Have you grown tired of unwanted calls disrupting your business flow? According to a ZDNet article, small businesses in the United States waste nearly 20 million hours per year on unwanted calls, which is around $475 million per year.
These intrusions affect your agents’ productivity, generate frustration, and can harm your customers’ experience.
In the past, the primary strategy to combat spam calls was manual assignment to agents. Agents were responsible for identifying and blocking spam calls. However, this approach exhausts and demotivates agents, reducing their efficiency and job satisfaction.
In this article, we’ll explore effective alternatives for preventing unwanted calls that don’t impose additional workload on agents.
We’ll address technological solutions, data management strategies, and best practices that will help you combat spam calls without sacrificing your team’s well-being.
What are unwanted calls?
These are calls you receive without the prior consent of the customer.
Unwanted callers
- Robocallers: These computer programs inundate you with prerecorded messages, often for fraudulent or aggressive telemarketing purposes.
- Unscrupulous companies: They obtain your contact information illegally or purchase it from dubious databases to sell you products or services you don’t need.
- Pranksters or harassers: They use the anonymity of the phone to bother or even threaten you.
Impact of unwanted calls on call centers
Unwanted calls are not only a nuisance for you but also seriously affect the operation of the call center:
- Unwantred calls waste valuable time: that could be spent attending to real customers and solving their problems.
- They generate stress and frustration: affecting your mood and motivation to work.
- This kind of calls damage the company’s image: by associating it with annoying and intrusive practices.
- Unwanted calls decrease customer satisfaction: causing annoyed customers to hang up or even stop using the company’s services.
Expert Advice: Beyond analyzing metrics and KPIs, an effective call center leader leverages one-on-one meetings with their agents to build strong relationships and foster a positive and productive work environment.
Why do unwanted calls reach your business?
Unwanted calls that disrupt your day-to-day operations in the call center don’t appear out of thin air. They have an origin, and it’s essential to combat them effectively.
Data leakage and sale of personal information
Our personal data is constantly exposed, and unfortunately, not all companies are responsible for managing it. Information leaks or sales to third parties without our consent can lead to our phone numbers, being used by unscrupulous individuals to make unwanted calls.
Outdated or illegally purchased phone databases
Some companies need to verify the origin or consent of the people included to compile and sell phone databases.
Usually obsolete or incomplete, these databases end up in the hands of those seeking to make unwanted calls.
Robocallers
Technology has also been enlisted to service unwanted calls. Robocallers are computer programs that make automated calls on a large scale using random phone numbers or illegally purchased databases.
These prerecorded robots are annoying and can be used for fraud or scams.
Unethical telemarketing practices
Some companies use unscrupulous practices to achieve their sales goals. These include purchasing dubious phone databases, making calls at inappropriate hours, or insisting on offering products or services that are not of interest to the customer.
Tips to avoid calls. How to know if agents are avoiding customers
Imagine if your agents lose 20% of their time attending to annoying calls. Your customers get frustrated and hang up before being served, and your reputation is affected by complaints about unwanted calls.
Here are some practical tips to prevent this problem and protect your Call Center.
1. Continuous Monitoring:
- Record and review random calls: to identify if agents avoid specific customers or do not offer adequate attention.
- Use call tracking tools: to analyze calls in real time and detect unusual behavior patterns.
- Follow KPIs: pay attention to the rate of abandoned calls, average wait time, and resolution rate.
2. Deep analysis
Review calls from dissatisfied customers
It’s essential to analyze calls from those customers who have expressed dissatisfaction with the service received. It will allow you to identify recurring service errors, lack of service quality, or even cases where agents avoid attending to certain types of customers.
Conduct satisfaction surveys
Satisfaction surveys are a valuable tool for obtaining direct feedback from customers about their experience with your agents. Through them, you can learn their opinions, identify areas for improvement, and detect behavioral patterns that could indicate that agents are avoiding calls.
Identify behavioral patterns
Analyzing calls to identify behavioral patterns indicating that agents avoid attending to specific customers is crucial.
For example, if you notice an unusual number of unanswered calls at certain times or certain types of customers receive less attention, this could be a red flag.
3. Customer Feedback
First, review feedback from dissatisfied customers. What do they say? What kind of problems are repeated? Are there cases where customers mention that agents seem to avoid them?
