3CLogic's Contact Center Blog

According to Dimension Data’s recent Contact Center benchmarking report, digital channels (email, web chat, social media, SMS text, video chat), which currently account for roughly 35% of contact centers’ total interactions, are expected to overtake voice within the next two years. The catalyst?—the widespread adoption of Internet-connected mobile devices. Consider the following: by 2018, Cisco predicts that the number of mobile devices used by consumers will grow close to 8 billion.

Praised for its superior scalability, reliability, and cost savings, cloud has quickly picked up speed in the contact center space, as it has eliminated the need for large up-front infrastructure investments and server maintenance. While the majority of the market continues to rely on on-premise solutions, an astounding 70% of businesses have stated a desire to transition to a cloud alternative. But while many cloud contact center solutions appear to offer similar features and functionality, there are a number of fundamental differences between them that every decision maker should be aware of before choosing a solution.

An astounding 82% of today’s consumers say speed of service is the number one factor to a great customer experience. And as businesses increasingly seek ways to improve their customer service, many have turned to virtualization and self-service. Airlines use self check-in, restaurants allow customers to make their own reservations, and grocery stores have self check-out lines—the list goes on.  In the case of contact centers specifically, 62% of best-in-class companies use interactive voice response platforms in some capacity to facilitate the delivery of fast but relevant customer service.

When a customer ends a call before it is answered by a live agent, the call is considered to be “abandoned”. Typically the result of long hold times, call abandonment can be a serious problem within contact centers, as it is often correlated with low CSAT scores, decreased revenue, and lost business. Consider this- more than sixty percent of consumers will hang up if their call is not answered in under five minutes, and more than eighty percent if their call is now answered in under ten. And while every industry and business is different, abandonment rates above 5% are considered to be problematic. How can contact centers decrease their call abandon rate?

After call work (ACW), often referred to as “wrap-up” or “post call processing”, is a component of call handle time that consists of the tasks performed by agents after disconnecting a call, including taking call notes, selecting a disposition code, updating information in the CRM/helpdesk, scheduling follow-ups, and updating colleagues. While a completely necessary step to any customer engagement, time spent on after call work (ACWT) is something most call center supervisors look to shorten, as it reduces the number of resources available to take a call. Said to take as much as one-third to one-half as long as the duration of the call (subject to change depending on industry, agent expertise, and role), ACWT that is consistently outside of an organization’s projections can begin to significantly impact agent productivity, customer satisfaction, and revenue. So how can an organization reduce after call work time without impacting quality?