addition of a third person in the busy Melbourne office. Disappointed with the additional cost of two more workers but believed there was no other option that was until she met Greg Eicke from Phone Systems Brisbane.
After a short discussion, Greg explained to the general manager that spending more money on more workers was not the answer, in fact there was only a tiny investment required to see all customer sales calls answered quickly. Surprised, the general manager was astonished to realise it didn’t matter which office was called. An annual investment of around $120 000 was reduced to a tiny once off injection of $8 000. That’s a tiny 6% of the total anticipated annual expense the company was willing to pay. Needless to say the business owners were delighted to witness a huge increase in customer service coupled with massive savings.
Now customer calls are automatically directed to available staff members in all three offices. 98% of customer sales calls are now answered within 30 seconds which is a distant memory from the previous delays and desertions.
A handy thing I hear you say. We think so too, just imagine appreciating exactly how many of your customers are waiting and indeed how long they’ve waited. Furthermore understand which of your staff are currently serving customers and the availability of others to assist, all in a quick glance? Imagine the heights you can take customer service levels to with that sort of information at your fingertips?
