10 Strategies to Manage High-Volume Call Rates
Here are 10 strategies from Telcoworks to help businesses like yours manage high-volume call rates without taking a hit to the quality of your customer support.
1. Forecast Call Rates
Forecasting call rates can help you appropriately prepare for moments when you know a lot of callers will be contacting your business. This can be done by identifying common causes of higher-than-usual call volume periods, and analysing call rates from previous years.
Once you can predict when surges will come in, preparations such as more staff allotment and automated services can be made in advance to best manage these periods.
2. Consider Additional Customer Service Channels
Integrating multiple customer service channels into your business can significantly reduce your call rate. It does so by limiting calls from customers with simple questions and easily solved queries. Instead, they are directed towards automated or more easily managed communication avenues to ensure the customers’ needs are still met.
Email contact forms live online chats, and AI chatbots for general enquiries are popular alternative customer service channels. However, many business phone numbers also provide alternate customer service channels, providing a more easily integrated solution.
Altogether, these additional channels have proven helpful for base-level queries and can take considerable pressure off your customer service staff. Having alternative channels displayed with your business phone number is key here to initially draw in customers and cleanly direct them where needed.
3. Replace the Call Hold With a Call Back Option
This strategy is a no-brainer for keeping customers happy in times when high call volumes cause longer wait times.
Customers hate being on hold for extended periods, so the call-back option allows them to go about their day until you can solve their queries. This reduces the percentage of customers becoming frustrated with your business’s services, while also freeing up your staff to focus on more pressing matters.
4. Schedule Sufficient Staff
For forecasted high-volume call periods, warn your staff that your business will need more firepower in these times. Then, check the existing employee schedules to make sure you can pull off adding additional staff in these times.
Remember to support your staff in high-volume call rate times. It is hard on them, especially if customers are more agitated due to longer wait times or service issues that have caused the surge in calls. Your staff deserve to be treated with respect, so don’t forget to be encouraging and acknowledge their hard work.
5. Hire More Employees as Necessary
For longer lasting high call volume periods, or permanent business growth, you’ll need to hire more staff to manage all of the incoming calls. Investing in call centre staff is critical for your business’s customer service reputation, so be sure to send out those hiring notifications ahead of time.
6. Be Upfront With Customers
A note on your website, a message on your hold line, or one of your reps sincerely apologising for the wait on phone lines can go far. If you are upfront and honest with your customers in times of delayed staff responses, they are more likely to be empathetic and treat your reps with more respect.
Additionally, explaining the cause of the surge in call volume allows customers to understand that it is a one-off occurrence. In turn, protecting their image of your quality customer service.
7. Create a Helpful Online FAQ Guide to Answer Popular Customer Questions
If the issue that contributes to your call volume is customers calling with basic questions, then it may be because your website doesn’t provide the necessary information. Putting yourself in their shoes and determining how clearly this information is displayed on your website is key to determining whether this issue is causing higher call rates.
An in-depth (but concise and user-friendly) frequently asked questions (FAQ) section on the homepage of your website is one solution. Such a simple method can go a long way in solving customer problems before they pick up the phone. This will take pressure off your customer service representatives and leave them freer to focus on more pressing business operations.
8. Use Call Queues
Call queues allow your business to organise incoming calls in the order they are received. That way, you can guarantee that customers are served on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Alternatively, they can be prioritised in terms of urgency if they press an option on the call menu for more advanced queues.
9. Offer Self-Service Options
When call volumes spike, encourage customers to switch to chat or self-service options. Have your customer service reps promote these self-serve methods on every call.
You can also have a prerecorded message at the start of the call that directs customers to different self-serve channels based on their queries. This empowers customers to use self-service, reducing the need to call in.
10. Install an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) System
An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system can significantly improve your business’s ability to manage high call volumes. It does so by automating routine inquiries, efficiently routing calls to the right departments, and providing self-service options for simple tasks. This not only reduces wait times but also frees up your customer service reps for more complex issues.
IVR can also personalise the customer experience. The resource scrapes past relevant data and handles multiple calls simultaneously during peak times so that no customer is left waiting for long.