Agent productivity is important when managing a blended call center. Finding the right way to train agents, assign leads, appropriately dial out, and route inbound calls are all key facets to optimizing your call center. But how can you seamlessly improve your blended call center and still ensure your agents remain productive?
What is a Blended Call Center?
Blended call centers handle both inbound and outbound calls. Depending on your business’ needs, having staff that can address both inbound and outbound calls seamlessly can improve productivity.
Benefits of a Blended Call Center
A blended call center’s most evident benefit is increased efficiency among your agents, especially if you have a user-friendly interface that allows the handling of inbound and outbound calls, and allows seamless switching between multiple contact channels. Other benefits of a blended call center include:
Increased quality of service & customer satisfaction
No matter where your customers are, you can meet them there with inbound and outbound capabilities, texts or SMS, video chats, email, or on social media platforms. With these capabilities, your agents can quickly address customer compliments, complaints, or questions, resolving situations with five-star ratings.
Improved satisfaction in the workplace
If your agents have the tools they need, workplace satisfaction will soar. Your agents’ morale is directly affected by customer satisfaction and their ability to handle any situation a customer may have.
Increased revenue
You can significantly reduce your call center’s operating costs, thereby increasing revenue, by shifting to a blended model. In other words, handling both inbound and outbound calls, and openly integrating several communication channels is a win. You’ll cut back on overhead as well as overtime. As agent efficiency improves, productivity soars.
Improved, real-time monitoring
Looking at key performance indicators and related data after the fact can only show you what’s been done, and allow you to decide which changes to apply going forward. Then, you again take a look at the data at a future date and see what worked and what didn’t. It’s a vicious cycle that’s causing you losses in revenue and satisfied customers. Pairing real-time analysis with historic data lets you address issues as they occur, such as when you’ve got too many agents, or not enough. Real-time analysis with a blended call center software package lets you monitor calls as they happen, interact with your agents, and empower them with the information needed for critical, on-the-spot decisions.
Increased productivity
Blended call center software reduces your agents’ idle time – thereby increasing productivity. It really is that easy. This tool gives your agents more time to spend on customers than sitting idly waiting for their next call, plus it provides more tools for ensuring customer satisfaction.
From a business standpoint, blended call center software:
Improves inbound and outbound calls
Using blended dialing software allows for better call management for both inbound and outbound calls. It also provides streamlining for all major departments in a contact center.
Improves sales
For sales agents, a blended dialer can reduce agents’ downtime by utilizing predictive dialing. It also allows agents to access real time data and analytics, along with information associated with leads.
Improves customer service
Integrating a blended dialer with an IVR can help route calls properly to the most skilled agents. These can also provide standard resolutions which could reduce call times during peak times.
Blended dialing software can also allow agents to view customer information when they call in. Easier access to data helps to resolve calls quicker. In addition, management can easily monitor and audit customer service agents.
Adds value for your marketing team
Call tracking and customer statistics can provide a great deal of value for marketing departments. Knowing what kind of leads and customers are more engaged with sales agents helps to target the right audience for conversion rates.
Benefits of a Blended Call Center for Your Clients
The above illustrates all the benefits your blended call center enjoys – but a blended call center’s benefits extend to your clients, as well. For instance:
- All previous touchpoints with a client are visible for every agent, every time
- Calls get routed to the most experienced agent or department
- Customers experience reduced hold times
- Customers can request a callback if they don’t want to wait
- Customer experience greater satisfaction
Blended call center software is a suite that includes such things as customer relationship management (CRM) tools. Blended call center software allows the simultaneous processing of incoming and outgoing calls while also allowing outbound sales teams to work in tandem. Blending tools such as outbound dialers, incoming call reception capability, and a CRM also simplifies a lot of the operations within your customer service and support teams.
This type of software allows a customer to speak with the same agent every time they call if they so desire, and offers well-rounded service prior to, throughout, and after their purchase. Eventually, your agents will evolve as they learn just how much more they can do for the customer – increasing brand loyalty.
How Can Dialing Software Help a Blended Call Center?
Blended call center software provides just the right tailored experience by offering the following features:
- Call Routing
- IVRs
- CRM Systems
- Outbound Calls
- Reporting
Tips to Increase Your Call Center’s Productivity
Traditional contact centers use metrics and rewards to help improve productivity. Blended call center software helps you streamline the following in an effort to create engagement and boost productivity:
- KPI and metrics
- Incentives
- Software solutions
- Better call routing
- Training and engagement
While these methods can be effective, technology can help provide better solutions, as well. The type of dialer you are using and how it’s configured can dramatically
increase performance. Predictive dialers tend to be the most optimal for performance while preview and manual dialing are among the slowest.
Conclusion
Opting for a blended call center software suite can help you take advantage of your team’s performance by easing stressors and providing the optimal tools to work with, thereby increasing team productivity and customer loyalty.
