As customer service continues to overtake price and product as a brand’s key differentiator, businesses are increasingly seeking out ways to help streamline and optimize every aspect of the customer experience, from queue management and hold times, to interactions and follow-ups. But for many of today’s leading contact centers, there is very little control over when a call is answered and by whom, and often no efficient or effective means of identifying callers prior to speaking with them. Consider this—while 59% of calls require identity verification, only 3% are handled entirely through automated processes (ContactBabel). For most, basic and static IVR menus(i.e. “press 1 for sales, press 2 for support”) are the primary means of differentiating callers and attempting to route them to the appropriate department, with little to no account for preexisting customer data or prior interactions.
Topics: call center, call handling procedures, IVR, skills based routing, contact center