In addition to comments, you can conduct customer satisfaction surveys and CSAT calls. These surveys will allow you to obtain direct feedback from customers about their experience with your agents.
Ask them about the quality of the service received, the agents’ friendliness, and if their problems were resolved.
You can identify behavioral patterns by comparing feedback, CSAT scores, and survey responses.
If you observe matches in areas of dissatisfaction or if there are types of customers or times with more negative comments, agents may avoid attending to specific calls.
Acting quickly is essential, correcting agents’ behavior, improving customer satisfaction, protecting your business’s reputation, and increasing sales and loyalty.
4. Stay alert during training and coaching sessions
Effective leadership in a call center transcends beyond simple numbers and metrics. To build a solid and productive team, it’s essential to establish personal connections with agents through individual meetings.
These sessions provide an invaluable opportunity to deeply understand each team member and discover their motivations, concerns, and particular challenges. This way, personalized support and guidance can be offered, addressing specific issues and providing the necessary tools to overcome them.
These meetings foster open communication and a relationship of trust, creating an environment where agents feel secure expressing themselves without reservations.
They promote a positive and motivating work culture where agents feel valued and are inspired to reach their full professional potential.
How to draft a policy to avoid calls and successfully implement it
This policy should be like a guide that directs agents and customers towards excellence, and to achieve this, it should include the following key elements:
Training material and usage guides
Develop a comprehensive training and onboarding program that prepares new agents to face any challenge. This program should include call simulations, problem-solving courses, and training on communication channels.
Ensure that agents feel secure and confident in handling the types of problems they will encounter. It’s important that agents have access to up-to-date knowledge resources and a mentor who can guide them in case of doubts.
Centralize knowledge resources in an accessible location for quick access to real-time information. It can include a frequently asked questions database, procedural manuals, and problem-solving guides.
Directing each customer to the appropriate channel
- Implement an omnichannel strategy that allows customers to choose the channel that best suits their needs, whether by phone, chat, email, or social media. It means offering a seamless and uninterrupted experience across all channels.
- Prioritize live channels for critical issues that require human interaction while using web channels for less severe problems that can be resolved autonomously, ensuring that customers receive the attention they need.
- Employ skills and priority routes to connect customers with the most suitable agents, optimizing time and problem resolution.
- Encourage self-service options. Frequently asked questions databases or chatbots, allows customers to find answers independently, reducing agents’ workload and wait times. It enables customers to solve simple problems without waiting to speak with an agent.
Establishing the customer journey
- Clearly define the journey, specifying when to choose a channel or support team. This way, you can communicate to customers which channel to use for each type of problem and how to access the appropriate support team.
- Communicate expectations to agents for each channel, including acceptable and unacceptable behaviors; explicit norms will be created on how agents should interact with customers on each channel.
- Establish a reward and recognition program to incentivize desired behaviors among agents, motivating them to deliver exceptional service. For example, bonuses, rewards, or public recognition can be included.
Assessing results
- Implement a solid set of metrics and dashboards to monitor call avoidance and other key performance indicators (KPIs). These can be customer satisfaction, average resolution time, and agent productivity.
- Integrate these measurements into the quality assurance program to identify areas for improvement and continuously optimize the strategy.
- Continuously reinforce desired behaviors through regular employee feedback, team meetings, and quality training, ensuring that all agents are aligned with the policy’s objectives.
Conclusion
The fight against unwanted calls is an ongoing battle for call centers worldwide. Implementing effective strategies is crucial to ensuring success in this task.
It’s essential to recognize that the problem of unwanted calls will continue to evolve. Therefore, it must remain vigilant and adapt to face this ongoing challenge.
With a proactive approach and a commitment to continuous improvement, call centers can remain efficient and customer-focused in an increasingly challenging environment.
Questions about unwanted calls
What is call avoidance in a call center?
Call avoidance refers to all strategies call center agents employ to intentionally avoid telephone calls, both to handle incoming calls and make outgoing calls.
How important is it to implment a strategy to avoid unwanted calls in my call enter?
Implementing a strategy to avoid unwanted calls is crucial for the success of any call center. These calls disrupt workflow, reduce productivity, damage the company’s image, and generate customer dissatisfaction with legitimate issues.
