average-handle-time

6 Call Center Practices You Can STOP Doing Today

By Daniela Puzzo on September 1, 2016

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6 Call Center Practices You Can STOP Doing Today So, you’re working on auto-pilot eh? (Yes, I’m Canadian.) I get it; we all tend to get comfortable with the rhythm of our day-to-day tasks and fail to watch areas that may require change. Unfortunately, your repetitive actions will produce the same results. If you keep practicing the same strategies without considering change it will only end in the demise of your center.

The best way of deciding how to improve contact center performance is to step back and look at it from a 360-degree view. After all, innovations and consumer behaviors evolve in scope and sophistication, so it’s worth reconsidering your tactics to potentially take your service to the next level. Continue reading →

Call Center Metrics: 4 Pitfalls You Need to Avoid [Whitepaper]

By Daniela Puzzo on March 31, 2016

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Measuring and improving call center metrics can be a pain point for executives. Your call center operates in a stressful environment where good quality metrics lead to a higher standard of customer service.

There are 4 call center metrics that are critical to track and get right. These numbers drive your budget, the jobs of your agents and, of course, your company’s bottom line. Here are common mistakes made when measuring or interpreting these 4 popular contact center metrics: Occupancy Rate, Average Handle Time, Service Levels, and Abandonment Rate. Continue reading →

3 Pitfalls When Measuring Average Handle Time

By Shai Berger on December 15, 2015

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It is critical to choose the right metrics to track in your contact center. Metrics drive your budget, the jobs of your agents and, of course, your company’s bottom line.

Today, we will look at “Average Call Time” also known as “Average Handle Time”. Its name is fairly self-explanatory, but there are important subtleties that need to be appreciated. Furthermore, we will look at the relative importance of this metric. If you’re tracking too many numbers, important signals can get lost in the noise so it’s important to prioritize. (TLDR: This one is not as important as many others.) Continue reading →

The Trouble with Average Handle Time

By Shai Berger on August 11, 2015

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If you manage a contact center, one of the toughest tasks you do is prioritizing the metrics to monitor. Today’s contact center software usually makes dozens of metrics available: Service Level, Abandon Rate, Average Speed to Answer (ASA), Average Handle Time (AHT), Occupancy Rate, and more. On top of that, analysis of data provided from systems proximate to the call center (e.g. CRM, workforce management, business intelligence, etc) bring even more metrics to the party: Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction, First Call Resolution (FCR)… the list goes on and on.

Choosing the right metrics is critical. Your call center’s budget might be at stake, as well as the jobs of your agents and, of course, your company’s bottom line. We can’t tell you which metrics should make the top of your list, because there are too many variables between call centers. But, we’ll do the next best thing: We’re going to look at why “Average Handle Time” can safely be demoted. Continue reading →

The ROI of Call-Backs (2 of 4): Reducing Handle Time

By Shai Berger on April 14, 2015

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The ROI of Call-Backs: Reducing Handle Time Today we continue our series exploring the ways call centers can see direct, measurable benefits by adding a call-back solution. We’re walking through the paths to “hard” ROI, such as reducing abandon rate, telco costs, or (today’s topic) handle time, one post at time. If you missed part 1, you can read it here.

With this series, we’re setting aside the other major upside to call-backs – increased customer satisfaction. Often the pursuit of happier customers is sufficient enough for all call centers to give this technology a close look, but we recognize that some organizations are more motivated by quantitative benefits, or need additional “ammunition” to obtain budget approval.

This post is fairly detailed and analytical. If you want a more high-level introduction, try 5 Reasons You Need Call-Backs in Your Call Center. Continue reading →

4 Hidden Causes of Poor Customer Service

By Jason Bigue on March 11, 2015

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4 Hidden Causes of Poor Customer Service The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but so is the contact center. Many companies talk a big game when it comes to providing outstanding customer service, but few actually achieve it. The question is: Why?

Certainly, no organization sets out to overpromise and underdeliver to its customers. Rather, poor service is the sum of all the policies and decisions along the way that negatively affect the service outcome, despite anyone’s best intentions.

Here are 4 hidden causes of poor customer service, and what you can do about them. Continue reading →

WebRTC and the Call Center: Challenges Ahead

By Shai Berger on November 26, 2014

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WebRTC and the Call Center: Challenges Ahead Today I want to spell out some big challenges ahead for WebRTC specific to the call center space, an area in which I’ve been deeply immersed for the last 5 years. I have followed WebRTC quite closely, written about it, experimented a bit and I am certainly bullish. I definitely see immediate potential in the UC/collaboration space as well as in “person-to-person” OTT communication. But my enthusiasm is much more guarded about one particular application: Using WebRTC to connect call center agents to consumers.

To keep the conversation manageable, let’s just focus on one simple scenario: A consumer connecting to a call center agent for a real-time voice conversation via a WebRTC client that is embedded in a browser. Let’s ignore video, the mobile case and the agent-side of the equation. Essentially, I’m describing a “Skype-like” experience for a caller that allows a smooth transition from a web interaction to a voice interaction, without needing a plug-in. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, not so fast. Continue reading →

3 Ways to Increase Customer Satisfaction in Your Call Center

By Shai Berger on October 21, 2014

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3 Ways to Increase Customer Satisfaction in Your Call Center With today’s demanding consumers, it can be very difficult to maintain high customer satisfaction scores, especially with a tight budget. According to a CEI Survey, 86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience, but only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve written about the major metrics (KPIs) that contact centers can use to obtain optimum performance (e.g. First Call Resolution (FCR), Abandon Rate and Service Level). This post will take a broader look across three areas: Customer Effort, Agent Attitude and Cross-Channel Efficiency. Improvements in these areas are the most impactful towards the overall experience for your customers. Continue reading →

Whitepaper: Are You Losing Customers to Hold Time?

By Jason Bigue on April 23, 2014

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Every business strives to do the best possible job acquiring and keeping customers. Doing those two things consistently, and doing them better than the competition, is no small challenge. Yet, many businesses lose customers every day through the simple act of putting them on hold. This is an entirely preventable source of customer dissatisfaction.

The best way to eliminate hold time is to add call-back functionality to your call center. Call-backs improve customer satisfaction and reduce churn by:

• Making the call center experience more enjoyable.
• Reducing abandonment rates.
• Converting more web and mobile visits into calls.

Traditionally, call-back solutions have been expensive and difficult to deploy. Today, Fonolo offers a cloud-based call-back solution that is quick to deploy, and very affordable. Continue reading →

5 Reasons Why Call Centers Should Not Send People to Voicemail

By Shai Berger on March 25, 2014

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5 Reasons Why Call Centers Should Not Send People to Voicemail

It happened again. I was calling a service provider (a shipping company). First I heard “All our agents are currently helping other customers”… so far, pretty standard. And then… “Press zero if you would like us to call you back instead”… Aha! A call-back system. Let’s give it a try. Pressed zero. A brief dial tone then (a different voice), “Please leave a voicemail and an agent will return your call.” Arrgh!

Many contact centers handle high volume periods by sending calls to voicemail, however this is *not* the same as giving callers a call-back option. The main difference is that a proper call-back system keeps the customer’s place in line (aka “virtual queuing”) and automatically connects customer and agent at the right time.

Years ago, adding such a system was pricy and time consuming, but today we have easy, affordable options and this “hack” has no place in the industry. Aside from seeming unprofessional, sending your callers to voicemail has 5 undesirable effects.

Continue reading →