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Top Tips on Unified Communications for Call Handling Teams, by James L. Tanner
James Tanner is CEO of Communications Department Ltd, a contact centre consultancy that helps companies of all sizes to reduce cost inefficiency and improve contact handling. He points out that while unified communications sounds like a dream come true for contact handling teams, technology is only one part of the solution. “People’s training and processes to manage the effective multi-channel communication need to be addressed to make this work effectively. Too often people and process is ignored. You can introduce all the latest contact centre technology but it just won’t help customer service unless it’s implemented effectively.”
He advises “new contact centres that ‘touch’ customers across many channels need to have clearly defined and communicated key contact handling performance targets across all these channels. It’s important to ensure that the contact handling team know how to achieve them and they need to be monitored regularly. Making a call centre perform well
is often challenging but making a multi-channel contact centre perform well can be extremely difficult. Ultimately, a cultural transformation is required, where people are driven and motivated to achieve or exceed the performance targets and to ensure that irrespective of the communication channel customers get a consistent quality of service.
Getting multi-channel communications in the contact centre right can reap the rewards
for organisations and mean that they can improve customer service with fewer staff and less cost.”
James provides the following tips for contact centre managers:
1. Encourage multi-channel contact including self-service
Up to 30 percent of all calls are either simple queries or progress chasing of existing order. Organisations should set up simple query resolution and payments through
cheap self-service channels which will automatically reduce contact volumes. New
self service and other unified communication contact channels should be effectively promoted. According to Keynote’s research: One third of people prefer to contact organisations by email or online and 50% of 25 -44 year olds prefer contact by email
or online
2. Get Buy in from the board
It is vital that an organisation has a board member sponsor with real power to implement unified communications; according to Keynote research 58 percent of contact centres said their performance was hampered by their legacy systems that needed upgrading .
3. Highlight the Top 30 Simple Frequently Asked Questions
Record monthly the top 30 simple FAQs with answers across all channels in order, and list them on your web site and intranet.
4. Avoid channel conflict
Outsourcers charge up to £1/ per min for each inbound call, so they are not incentivised
to promote self service or other channels. Contact handling teams often don’t want to promote self service or other channels as they are concerned they may lose their job.
5. Manage peak multi-channel contact periods
According to Netcall research callers wait an average of 12 minutes during peak times.
Average staffing levels should be calculated by hour of day, day of week and month of year across all channels. Contact handlers should be cross trained to answer different cross-departmental queries, and respond to different methods of contact.
6. Multi-channel real time statistics
It is vital that contact handling team members and supervisors have constant visibility of their individual and departmental statistics in real time across all channels.
7. Make the unified communications technology work for you
Set up automatic routines in your ICT systems so enquiries can be redirected to other teams/sites at busy times, and set up live alarms when predefined contact handling
times across all channels have been exceeded.
Author
James Tanner, Communications Department Ltd. © helps organisations maximise the efficiency of call handling teams to become leaders in their industry. For more information on improving call centre performance contact us call + 44 (0)20 8127 8302 or email jtanner@communications-department.co.uk