High call volume: what to do?
It's wishful thinking, but every company wants to offer high-quality customer service to its users and customers. But why should they?
Quite simply, because effective customer service is based on 3 levers:
- Customer satisfaction by ensuring that requests are dealt with quickly and qualitatively: this effectively addresses an important KPI: the average handling time (AMT) of incoming calls;
- Employee satisfaction: an eminently important criterion for helping your customer service department with day-to-day tasks and applying the famous concept of symmetry of attention and management by care;
- Promote your brand/company to prospects: boost brand awareness, promote expertise and advice, and ultimately increase sales.
So it's easy to see why, in times of peak activity, it's extremely important to be able to organize efficiently, using all the techniques and technologies available on the market.
Whether you need to identify a permanent change in your company's activity or take specific action, the increase in call volume is an indicator not to be taken lightly.
What do we mean by call volume?
Call volume is a numerical indicator used in call centers to measure the number of incoming calls over a given period. In call centers, volume is often studied over different periods: hour, day, week, evening.
These data are then classified between the number of telephone calls handled by an automated system and the number of calls handled by agents.
Call volume affects a number of elements:
- on customer service workloads and will influence forecasts in terms of staffing requirements;
- on customer service efficiency: how many calls are handled by an agent over a given period;
- on customer service quality indicators such as the number of lost calls or the abandonment rate.
How to identify high call volume?
High call volume means that the number of incoming calls is significantly higher than expected. This means that the incoming volume is higher than your customer service department can handle efficiently without damaging the satisfaction level of callers (customers or prospects).
Of course, an increase in the number of calls is not necessarily a permanent phenomenon.
These may include :
- An increase linked to a marketing/communication action plan: This is the case when a company launches a new product and has launched an action plan to boost the visibility of its products.
- Seasonal peaks: many companies experience regular call peaks depending on the time of year, as in the insurance industry (back-to-school period) or in retail: Valentine's Day, Black Friday, sales, etc.... Periods when you need to be highly responsive in managing customer relations.
- Weekly peaks on a given day and/or period. In many call centers, there is a post-weekend peak on Monday morning.
- Technical problems: your website is unresponsive, your application is down, or you've been the victim of a cyber attack. All these factors are likely to lead to an increase in the volume of calls from unhappy customers. Ps: we tell you here how to deal with an unhappy customer.
How do you handle high call volumes?
As you can see, you need to react quickly to any increase in call volume.
While the ad hoc addition of human resources may be a one-off solution, it seems complicated to implement for a number of reasons:
- A general lack of personnel
- Recruitment difficulties
- Lack of training for qualified advisors
- The complexity of covering 2-hour peaks two or three times a week.
Experience has shown us that implementing corrective practices is far more effective.
Planning for better management
Forecasting remains your best ally for making accurate decisions in terms of customer service management. At Zaion, we start every assignment with a scoping meeting, during which we take stock of the company's main customer service KPIs and carefully study the nature of your business.
This study phase enables us to establish forecasts based on your data, and to draw up a roadmap for the duration of the project.
The callbot
Flow management and caller recognition are crucial when it comes to handling large call flows. That's why a tool that identifies and qualifies the reason for the call, and processes it to provide a precise, intelligent response, is essential.
Zaion has developed innovative callbot technology to address these pain points. Our virtual conversational agents are able to understand customers' intentions in "human" language: natural language understanding ( NLU ), and to respond precisely according to context: natural language processing (NLP).
Because it's intelligent, the Zaion callbot adapts over time to the realities of your customer relations teams.
A welcome bot
Our Welcomebot allows customers to express their needs over the phone in natural language. The Welcomebot identifies customers and qualifies their needs before processing them if they can be automated, or directing them to the most competent advisor available, depending on the request.
The welcome bot is ideal for coping with peaks, as it guarantees instant handling of callers, no matter how many there are. The customer journey becomes seamless once again, the greeting is personalized: the customer is recognized and his or her information recorded, and the icing on the cake, the greeting bot is able to detect the caller's emotions and optimize the call distribution in a way that . For example, our bots can immediately transfer the call to an advisor if it detects that the customer is stressed or angry.
Overflow bot
The overflowbot or overflow bot helps to manage call peaks and remain available to customers in all circumstances, 24/7.
The bot handles unanswered calls (call peaks, HNO, queues) and distributes essential information to your advisors by email for cold processing.
This allows :
- Responding to customers in all circumstances to offer a voice experience
- Extend service availability
- And optimize planning for a better customer experience.
The crisis callbot
Health crises, product recalls due to health hazards, natural disasters, cyber attacks and BCPs, industrial accidents.... In an emergency situation, you can be sure that you're going to face an extremely high volume of calls. In this case, don't waste a minute and contact us: our Kraisis bot responds to all contacts, whatever the volume and channel, and guarantees a rapid, consistent and relevant response in support of your resources.
